Our goal: Collaborate to build the largest open product database in the world. Join us if you are interested in open data, smart things and the future of retail and product design. No prior knowledge or technical skill required.

The Open Knowledge Foundation, Provenance.it and HubWestminster are teaming up to bring together various builders and thinkers to make an open database of product information, building on the existing work of Open Product Data. We will share and learn from our diverse experiences, work through some immediate challenges and collectively develop a roadmap for building the largest open product database in the world.

All are welcome and are essential to make this day a success: Designers, coders, academics, makers and thinkers. You don’t need to be a data expert. The day will be organised around three working groups:

Mapping the Data Source Possibilities

What types of product data do consumers need to make informed purchasing decisions? From data about the company that made it to the product’s carbon footprint to the cheapest place to buy it – this group will explore and map all the data source possibilities of an Open Product Database.

Database Architecture 

How do you build the largest open product database in the world? How can we make it easily accessible to everyone? This group will tackle the large data systems challenge of building an Open Product Database in order to ensure that it is built the right way and is built to serve the needs of businesses and consumers from across the world.

Vision for the Future

What does the future look like with Open Product Data? There are incredible possibilities for a world with a more open product space including having an impact on environmental and social sustainability, advertising, the way products are made and ultimately, we think, the possiblity of fundamentally changing consumer behaviour. This group will discuss the future implications of open product data. 

Drawing on our combined expertise, we can build tools that empower citizens with the information they need to make purchasing decisions that are right for them, their families and their community. Let’s Build the Future of Retail.