Planet Open Knowledge 
Open Knowledge and MyData – same roots, shared values
Viivi Lähteenoja - November 10, 2020 in Events, OK Finland, Open Data, Open Knowledge, personal-data, Talks
The origins of MyData can be traced back to Open Knowledge Festival held in Finland in 2012. There, a small group of people gathered in a breakout session to discuss what ought to be done with the kind of data that cannot be made publicly available and entirely open, namely personal data.
Over the years, more and more people who had similar ideas about personal data converged and found each other around the globe. Finally, in 2016, a conference entitled MyData brought together thinkers and doers who shared a vision of a human-centric paradigm for personal data and the community became aware of itself.
The MyData movement, which has since gathered momentum and grown into an international community of hundreds of people and organisations, shares many of its most fundamental values with the Open movement from which it has spun off. Openness and transparency in collection, processing, and use of personal data; ethical and socially beneficial use of data; cross-sectoral collaboration; and democratic values are all legacies of the open roots of MyData and hard-wired into the movement itself.
The MyData movement was sustained originally through annual conferences held in Helsinki and attended by data professionals in their hundreds. These were made possible by the support of the Finnish chapter of Open Knowledge, who acted as their main organiser. As the years passed and the movement matured, in the autumn of 2018, the movement formalised into its own organisation, MyData Global. Headquartered in Finland, the organisation’s international staff of six, led by General Manager Teemu Ropponen, now facilitate the growing community with local hubs in over 20 locations on six continents, a fourth Helsinki-based conference in September 2019, and the continued efforts of the movement to bring about positive change in the way personal data is used globally.
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The previous episodes of Zero to Infinity Talks were on various topics. Such as particle physics – ‘Infinity to Zero: A Tale of Particle Physics.’ Speaker Dr. Arshad Momen, Professor & Chairman, Department of Theoretical Physics, University of Dhaka. Dr. Arshad Momen completed his Ph. D. from Syracuse University, NY, USA, was a research fellow at Oxford University in the Theoretical Physics. Also a visiting scientist at CERN, ICTP.
Lectures also held on The Response of Bangladesh and Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta to Sea Level Rise. Speaker Dr. Dipen Bhattacharya is a Research Physicist at University of California, Riverside, and Professor at Riverside Community College, USA. He was also a former research fellow, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
‘Zero to Infinity Talks’ is a weekly lecture series arranged by monthly science magazine ‘Zero to Infinity’. The Program is powered by ET Tech Limited. Inspired by Open knowledge Foundation. Other partners are Ezze Technology, Fortune Tech, and Society for Science Popularization, Bangladesh. 
The previous episodes of Zero to Infinity Talks were on various topics. Such as particle physics – ‘Infinity to Zero: A Tale of Particle Physics.’ Speaker Dr. Arshad Momen, Professor & Chairman, Department of Theoretical Physics, University of Dhaka. Dr. Arshad Momen completed his Ph. D. from Syracuse University, NY, USA, was a research fellow at Oxford University in the Theoretical Physics. Also a visiting scientist at CERN, ICTP.
Lectures also held on The Response of Bangladesh and Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta to Sea Level Rise. Speaker Dr. Dipen Bhattacharya is a Research Physicist at University of California, Riverside, and Professor at Riverside Community College, USA. He was also a former research fellow, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
‘Zero to Infinity Talks’ is a weekly lecture series arranged by monthly science magazine ‘Zero to Infinity’. The Program is powered by ET Tech Limited. Inspired by Open knowledge Foundation. Other partners are Ezze Technology, Fortune Tech, and Society for Science Popularization, Bangladesh. 
It was so inspiring to hear what our network has been doing to further the Open movement recently and over the last 6 months!
We heard from 
It wasn’t just during the planned sessions where community-building and networking occurred: despite the scorching 30°C (86°F) heat – somewhat warmer than the Winter Summit in January! – people made the most of lunchtimes and breaks to share ideas and plan.
We also heard from 
It should be noted that these activities and updates are brief highlights only – distilling the activities of our groups into one or two sentences each is very much unrepresentative of the amount of things we could talk about here!
As an aside, I was going to state that “we only need an Antarctic representative and the Open Knowledge Foundation will have all seven continents in our network”; however, it appears