Open Invitation: Open & Shut Conference

James Marchant
Aug 9, 2017 · 2 min read

Hello there, and welcome to Open & Shut!

You can read all about our work over here, but to summarise, Open & Shut is a new publication from Small Media focused on exploring the potential of open data to solve social and political challenges in closed societies.

We’re going to be bringing together the open data community for a one-day conference — Open & Shut: Opening Up Data in Closed Societieswhich will be held at Friends’ House in London on 21 September 2017.

So who are we? And why are we setting up this event?

Small Media is an organisation working to support freedom of information and freedom of expression in closed societies. We created the Iran Open Data portal for Iran, and are engaged in a host of other data-driven work to support human rights across the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa.

In order for the open data community to succeed in these challenging contexts, it’s essential for open data experts, practitioners, and civil society organisations to come together to share their knowledge, discuss their experiences, and shape new ideas.

That’s why we’re organising the Open & Shut event — to bring together global experts and practitioners with first-hand experience of supporting open data projects in closed societies.

In this blog and at the conference we’ll be bringing you stories from open data practitioners working to crack open data in closed societies, who are doing their best to shine a light on the practices of secretive governments and corporations — sometimes at great risk to their personal safety and freedom.

If these are issues you feel passionate about, and you’d like to meet up with a community of activists, problem-solvers, and frontline open data practitioners, then we’d love for you to join us at the Open & Shut event in September to share experiences and spark off new collaborations!

Space for participants is limited and we anticipate lots of interest! So, if you’re interested in coming, please register for the event here by 14 September 2017.

Thanks so much for your interest, and we hope you can join us in September!


Open & Shut is a project from the Small Media team. Small Media is an organisation working to support freedom of information in closed societies, and developed the Iran Open Data portal.

Cover image by skp.

Open & Shut

A blog exploring the potential of open data to transform closed societies, from the Iran Open Data team.

James Marchant

Written by

Research Manager at @Small_Media

Open & Shut

A blog exploring the potential of open data to transform closed societies, from the Iran Open Data team.

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