Open for one. Open for all.

This is part 1 of a 3-part series where we clearly lay out what we do at imin and why we do it. We believe that if we change the way we collaborate and share data in the physical activity sector, we can get more people more active. To achieve this, we first created a common way to share data and a vehicle to drive adoption; second, we started to educate the sector about what’s possible and created a transparent marketplace of options; and third, we created a technology platform to help facilitate this data exchange between organisations. In this way, we can create a sustainable ecosystem of organisations that will collaborate to get more people active.

Often people are aware of what we’ve done. We’ve written plenty about it — we’re proud of the achievements our small team has accomplished. Recently, however, we wondered if people knew why we’ve done it — what were the drivers; what guided our decision making? So I’m going to lay it out very clearly for everyone.

To get more people more active? Trigger sustainable sector-change bigger than any one organisation.

Our journey began in 2014. We were one of many startups trying to bring physical activities to the consumer, through an app. Apps are cool, we were convinced we were cool, so there we were — for the full journey, read this blog. The thing was, whilst it wasn’t hard building an app, powering the app with data about available physical activities was. We found that, rather than focusing our time on engaging and motivating the would-be consumer, the majority of our time was spent trying to fill our app with as much physical activity data as possible. The difficulty was that this data was completely siloed.

It took us 6 months then to realise what is obvious now: novel and effective technology innovations in physical activity participation were near-impossible because the struggle was unlocking these siloes of data. We could have stoically persisted with our attempts to gain exclusive access (until our limited resources ran dry), however we believed this would continue to stifle the very innovation that has transformed other sectors. The fact was that we were never going to succeed as an app, because no app could succeed in that situation. It was clear that we needed to change that situation.

So was born a vision: to open all the physical activity data from all the providers across the world for all organisations to use and share. This was the opposite of working exclusively in silos for individual gain — this was completely leveling the playing field for everyone, including us (for our focus now lay in working with both sides of the market, enriching open data, making it bookable, and providing it to clever people to focus on the challenge of getting people off of the softa using technology). This was putting the sector first, rather than any one organisation.

But to bring about such a grand vision of all providers opening their activity data, we knew this could never be done by us alone. Experienced organisations like London Sport helped us to realise we had to stop working in isolation and start working as a unit to reach a common goal. So how could we bring different organisations together to work towards the same cause?

Enter OpenActive: a group of organisations sharing a common vision for tackling the global problems of physical inactivity by giving technology the best chance of successful engagement with the consumer; by using open standards, open data and open source tools, to bring our sector in line with its peers; by uniting under the common goal of making physical activity data openly available for anyone to freely access, use and share.

For 2 years, we funded, coordinated and drove OpenActive from an idea on paper to an initiative with real momentum. We worked with the community to draft the first candidate open standard for the group, helped the first organisations implement them, and succeeded in getting everyone’s attention. We travelled to Leeds and Newcastle, Basingstoke and Bristol, and spread the message to France, Scandinavia and even as far as Australia, all in the name of open data. We would lead with “we’re imin and we’d like to talk to you about OpenActive”, before hopefully convincing those listening that open data was a viable and sensible way of increasing the health and wellbeing of their respective communities.

We didn’t get paid for these trips, nor our time spent on similar calls. We did it because we saw the inherent value in educating people about OpenActive and open data. We were investing in the growth of the entire sector first, which presented a huge risk to imin as a very young, cash-strapped startup. We were completely convinced the more advocates there were, the more data we would see in the ecosystem, which would ultimately benefit the market and the companies operating commercially within it. And of course, one of these organisations is imin.

We wanted to focus on building software to help organisations use the data being opened. It was time for others to come and grow OpenActive and focus fully with resources that we lacked. The natural choice was the Open Data Institute. imin was one their incubated startups so they had a deep knowledge of the work we were doing, as well as the skills and expertise to take OpenActive to new levels. As a not-for-profit and non-partisan body, the team at the Open Data Institute was perfectly suited to steward the community, able to work more closely with Sport England to gain further funding and support for the initiative. Under their expert leadership, OpenActive has flourished.

We advocate open data. We commercialise open data. These things are not mutually exclusive.

It is with that shift that imin’s role as an aggregator in the sector has become more explicit. By addressing a seemingly intrinsic link between OpenActive and imin, it is hopefully easier now for people to see that OpenActive was a way for us to stimulate sector change, creating the right conditions for us to build a company that delivers social change — tweet this.

Christian Villum, International Community Manager for the Open Knowledge global network, noted in a recent blog that:

“Open data strengthens the society and builds a shared resource, where all users, citizens and businesses are enriched and empowered. Therein lies the real innovation and sustainability — effectively removing the silos and creating value for society, not just the involved businesses.”

This captures everything we believed when we created OpenActive. We wanted the data to be available for all to innovate, including imin. If we were yet another startup seeking exclusive access to the siloed data, then we would have to ensure we were around long enough to make it useful to the consumer, and ultimately guarantee our digital solution was suitable for everyone — something which is difficult given the nuances of motivational behaviours from one person to the next.

And that is what we continue to believe, and so why we continue to invest heavily in the entire open data ecosystem. We have led it since day 1 and still have a heavy influence in its growth. We are invited to represent OpenActive in numerous board meetings and workshops because of our ethos and values. Our agenda is clear:

• Yes, we want as much open activity data as possible — that’s why we continue to be a pioneer of OpenActive, working with the Open Data Institute and others to increase the amount of open data in the ecosystem. We believe in putting the growth of the sector first.
• Yes, we do what we can to expedite the opening up of data — in early 2017, we helped activeNewham become the first leisure operator to make its opportunity data available as open data using a piece of software built by us. In July 2017, we did this again for Salford Community Leisure, Vision Redbridge, and Colchester Leisure World. We believe we have a unique position in the sector and we should use that to help everyone.
• Yes, we sell software that we’ve built on top of the open data — we aggregate open opportunity data and provide a valuable platform to organisations to help them better serve their audience. We believe that everyone is entitled to build a business on the open data. Organisations can choose to work with us if our platform provides them value, or they can choose to build similar software if they choose to. We believe in the open market we’ve created and its ability to spur innovation.
• No, we do not sign exclusivity agreements — we advocate that organisations make their data available under an open licence so that all innovators can use it in whichever way they please, in order to keep that market open. We believe in succeeding by being the best choice, not by locking organisations into contracts.

imin was privileged to have been recently invited to a roundtable discussion hosted by the Institute for Government and Global Counsel, with Lord Maude a guest speaker and representatives from DCMS, the Open Data Institute, Government Digital Service and OpenGov. The question asked was: can open data bridge the gap between governments and citizens? During the discussion, the idea of “equity” relating to open data came up: what is the benefit and who receives this benefit? After reading this, we hope you understand what we see as the benefit — that it is easier to innovate — and who we see as the beneficiaries — the entire sector, us included.

Now read part 2 of this 3-part series about how we started to educate the sector about the wealth of opportunities that open data unlocks.