I have just come back from my trip to the UK and can really sum it up as a success! Not only where all my interview partners from different organizations very helpful and friendly, they also really helped me with organizing the mind map which will be the base for the Climate Compatible Development Thesaurus I am starting to build this week.
The first day, a Monday, took me to Brighton’s Sussex University (lovely day, by the way) or more precisely, the Institute of Development Studies (IDS). Dr. Blane Harvey and I spent a couple of hours defining top concepts that would later prompt an organic development into branches. He did a great job in setting up a basic map that could evolve into something useful.
Once in London, I set out to meet Dr. Emma Wilson and Dr. Tom Birch at the IIED (Institute of Environment and Development) near Euston. The three of us engaged in a fun and innovative conversation that actually saw the construction and development of two more important top concepts and also a little face-to-face encounter with controversy in terms of the meaning of certain concepts.
Later that day in Bromley, I meet Dr. Grant Ballard-Tremeer of Eco and Dr. Raffealla Bellanca of HEDON and again a three-way discussion produced some more in-depth information in the mindmeister mindmap. A prominent point was the issue of justice, and a little bit of “what is right”.
Wednesday saw me making my way down to Waterloo where I meet Dr. Prachi Seth at the ODI (Overseas Development Institute). Prachi gave me some very useful input to consider for our reegle re-launch next month as well as she helped me to develop the branches of the map even further.
In the afternoon I was able to present the state of project to Florian from our engery information gateway reegle/reeep and Dr. Geoff Barnard (CDKN – Climate Development Knowledge Network).
Finally I got another chance to enjoy the British countryside – on a trip to Coventry. Meeting Dr. Tony McNally from Climate Change Solutions Ltd. did add a new dimension to the previous work, and again we where joined by Dr. Michael Ahearne of the Science City (University of Warwick) and got a constructive three-way conversation going. While the two were absolutely informed and involved in Climate as well as Energy matters, I did try to advertise the idea of Linked Open Data that we use here at reegle with them. I do hope I could get them exited about the whole idea of offering our data in a non-proprietary format (RDF) and linked to other open data sources.
Now I can get down to business and hope the Climate Compatible Development thesaurus will be useful not only for reegle, but for structuring energy and climate data in general. Will keep you updated.
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