From mySociety Blog. This looks like a must attend day. My only problem is do I go as a wonky geek or a geeky wonk? I think the former.
But it’s stuffed with great contributors – Heather Brooke who tried for years to bring MP’s expenses into the light. Ben Goldacre who I heard last year but almost certainly has a different Bad Science.
And when I WroteToHim (using WriteToThem) on Net Neutrality I have only got acknowledgements. It’s a race between getting a reply and being cut off by HADOPI-UK.
It is this sort of thing – not conventional politics – that keeps my faith in democracy alive.
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mySociety blog » Share tips with 6 brilliant Freedom of Information experts on 4th July
By Francis Irving on Monday, June 22nd, 2009
Is there something part of the government is doing that you’d like to investigate? Find out everything from MPs’ expenses, to the length of allotment waiting lists, to whether your council’s Guy Fawkes bonfire is properly checked for hedgehogs.
mySociety are running a practical workshop on Freedom of Information at OpenTech on 4th July.
The workshop will help you make your first Freedom of Information request, including working out what to request, where to request it from and what exactly to write.
If you’re an old hand, you can get and give tips on how to take requests further.
We’ve got a fantastic team of Freedom of Information (FOI) experts to kick things off and answer hard questions.
Heather Brooke used FOI to cause the frurore over MPs’ expenses.
Francis Davey is a lawyer with a specialist knowledge in FOI.
Elena Egawhary is a freelance journalist, currently working and using FOI for Panorama.
John Cross, Alex Skene and Richard Taylor are volunteers who run and improve WhatDoTheyKnow, and all use it for their own activism.
Bring a laptop if you have one. Internet will be provided for the workshop only, so we can scour Government websites, and make requests on mySociety’s WhatDoTheyKnow.com website.
As usual, the rest of OpenTech is brimming with great talks, and will be full of interesting geeky wonks and wonky geeks. Book your place here so you can go to them and to the workshop. Hurry, it’s nearly sold out.
This entry was posted on Monday, June 22nd, 2009 at 8:21pm and is filed under Events, WhatDoTheyKnow. Follow responses to this entry (RSS2 feed).