Civic Lab Ghent

Civic Lab Ghent are monthly meetings open to anyone working on or interested in open activities and projects.

Purpose

Civic Lab Ghent is an action-oriented group for those interested in creating solutions for local communities, mainly through technology. During our monthly open gatherings (all backgrounds welcome) we work on civic projects, get feedback from tech and gov experts and learn about civic innovation and related concepts like open data, civic hacking and open government. Feel free to join!

When spoken about open, it is open as defined on http://opendefinition.org/

Meetings start at about 18:30 and have as program 30 minutes for short presentations, 2 hours for actions on the subjects of the presentations.

This wiki page exists to keep an overview of the project, to document it, and to be both open and transparent (transparency).

History and background

Civic Lab Brussels started in 2017 with a focus on air quality related projects. Since October 2017 also Civic Lab Ghent is organised, with projects related to biotechnology, open data and water quality. With the start of Civic Lab Brussels in 2017, already 27 labs existed in the world (in Germany open knowledge labs). Civic Lab Ghent has been inspired on the Brussels edition. In March 2018 Civic Lab Leuven started.

Contacts

Ponwinnie
Dries for Open Knowledge Belgium
Romaine for Wikimedia Belgium

Partners

Co-organisers of Civic Lab Ghent are:

Supported

Civic Lab Ghent is also supported by:

Open Knowledge Belgium
Wikimedia Belgium

Budget

Wikimedia Belgium (WMBE) funds all kind of activities and projects that have output on Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons (Wikipedia's media files repository) and any of the other Wikimedia platforms. Also for projects/activities organised by/at Civic Lab Ghent there is budget available, if three criteria are met:

Output: The activity or project has output on Wikipedia or any of the other Wikimedia platforms. For example: photos of scientific subjects.
Providing us information: Statistics and metrics are kept, like number of participants, number of photos uploaded, number of articles edited, etc, as well as keeping WMBE informed about activities.
Maintain receipts: Receipts for the expenses are kept and submitted with requesting a reimbursement of the costs.

For more information or questions if we can support your activity, contact us at: infowikimedia.be

Location

Civic Lab Ghent kicked off in De Krooks, and has since been organised at LAB9K in NEST and ReaGent. The location for the monthly meetup is announced on the event pages.

ReaGent is at Wispelbergstraat 2 in Ghent, a building of Atheneum Wispelberg, Block E, 1st floor

Timeline

3 October 2017 - Civic Lab Ghent (1st) in De Krook (Kick-off (archived))
17 October 2017 - Civic Lab Ghent (2nd) in ReaGent (Meetup (archived))
31 October 2017 - Civic Lab Ghent (3rd) in ReaGent (Meetup (archived))
14 November 2017 - Civic Lab Ghent (4th) in ReaGent (Meetup (archived))
1 February 2018 - Civic Lab Ghent (5th) in ReaGent (Meetup (archived))
1 March 2018 - Civic Lab Ghent (6th) in ReaGent (Meetup (archived))
- Subjects: Apps for Ghent, water quality Ghent (20:00 start), power - open science
5 April 2018 - Civic Lab Ghent (7th) in ReaGent (Meetup)

Output

Add here images or links to created Wikipedia articles (etc)

Statistics

The metrics and statistics of this project are:

4 October 2017 - 33 people present, 3 subjects
17 October 2017 - 15 people present
31 October 2017 - 6 people present
14 November 2017 - 5 people present
1 February 2018 - 6 people present, 3 subjects
1 March 2018 - 15 people present, 3 subjects
5 April 2018 - 10 people present, 3 subjects
7 June 2018 - 6 people present, 2 subjects
2 August 2018 - 12 people present, 2 subjects
15 January 2019 - 6 people present, civic lab planning meeting