The Open Data Institute (ODI), a London based foundation, has announced its global expansion plans owing to the creation of 13 New Worldwide ‘Nodes’.
The ‘Nodes’ will be launched with an aim to bring together, incubate and nurture companies, universities, and NGOs supporting open data projects and communities. The ODI was founded and launched by Professor Nigel Shadbolt and Tim Berners-Lee in financial collaboration with the UK Government and Omidyar Network to stimulate and encourage economic, environmental as well as social innovation through open data sharing and analysis system.
The institute says that since its December 2012 launch, many have sought support for setting up their own versions of the organization. This is the reason that ODI decided to create a network of nodes in different parts of the world.
The new nodes will be launched in Argentina, Canada, Dubai, France, Italy, Russia, Sweden and the US, with two extra US nodes Chicago and North Carolina. Other three UK nodes will be launched in Manchester, Leeds and Brighton.
Each of the new ODI nodes will be operating at both local and national levels. The nodes will have to adopt the ODI Charter, which is an open source codification of the ODI itself, and embodies principles of open data business, publishing, communication, and collaboration.
Announcing the launch of the new 13 worldwide nodes on Tuesday during the first annual ODI Summit at the Museum of London, Gavin Starks, CEO at the ODI, said “I have been amazed at the energy and enthusiasm of people looking to align around a global network of ODIs. The speed at which we have been able to collaborate, and the shared thinking about the approach and the scale of the potential. We have borrowed from the design principles of the web itself to bring people and organisations together, and will use open data both to collaborate with each other, and as the primary output of the network”, notes Wired.
