On May 16, 2025 Charalampos Bratsas, Assistant Professor at the Department of Information and Electronic Engineering at the International Hellenic University (IHU) and president of Open Knowledge Foundation Greece (OKFN Greece) participated along with his team in TechSaloniki 2025.
Thessaloniki’s biggest tech conference emerged in 2016 as a community building event, aiming to bring together people across the digital industries sector. Very quickly, it became Northern Greece’s bespoke tech recruitment gathering, supporting the region’s digital transition with skilled workforce. Nowadays, this “festive meeting of tech” aspires to transform lives, celebrate the city’s ever-growing digital ecosystem, connect world-class tech companies, innovation outlets and academic institutions with talented jobseekers and provide unrivaled networking and learning opportunities.
In this context, Mr. Bratsas was invited by the organizers to give a 45-minute speech about the challenges of open data adoption in everyday life. He seized the opportunity, to raise awareness about OKFN Greece activities and in particular about the ‘OpenUp Thessaloniki Climate 2025’ competition. In his speech he argued about the value and exploitation benefits of open data as tools that can shape current reality by providing simple solutions in complicated civic problems such as climate change and the protection of the urban environment. He also stressed that, currently, more than 50 participants have registered for the innovation competition and have already started developing their applications by using the Open Data Marketplace platform, which was developed within the framework of the Upcast Project.
