An International Network

The Open Knowledge Foundation is a globally-located, community-focused organisation with much of its work done by volunteers and other contributors around the world. This page displays information about core OKFN staff members who run the Foundation and work with our projects, tools and communities.

For more information on the advisory and decision-making at the OKFN, see our Board of Directors and Advisory Board. To browse through members of our network who have chosen to list themselves online, go to our members page. For more information on those involved in individual projects, go to our wiki.

List of Current Staff

The Core Team

Dr Rufus Pollock — Co-founder

Rufus lives in Cambridge and is a Shuttleworth Foundation Fellow, an Associate of the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law at the University of Cambridge and a Director of the Open Knowledge Foundation which he co-founded in 2004. He has worked extensively as a scholar and developer on the social, legal and technological issues related to the creation and sharing of knowledge. More information can be found on his home page.

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Dr Laura James — Foundation Coordinator

Laura lives in Cambridge and is a dynamic and adaptable technical leader with extensive hands-on technology R&D, product design and delivery experience. She is a co-founder and Director of Makespace, a Chartered Engineer, and is excited by and interested in far too many disparate things. More information can be found on her home page.

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Jonathan Gray — Community Coordinator (on sabbatical)

Jonathan is on sabbatical from January 2012 in order to focus on his PhD.

Jonathan lives in Berlin and studied Philosophy at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University, Social Sciences at the Open University and is currently doing research in the German department at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is particularly interested in open government data, data visualization and digital technologies in the humanities. More information can be found at jonathangray.org.

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Lucy Chambers — Community Coordinator

Lucy is the Community Coordinator for OpenSpending, Data-Driven Journalism and Spending Stories.

Lucy lives in Cambridge. She graduated from St John’s College, Cambridge in June 2010 in modern languages (German, Russian & Ukrainian). Aside from languages, she spent a year living in Russia working on an ethnographical project with labour migrants from Central Asia. She is particularly interested in Open Data related to Russia and the CIS and literature of Russia and Ukraine.

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Kat Braybrooke — Community Coordinator

Kat is the Community Coordinator for Global Chapters and OKFest.

Kat lives in London and is the point-of-contact for the OKFN’s Local Chapters, conferences and events. She also does front-end design for various core OKFN projects. A Canadian from Vancouver with a background in local organising, indie media and municipal politics, Kat conducted an MSc ethnography of European F/LOSS hackers with University College London’s Digital Anthropology programme and has a BA in Political Science from Canada’s University of British Columbia. Her side work lives at KAiBRAY.

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Sam Leon — Community Coordinator

Sam is the Community Coordinator for Volunteers and Open Data in Cultural Heritage.

Sam Leon lives in London and works specifically with the Open Humanities, Open GLAM and Public Domain working groups. He is co-editor of the OKFN blog, Volunteer Coordinator and is also working on an incubating OKFN project called TEXTUS, an open source platform for working with collections of texts and metadata.

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Laura Newman — Community Coordinator

Laura is the Community Coordinator for Working Groups and Open Data in Research.

Laura is based in Cambridge. She oversees the OKFN Working Groups, particularly those related to science and research. She is also coordinating the Panton Fellowships and is the main point of contact for the forthcoming School of Data. Laura graduated from Keble College, Oxford, in 2011 with a degree in English and Modern Languages (German). Before joining the OKFN, Laura worked and volunteered with several national and international charities. She believes that open data has the potential to bring about real social change.

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Naomi Lillie — Foundation Administrator and Community Coordinator

Naomi is the Community Coordinator for OpenBibliography.

Naomi lives in Edinburgh and will be the point of contact for the administrative needs of the OKFN. An English Literature graduate, she has a professional background in project management and has worked in academia where the closed nature of information was a source of much frustration, so she is very pleased to be contributing to the cause for open knowledge. She also volunteers with a debt-counselling charity and sings in a choir.

