 OK. Hello, everyone. I would like to make one request. It's that if you have taken pictures today, that you can share them on Wiki Commons. So on Wiki Media, the website of the same guys behind Wikipedia, you can upload your images there. And the room in, I'm missing a room in. Where is the room in? No. OK, just Google for Wiki Commons, and you will be able to upload your pictures there. Share them with Open Belgium 18. So who knew that today was actually, that today was actually the 29th birthday of the web? Many people actually knew. Nice, but it wasn't mentioned before. So the 12th of March today in 1989, there was Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the web. That actually invented this very thing. So back today, he wrote an opinion piece with his NGO, the Web Foundation, where he actually said, the web is under threat. We are not doing a good job with the web. And we need to do a couple of things about this. And I think this is very close to what we are doing as well with Open Knowledge Belgium. The first thing that we actually need to do is to close the digital divide. We need everyone to have equal access to the web, to the web or the internet. And today, and I want to ask you, dear people of the audience, net neutrality. Who knows what net neutrality means? Yes? Good, go on now, leave them up, leave them up. Yes, this is a game that we're playing, yes? So, OK, majority knows what net neutrality is. And now, who is in favor of net neutrality? Good. I saw none of the hands actually going down. That means that the people in this audience actually have a very high rate of believing in the same thing. Yet, that is not true for everyone. It's not true for everyone across entire of Belgium. And that's a problem. And we need to fight for net neutrality. We need to fight for the web as it is, because there's a threat that it's going to disappear if we are not going to tell us what's bothering us. So we, as a community, the audience of Open Belgium, we need to make statements. The second thing is that he said, make the web work for people, not only for big companies. And let's not make big companies just centralize everything in one system. But let's make sure that everyone can harness the power of the web to make something useful for him or herself. And how can we do that? Well, I think that governmental organizations and people who actually publish raw data have a lot to say in that. Because today, even if we publish data about, for instance, about public transport, if we publish data about public transport today, then, yeah, the first thing that happened with SNCB, for instance, it was not. SNCB no shares their data for developers. No, it was Google Maps. No adopts the data of SNCB. This was the headline in the newspapers. That's a big problem. Because, yeah, I will, oh, the web is, I will ignore the fact that the web is not. So if Google Maps is the only one who will be able to actually put in the investments to use this data and to make useful things with it, then we have a problem again. So we also need to publish this data better. And I think I saw someone from Stip today who I was really happy to meet. That said, we are going to put in the effort to publish better open data in the future. And that's really key, something that we really need to do. We don't need to only publish open data. We actually need to do it better so that it actually creates power for the many and not only the few. And I have another question for you. Who believes actually that meteorological data should be open and free to use? That creates almost 100% success rate. We all believe that just the better data about the better, that should be freely available. Yet if we look at our own meteorological institute of Belgium, and we look at the open data page, it hasn't been updated since 2016. And I actually said this work of creating this open data portal will last until 2016. And the data on there, there are some really interesting data on there. But it was only part of a small project, which the project really has its merits. But it's too bad that this is just not funded anymore. How come this is not funded anymore? I believe this is our fault. This is on us. We didn't make enough noise about the fact that this was a really good step. This was a really good step of our meteorological institute to do open data. And we really needed to, we really need as open data advocates to show that's a good example and to make sure that it's going to keep getting funded. And what we are doing as open Belgium and as open knowledge Belgium, I think it's also working. Because only today there was already Ryan Heath, a very popular journalist that actually retweeted a tweet from Tom saying that, hey, look, there's now this tool that you can use to actually use open data. And then there's Alstompo that shouted out to Stip. I don't know whether it's correct or not. But she showed it out that Stip should go for better open data. So also, politicians and journalists are now on the same page with us. So we are actually creating this world where knowledge creates power for the many and not the few. And that's really where we need to be heading at. And of course, as any NGO, as any organization that believes that we're on the right side of history, if something is working, let's do more of that and let's do it with more people. So that's what we really need to try to do with you in the audience. We need you to start advocating open data as