Making money with Open Data

"Open Data" is quite the buzzword. Governments around the world are increasingly opening up their data in machine readable formats. But why? (ex-) European commissioner Neelie Kroes is convinced that "data is the new gold". Europe is a knowledge society after all. She projects that the data market can have a value of about 40 billion euro. But how can we capture the value of this data, and how can we build a sustainable business with it?

Over the years, a few businesses have been able to do just this. Even though the projected 40 billion remains far from apparent, this session will describe a number of cases in which Open Data has allowed entrepreneurs to set up a sustainable business model and actually make some money. These examples may be rather unexpected and they certainly aren't limited to making "apps" alone. Since Open Data is supposed to be "free for all", the business models that are surfacing in this field are quite unconventional. We will provide an overview of these business models and conclude with a short overview of the state of the art, including some valuable open datasets in Belgium.

Also check out the "Apps 4 Europe business lounge" that is organised at Drupalcamp Ghent on saturday afternoon.