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Friedrich Lindenberg — Developer

Friedrich lives in Berlin and is a media scientist turned coder working on open government and transparency initiatives. He is a developer at the OKFN with a focus on OpenSpending. After presenting the German state budget on OffenerHaushalt.de in 2010, he is now working on technologies that allow the budgets and spending records of any state and region to explored. He also helped create data portals for a number of European administrations and is working on an effort to create a pan-European data catalogue at publicdata.eu. He is the author of Adhocracy, a collaborative drafting software used by the Internet commission of the German Bundestag and other organizations to enable citizens to contribute and vote on policy documents.

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Tom Rees — Director of Labs

Tom is a developer with a strong interest in user interfaces and design. Most of his work to date has been concerned with web technologies, games development, or both. He wants to make complex software useable and addictive, so that users do not realise that the work they are doing is difficult.

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Gregor Aisch — Designer and Developer; OKFN Visualization Lab

Gregor is a freelance designer who specialises in creating interactive data visualizations with a focus on society and politics. His work is driven by the belief that data visualization enables the public to understand and engage with complex issues. He has worked with the Open Knowlegde Foundation on projects such as Europe’s Energy and OpenSpending as well as with media companies such as Deutsche Welle and Zeit Online. Gregor will build up the OKFN visualization lab, the major purpose of which is to create open visualization tools and visualization experiments.

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Joris Pekel — Community Coordinator

Joris is the Community Coordinator for OpenGLAM.

Joris lives in Berlin and works specifically with digital heritage related projects like Open GLAM. He graduated from the University of Amsterdam in 2011 with a degree in New Media with a special focus in digital heritage and identity building. He is interested in opening up collections belonging to different cultural institutions and linking them together in order to create new ways of looking at history.

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Velichka Dimitrova — Working Group Coordinator, Open Economics

Velichka lives in London and is the point-of-contact for people who want to get involved in Open Economics projects. She holds a degree as a international project manager in NGOs and civil society movements from the Globalverkstan programme in Gothenburg, Sweden. Velichka studied Economics at the Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin and MPhil Environmental Policy at the University of Cambridge, doing research on environmental and natural resource economics. She believes there is a great potential for a more transparent and inclusive academic environment.

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Nils Toedtmann — Systems Administrator

Nils lives in Berlin and is the point of contact for OKFN sysadmin queries. He studied Maths in Bremen and Bielefeld, Germany. He has built and operated server and network infrastructure based on OpenSource software since the mid 90s. Since then he has worked as a programmer, network engineer, systems architect, package maintainer, IT security advisor, UNIX teacher, cryptographer, DevOps and more. Co founder of OpenCoin and architect of its protocol. Researcher at the smart grid startup DemandLogic. Nils helps social enterprises like The Hub and OKFN to improve their IT infrastructure, on the policy level as well as down on the command line.

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Theodora Middleton — Blog Editor

Theodora lives in London and works a few days a week on the OKFN’s blog, newsletter, annual reports and conferences like Open Government Data Camp. She is interested in how to build links between people from different backgrounds and in how to find a common language for all those whose lives are touched by open knowledge – whether they’re academics, citizens, coders or journalists. Her background is in campaigning and she is particularly excited by the open government data movement.

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The Chapter Team

Daniel Dietrich — Chapter Lead; Germany

Daniel lives in Berlin and is a Research Associate at Technical University Berlin, Department of Internet and Society. His academic work surrounds political science, computer science and communication science in Frankfurt and Berlin. He is working part-time for the Open Knowledge Foundation. He is the official representative and Chairman of the German Chapter of the Open Knowledge Foundation. He is the Coordinator of the Working Group on Open Government Data and the Working Group on Open Data in the EU. He is also co-founder of the Open Data Network and since 2011 Editor of the ePSIplatform. More information can be found at ddie.me.

