We’d love your help to get our alpha out the door. We’re working to produce the first version of our cleaning and linking processes (bring on the games!) so that we can launch the open source community around LinkedGov.

We are looking for two developers for 20 days each (paid, full time), to start pretty much immediately:

1. Data-based dev

Essential skills:

• Java
• Javascript
• RDF and XML
• XSLT or x-query or SPARQL
• Working knowledge of Google Refine

2.  Front end dev

Essential skills:

• HTML/CSS
• Javascript

Highly desired:

• UX design experience

3. For both roles

It would be great if you:

• Have previous experience with government data
• Are familiar with LinkedGov’s project
• Are willing to contribute to the specs / architecture / ideas / brainstorming around LinkedGov (as and when it’s needed)
• Are willing to work on site at LinkedGov HQ in Old Street, London

Send us an email at jointheteam@linkedgov.org. We’d love to hear from you by Monday 1 August.

We’ve just posted a video (well, slides and audio) so you can recreate every scintillating moment of our OpenTech talk.

For audio from the full session (we followed Francis Irving of ScraperWiki and Paul Makepeace talking about Google Refine), you can check out Session 3 of the Opentech programme.

Thanks again for the warm reception and all the feedback. It was a great day for us!

We are still buzzing from UK GovCamp, the public sector’s yearly brainstorm on all things digital.

We ran three workshops:

• We had a session entitled “Open data – how to”, led by Glyn Wintle, Rufus Pollock and Jeni Tennison. We discussed the issues around releasing data and how to deal with press interest. A number of developers gave their preferences for publishing formats (anything but PDF, please!), and the group explored ways we should be connecting the data users and the publishers on an ongoing basis.
• We had an “Intro to LinkedGov” session in the morning, led by Hadley Beeman, which produced a lot of useful feedback on what we’re doing.  The most useful tidbit was that there is a hole for people needing to talk about publishing government data; it would be useful for LinkedGov to help host those conversations.
• We also had an afternoon workshop called Sex, drugs, rock-n-roll:  the social side of government data (video attached), led by Hadley and Tim Davies, to discuss why data is important to more people than just techies and researchers.

The discussion centred around the idea that stories help bring data alive, and the breadth of public data means that some part of it should be relevant to almost everyone.

We gathered a great amount of feedback and energy to help with building our community.  The biggest challenge we face right now, getting all of this ready for mass input, was made a bit easier by how eager everyone is and timely it all seems to be.

Big thanks to Dave Briggs and Steph Gray for organising such a great day.