OKau Melbourne Meetup summary

Generally, we deal with openness and transparency of all kinds: open knowledge/data/government/software/hardware/journalism/science etc. We create a space where people of different backgrounds but with a common interest in the sharing/transparency/openness of knowledge, and allow those people to network and learn from each other.

We run several different types of meetup at http://www.meetup.com/Open-Knowledge-Melbourne/: Shut Up and Hack is a chance to come and work on your own "open" project, help somebody else with theirs, or work on one of the several ongoing projects we've got on our Trello page (https://trello.com/b/IT7asdCO/open-knowledge-melbourne). Meet the Data Owners is where data custodians can share information about their data, and we can ask questions about it and perhaps play with it to make cool projects or display interesting visualisations. We also have skill nights where we learn how to use a particular tool, often software, to make our lives easier, be that improving data manipulation efficiency, or finding better ways to collaborate. Finally, we sometimes have "open drinks" nights, which are just an opportunity to come and chat with other interesting people.