Dear friends & colleagues,

TLDR: You are invited to a free two-day event at Senate House, London, bringing together institutions, Open Knowledge communities, AI developers, researchers and funders. The event will focus on how institutional data, Linked Open Data, and GenAI can be better connected, featuring hands-on workshops, an expert panel (incl. Jimmy Wales, Denny Vrandečić, Prof. Elena Simperl, Renata Avila and others), and collaborative roundtables. More details & registration here.

The more elaborate version:

I have been wanting to write here for a few months now about AI-BRIDGES, and am excited to finally do that and specifically invite you to the AI-BRIDGES Symposium. For those researching the intersection of institutional data governance, Open Knowledge, and AI, an event that combines research dialogue with hands-on collaboration may be of interest.

AI-BRIDGES is a European Commission-funded project exploring how institutional data, Linked Open Data platforms like Wikidata & Wikibase, and Generative AI can be better connected, practically and responsibly. We work with various partners in the UK and globally (a partial list of which you could find here), and the project serves as a convening, facilitating and innovative space that connects communities that otherwise work in silos, in order to collaboratively tackle some joint challenges.

On May 28–29, we're hosting a Symposium at Senate House, University of London:
Day 1 (Thu): pre-Symposium training day: training about Wikidata, Wikibase, AI embeddings & MCP, and vibe coding for institutions and practitioners. Online attendance is possible.
Day 2 (Fri): the main Symposium day: intro & framing, Expert panel & facilitated roundtables. Only in person (most will be recorded).

Panelists include Jimmy Wales (Founder of Wikipedia), Dr. Denny Vrandečić (Founder of Wikidata & lead of Abstract Wikipedia), Jon Lloyd (Director of Advocacy, Digital Public Good Alliance), Renata Avila (CEO, Open Knowledge Foundation), Prof. Elena Simperl (Co-director King’s College Institute for AI; director of research Open Data Institute), Dr. Aaron Halfaker (Principal Scientist, Microsoft), and Josie Fraser (Head of Digital Policy, National Lottery Heritage Fund UK), alongside representatives from government, cultural heritage, academia and civil society.

The roundtables are designed for collaborative problem-solving, participants work together on real challenges and leave with concrete next steps.

Attendance is free, but registration is required. For more details and registration, please see here.

Beyond the Symposium, AI-BRIDGES hosts monthly Open Forum meetings (last Friday of each month, 15:00 UK time), an open space for shared learning and collaboration. See here to learn how to join the google group and become a thought partner. Finally, if you work at an institution, please check the "Get Involved" tab, specifically around contributing sample data to the project.

If you have any questions or want to partner, we'd love to hear from you.

Best,

Shani.

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Dr. Shani Evenstein Sigalov
Marie Curie Postdoctoral Researcher & AI-BRIDGES project lead
Digital Humanities Research Hub
School of Advanced Study
University of London
+44-7783056290