well. And we can only learn from the best. I have three people from the board of directors of Open Knowledge Belgium that I would like to invite on stage. So Ton, Gwen, and Timo, please join us on stage. They are open data advocates from the first hour. When it wasn't cool yet, these guys were actually doing it. And now it's cool. And now they're still doing it. And now they're inviting you to do it as well. But let me ask, in fact, a first question to Ton, do you think like now, when you've seen Open Belgium today, do you think we have the right meat, or how do you say, the meat in the bowl, or the fleece in the cup? Do you think we have the right people to start? Do you feel like I'm in sound sound? Yeah, I feel like I'm some sort of nightclub where the people, like you have like, I definitely think we have the right meatball. That is a saying or a fighting pit, like, OK, and we're not going to, we don't plan to fight here. But yes, I think if I look at the people that attended today and the discussions we had here in real life, online, and the people following the video stream, it's really impressive in a few years how I think that this idea of open data, which was new, which we had to explain a few years ago, has become something that people in this room take as a given. And that we are now asking for a lot more stuff in many of the work groups. I heard the same thing. How can it be that this set that was publicly funded is not open? This was going from energy data over sea bottom level data to many exciting other data sets, which we were not fighting for years ago. So yes, I think it shows that we have greatly advanced the knowledge about open data and the need for more open knowledge in general. What kind of data are you yourself working on? Is that like in the, is that over any kind of domain or is it something specific? Myself, I'm, as you know, the board members that sit here in front of you, we're all volunteers, unpaid, we did this on the side of our day job. And many of our day jobs are linked to what we are telling here. So we try to practice what we preach. And I make my living with two startups. The first one is data, which is opening business data. And the second one is legs.be, which is opening legal data. So often we had to go in the early days to scrape the data. Now and now, this data more and more are published in structured data sets. But the value of structuring the unstructured was already bringing enough value for us to live off. And there's a small SMB companies with a handful of people working there full-time. So, and do you think this cleaning data business will still exist for a long time? I hope it, I actually hope this is a strange thing, but I hope that the government will disrupt us. So I hope there will no longer be a need for what my company did a few years ago and is doing today and that we can all extract higher value that the base data sets will have a higher quality and that if you wanna sell something on there, it's gonna be insights that you have used and machine learning artificial intelligence or human power to bring new insights on top of existing data sets. But right now we're still doing a lot of the low hanging quality control, finding links, finding entities between those data sets that are pretty messy and unstructured up to this day. Okay, I think I've seen a lot of people working on linked data here and things that might disrupt your business and I actually hope that it will, if it's not going to do that, then I think we will only leave the power of data to a couple of companies, just like, yeah, your company, but yeah. Good, Glenn, you're the open science advocates, right? Yes. Does this work? Okay. Yes, you have to hold it really close. So what does that mean, open science? Is that not the same as open data or? Open data is part of open science. Yeah, as most of you know, I think the whole open movement in scientific research and to be clear with scientific research, we mean everything from humanities to social sciences to STEM. It started up with the call for opening up access to publications. So that's how it started like 15 to 15 years ago. People getting very frustrated by the fact that their publications are locked behind a paywall and basically that you have to pay to get access to research that's being funded by public means. So, but it's interesting, I think like since the seven years, six, seven years that I've been working, there's been a very, first a very gradual, but now like a very firm shift towards to not only have publications, to not only open up publications, but to open up underlying data sets, but the data underlying the publications, but also to consider data science as like a full part of scientific research. I think there are more and more researchers now actually not publishing papers anymore, but just working on data sets and that comes with certain, I would say institutional hurdles that in the largest part of the world, at least in Western Europe when your academic career depends on the number of publications you publish and that leaves more and more people who are actually conducting science, but who do not get the publications anymore. So far I have heard about a lot of open domains and in not one case it was simple, was always like part of like a really entangled structure and that's what you're probably referring to as well, like the, yeah. Yes, it's one and I mean every day I hear about like you have open notebook science, you