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Hauke Gierow — Community Coordinator; OKFN Deutschland

Hauke lives in Berlin and works as Project Manager and Entwicklungshelfer with a focus on planning OKFN events in Germany. He studies Political Science and Chinese Studies and is interested in computers and technology and the way we use them to change society. He is currently writing his final thesis (Magisterarbeit) on the protection of critical information infrastructure.

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The Project Team

Irina Bolychevsky – Project Manager and Product Owner; CKAN

Ira is based in London, and is the CKAN project manager and product owner. Ira oversees most things CKAN-related – evangelism, strategy, road map, design, clients, communications – and is always happy to point people in the right direction. Irina is a web-tech geek who enjoys finding better solutions to problems. In the rare moments when she isn’t busy with CKAN, Irina likes tea and dancing.

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James Gardner – Technical Consultant and Project Manager; CKAN

James lives in London and is a web developer and technical consultant. He currently works 3 days a week for the OKFN as Project Manager for the data.gov.uk and UKLP projects and Technical Lead and Project Manager on CKAN. James runs his own company 3aims Ltd and is interested in open source, carbon, Physics, Python, embedded devices and generally understanding the various ways people interact online.

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David Read – Developer; CKAN

David lives in London and focuses on client-facing development on the CKAN team. He has worked in software development for a range of large and small organisations over several years in the mobile and web sectors.

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David Raznick – Technical Lead; CKAN

David lives in London and is a data analyst turned web developer with a mathsy background. His main interests are in databases and the general organization of information/data, with the thinking that if everything could be organized better and people made more accountable, the world would be a better place. He formally used to work for a human rights charity in this role and wants a future sorting out more data.

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Adrià Mercader – Developer; CKAN

Adrià lives in Newcastle upon Tyne and is a software developer focused on the Web and Open technologies in general, and the geospatial field in particular. Before joining the CKAN team he built and managed several geo-related projects for different organizations, ranging from online map viewers to spatially enabled services and APIs.

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John Glover — Developer; CKAN

John Glover lives in Dublin and is a CKAN core developer working 3-4 days per week. He is also in the process of completing the latter stages of his doctoral research in the area of audio signal processing, working with Dr. Victor Lazzarini at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. He previously studied Computer Science at University College Cork and Music & Media Technologies at Trinity College Dublin. He believes strongly in the sharing of knowledge and is a keen advocate for open source software, open data and open government.

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Ian Murray — Developer; CKAN

Ian lives in Sheffield and works for CKAN 4 days a week. He studied maths and computer science at Worcester College, Oxford. He has previously felt the pain of closed data when working for a multi-modal travel-search startup, and wants to help increase the accessibility of what should be common information.

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Sean Hammond — Developer; CKAN

Sean lives in Berlin and focuses on Python web development at CKAN. He has previously worked as the lead developer for CLICK-EAST, a research study that is developing an iPad game to help children with autism learn social and communication skills, and as a Java programming lecture at The University of Edinburgh. For his PhD, Sean developed a story authoring app for children. He enjoys crafting good code and working with open technologies. More info can be found on http://seanh.sdfeu.org/“>Sean’s website.

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Mark Wainwright — Community Coordinator; CKAN

Mark is a gay generation-X Cambridge graduate, who has worked in ESL, housing and stonecutting, inter alia. He has spent a year living and working in Maldives, is addicted to crosswords, and occasionally plays poker or bridge or go. He lives in Cambridge and will turn his hand to pretty much anything.

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 Jillian Mathews – Project Manager; CKAN

Lives in Edinburgh and focuses on CKAN projects, Partnership Program and new business opportunities. Previously worked as a Project Manager for Fujitsu Services for UK Government IT Infrastructure projects. She has a fascination with how open and linked data can benifit the business community and provide new business opportunities. Also, how well catalogued data can benefit  education in schools. Previously a secondary school teacher of Design and Technology. Current research activities include conceptual design for educational music data hub, and other composition and community music projects. Recently completed MSc in Community Music from Edinburgh University.

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