API Strategy & Practice Conference 2017

"Despite open data's potential to change the world, it seems that developers and open data providers are constantly in an uphill battle to make open data not only available, but usable and actively used. The obstacles facing open data’s growth and adoption vary from technical infrastructure concerns, including maintenance, APIs, open data formats, to societal ones, including the ethical and security challenges of open data and the political climate shift in some countries causing antagonism towards open data.

In this talk, Shelby Switzer will dive into the origins and current state of open data globally and in the US, using concrete stories to illustrate the value of open data and its potential impact on our communities, governments, and businesses. She will explore the challenges facing the open data ecosystem, and discuss how key open source projects and standards, including Open API, have the potential to be instrumental in changing the game and positively impacting the open data movement."