have open lab science, you have also in humanities, I think for those who are just mourning and the humanities, the such medami, there's plenty of very interesting data mining, text and data mining, super interesting stuff being done and it's becoming more and more difficult to do that kind of stuff if you're not working in the open. There's somebody, there's a sticker on my laptop actually said like science that is closed is not good science or closed science is bad science and I think we're more and more going into that direction. So if now in the audience that there would be someone kicking off a new domain for instance about open data about to see, what later you can ask it at the reception. But Glenn, what kind of hints would you give to him? Would you have a tip for him? Like did in open science, did something go really well? I would just say like user common sense, like make sure there's been a lot of talk about fair and data and you know like you can, you can transpone this to other domains as well. Like it's findable, make whatever you do, whether it's data, whether it's a publication, whether it's notes that you make it findable, make it accessible, make it if possible, interoperable so that other people can interact with whatever you're doing and make it reusable as well. I think I would say the time of silos and science is over, it's not true. There's still silos, but I think we're heading towards the direction where there's this whole network of interconnected domains and especially with all the international projects. Like people are, you cannot really work on an international scientific project anymore if you decide to keep all your data on a USB stick in your drawer, right? Yeah, okay, cool. So Timo, that moves us to the last domain of this panel at least. That's, you've been worked, so it's business, academics and now you've actually worked on open data from inside government. How did that go? Was that exciting? Exciting, it was, honestly Peter, when I started my job at the city of Ghent, they told me you would be working on open data and I was scared as hell because I was just a low level clerk in a government organization. Which power do I have to open up data? That was a question that I had. And if I look in the room now, because you were actually, you were blaming the audience for not being advocates, right? You're right at some point, but at least one in four people in this room and I'm not exaggerating, have been instrumental in the open data program in Ghent. So honestly, you've been doing my work and the reason I had the power to convince people at the city administration to open up data was thanks to you guys, so thank you. Honestly, Peter was, the reason we have open data in Ghent, and I hope I can say we're trying to do it well, was because Peter asked our mayor, hi Mr. Tumont, would you do open data? And he said, yeah, sure. I wonder if I would have asked a different question whether he would have said the same thing. So honestly, community is very important, right? We really need to stand together and continue advocating. So only one in four people has helped me. The other three should start doing their job. Good, and on that note, I want to thank my panelists, Timo, Gwen and Tom. And now for the final bit before we start the reception. Or someone already have started? No, no, no, they didn't. Because it wouldn't have worked without you. I would like to thank, I would like to thank Mathieu, Christophe, Bob, Tom, Raph, Ben, Gwen, Bert, Niels, Thomas, Romain, Mutwakil, Carlo. I cannot read my own handwriting anymore. Mano, Manuel, Katya, Niko, Yotar, Mustafa and Damien. So give these people a warm applause. Thank you very much. Without you guys, this would have never, never worked out. So also thank you for all the last minute work we've been, you've been putting in. With some problems with the beamer, Bob, you've done an incredible job in, your stress level must have been, no? Okay, then, okay, then forget what I said. I'm gonna interrupt you now, Peter, because you're forgetting somebody crucial on stage. Julia, this is the moment where we are going to thank you. Yes, which flowers? Because what most people haven't seen at this success here today is yours. So a big thanks from us, from our hearts, from the whole board. You must know that we're a small, non-profit organization and Julia put this together almost all by herself with very little of our support. So Julia, well done and much appreciated. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. No, I appreciate it a lot, even though it's not necessarily true without the support of a lot of people. No, really, without these people, this wouldn't be possible and thank you so much. I agree with Timo. The community is incredible and thank you for being part of it. Well done to all. Thank you, Valentirs. Thank you, Julia. Thank you, Barton. Thank you, speakers. And closing words for you. Thank you to the partners, of course, the people who actually made sure that we had enough financial means to organize this. Mirva Mapbox Digital Wallonia, Emac de Greenland, FixShare, OpenDataShop, Rockestate, and Tenforce. Thank you very much. And now the rest of this. Next year, we would like to have Proximus again. So forgive, Peter, for making those crucial comments often. We have the carrot and the stick, yeah? And we tell it as it is and it's a hard balance to find. But Peter, thank you for taking care of all those partners. Thank you.