This is excellent, thanks for the deep-dive today!
Oleg
loleg
- ⚙️ Developer
- 🛡️ Coach
441
Software engineer, open data activist in the global Open Knowledge network, who works on Internet platforms, and runs tech events - including digital sustainability conferences and hackathon series. Also a blogger and wannabe media artist who has been involved in a wide range of impactful projects. Maintainer of Dribdat. Welcome to my online home! ❤
I grew up in Calgary, Canada: the historic home of hackathons. Going to programming/mathematics contests, Science Fairs, and IT conferences from an early age, I got a lot of practice at prototyping solutions and presenting them, and at some point became an organizer of such events. From 2001-2005 I studied math, engineering and communications systems in Québec and Lausanne.
After working for several years in the UK and Silicon Valley, in 2011, I came back to help to start the first hackathons dedicated to open data in Switzerland with Hannes Gassert and Jeremy Stucki - a year later joining as board member of the association Opendata.ch - Swiss chapter of Open Knowledge. I was an active member until 2024, and continue to be supportive of the Swiss and global community.
Journal B was one of my main projects while working at Apps with love, who profiled me at one of our first hackathons: the 2013 Finance Hackdays in Bern. In another article (archived here) from 2015, I'm interviewed as "Mr. Hackathon". By this time a large number of events were already running around the country, documented on the old MAKE open data wiki. During the event described in the blog, Dribdat was started with some seed support and resources from Swisscom. Read more about Dribdat in the Origin story and Project history.
This side-interest has become my full time preoccupation/obsession in the past few years. Being part of the VersusVirus and TogetherVsVirus teams made me think at a larger scale about the impacts of our work. I started the Hack:Org:X series and HackIntegration platform, among other initiatives to connect with academics and practitioners on a global level, with people who are challenged, disadvantaged, discriminated at the local level. You can find me "trööting" about my progress in this at hachyderm.io
A long time supporter of the demoscene, I have always been inspired by "new media" or digital art. This is why I help run the Demonights, Graffathon and other projects with Echtzeit association. Since 2020, I have also been supporting the Data Design + Art group at HSLU, connecting young artists to issues and opportunities in our transitioning, ever-evolving information society. I often fill the late hours of hackathons with some of the motivation, energy, and provocation of the digital underground. You can find my posts and 8-bit-artworks at graphics.social
🦾 Skills
Experience
- Open Legal Lab
- Hack10X
- The Tech We Want
- Innovation and Mapping Festival 2025
- Tour de Hack
- Awesome hackathon
Resume
| work | |
|---|---|
| Proxeus Association | Responsible for the "exit to community" of this notable initiative to create a stable, well designed, multi-chain solution for document integrity based on a fully open source stack (LibreOffice, Go, Vue, Ethereum, etc). Organized tech collaborations and supported on research studies, developed use cases through workshops and hackathon challenges. Maintained the code base and release schedule. |
| Datalets | Based in the Swiss capital, I provide services across the nation in software development, data engineering, consulting and hands-on development, specializing in data-first apps and websites, multi-cloud strategy, and open source community building. |
| Opendata.ch | Helping to accelerate digital transparency at the grassroots through positions, projects and promotion. My responsibilities include representing the association nationally - running events, community building, supporting and promoting open data applications - and internationally, as local coordinator and ambassador to Open Knowledge. |
| cividi | Launched on the wellspring of the SmartUse project, Cividi developed the ‘Gemeindescan’, a set of analytics enabling planning groups, municipalities and planners to obtain an "X-ray image" of their planning perimeter in a simple and cost-efficient way. We covered topics of land use, function, traffic and structure, asking questions like: "How can cities grow while still remaining worth living in?", with the help of the Migros Pioneer Fund. Through this we created open source digital tools to help make urban planning smarter, and involve the population in the process. |
| Versus Virus | Likely the largest and possibly most diverse hackathon to have ever been run in Switzerland, this series of virtual events in response to the COVID-19 crisis brought together over 5'000 people to generate ideas of sustainable response across 13 domains of urgent social need. Working with Opendata.ch, national media and partners, I helped to design and set up the online platforms, facilitate data access, support the organizing team, and to document the ~300 resulting projects. |
| Centralway | Working closely with the investment team on agile design and development of data mining and collaboration platforms while interacting with product teams to contribute expertise and assist in achieving cross-functional engineering goals. |
| Apps with love | Responsible for project management, back to front-end development, customer relations across several projects, like the new online magazine Journal B, the Kornhaus libraries app, and the FANCAM panorama app. Consulting and technical evaluation for enterprise clients. Project estimation and management with a wide range of customers. |
| Swiss Federal Institute of Technology | Supported research staff at the Planning of Landscape and Urban Systems group, which devises science models together with environmental policy stakeholders making long-term decisions about the development of cities and countries. We built Web portals to enable remote collaboration, aggregate, analyse, map and visualize complex workflows and diverse data sources. |
| Cisco Systems | |
| BEO Solutions AG | |
| Swiss Federal Institute of Technology | |
| volunteer | |
| Open Knowledge Foundation | Supporting multiple councils and projects with the leading network of hacktivists engaged for a Fair, Free and Open future. Discover and support our work at OKFN.org |
| education | |
| Shad Valley Leadership & Entrepreneurship, University of Waterloo | |
| Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne | Communication Systems |
| Université de Lausanne | Mathematics |
| Université Laval | Mathematics |
| publications | |
| Sustainability through Open Data: Examples from Switzerland | Although the term “sustainability” can be traced back to as early as 1761 in forest management, it was unknown to most of the wider public two decades ago. Driven by publications of scientific evidence showing the potential impact of greenhouse gases on global climate change as well as the prediction of the end of the oil age, popular awareness of ecological challenges facing our planet has increased – today, the topic of sustainability has arrived in the main-stream (with all the downsides, such as hijacking of the term). While awareness alone is certainly not sufficient, it is a fundamental and necessary step towards the establishment of new models for economic, societal and ecologic development. In this paper we show how the Open Data movement can address some of the complex challenges that sustainable development needs to solve. Examples of software applications (“apps”) and data analyses and visualizations developed in grassroots projects at so-called “make.opendata.ch hackathons” in Switzerland will demonstrate how the Open Data movement can be part of the solution by bridging the realms of economy, ecology and society in sustainable development. |
| skills | |
| Data Engineering | |
| Web Services | |
| Startup Development | |
| Geographic Information Systems (GIS) | |
| Opendata.ch | |
| Web Development | |
| PHP | |
| Shell Scripting | |
| Russian | |
| Open Source | |
| Cisco Technologies | |
| Social Networking | |
| Perl | |
| German | |
| International Business Development | |
| French | |
| Mobile Applications | |
| Software Development | |
| Git | |
| Cloud Computing | |
| Apache | |
| Networking | |
| Distributed Systems | |
| Web Standards | |
| Architecture | |
| XML | |
| HTML 5 | |
| Linux | |
| Subversion | |
| IT Solutions | |
| Web Applications | |
| Web 2.0 | |
| Python | |
| Unix | |
| Enterprise Software | |
| Java | |
| MySQL | |
| JavaScript | |
| Tomcat | |
| System Architecture | |
| Hardware | |
| Web Design | |
| Agile Methodologies | |
| Computer Graphics | |
| Technical Leadership | |
| REST | |
| Internet Strategy | |
| .NET | |
| TCP/IP | |
| Content Management | |
| Liferay | |
| Spring | |
| Software Engineering | |
| languages | |
| English | Native Speaker |
| French | Professional Working |
| German | Professional Working |
| Russian | Native Speaker |
| references | |
| Florin Hasler | I met Oleg in 2015 at an Opendata.ch hackathon (where else?) and he was instrumental in making my first hackathon a positive experience. This hasn't changed since I've been working for Opendata.ch for a couple of years now: You can always count on Oleg. Even in chaotic situations, with his years of experience, he can't be flustered. Oleg can get to the core of problems and come up with solutions quickly. Furthermore, Oleg is dedicated to missions aligned with his values and is bursting with ideas. Choose one and run with him! |
| Ulrike Wissen Hayek | Oleg is very fast in understanding concepts that are new to him, such as Geographic Information Systems, and the requirements of researchers. He did a great job at our chair in programming interactive planning support platforms. |
| Brett Swaim | Oleg did spectacular work when I was at Cisco Systems, I hope to work with him again in the future! |
| Sandy Chang | Oleg is a very gifted engineer that brings his passion for writing great software where ever he goes. He is also a true team player and was always available to mentor others, provide creative input, and take on the most challenging tasks. |
| Dominique Kuster | Oleg was a trustworthy and reliable partner in agile development projects. |
| Piotr Skoczylas | Oleg is a very skillful person and he loves working with latest IT technologies. What is even more important than his knowledge is his open-minded personality and great character – working with him was a pleasure. |
| projects | |
| Dribdat | Open source project tracking for collecting and showcasing projects at time-bound events known as hackathons, in a way that boosts open collaboration, civic engagement, and technical experimentation in a social setting. Through the experience of organising dozens events, dribdat was created to streamline efforts and share best practices with the wider community. |
| Journal B | Design, development, launch of Bern's hippest new online 'zine |
Dribs
In response to our project, someone said they heard of a related chatbot service from Beobachter. The same query as in our presentation in the screenshot.
1 month ago
Following Timothy's brilliant lead, we just presented the results on stage. Please use the DEMO link to see the Swiss data.
1 month ago
With minutes to go, Canada delivered: our code and data is up and running, we have RESULT.
1 month ago
My work here is done 😗🪣
My team is aware that we are using OpenAI services this weekend under a special agreement.
1 month ago
Achievement unlocked: Fix the Fedlex 😄
Uploading! The final test-run before we push to production at noon.
1 month ago
Good morning Switzerland! The glorious view from Magglingen/Mauclin this morning.
1 month ago
There will be a short window of opportunity to speak to them again in ~5 hours, and we aim to have production-ready data, a Pull Request and all our use cases prepared.
1 month ago
We are working across many timezones to get this project together. The team at 🍁 Queens University has been very helpful, and we hope to give them good feedback and a boost in their work.
1 month ago
😅
Thanks everyone for pitching into our contest! 👏
Deployed this Legal remix of a speed-typing app for the evening programme with Timothy at Open Legal Lab 🎉
1 month ago
Enhancing Contract Negotiations with LLM-Based Legal Document Comparison, Savinay Narendra, Kaushal Shetty, Adwait Ratnaparkhi 2024
1 month ago
We have merged the idea of a contract library with the OpenJustice Challenge, which aims to further develop a GNU-licensed project for Swiss legal work.
1 month ago
There was some interest in the history of Docracy, especially in their approach of appealing to lawyer's self-promotion instinct.
1 month ago
KI-gestützte Protokollführung mit Datenextraktion in der Sozialberatung is a project by a Caritas team from yesterday's hackathon that can inspire our mission here.
1 month ago
Can LLMs Express Their Uncertainty? An Empirical Evaluation of Confidence Elicitation in LLMs Xiong et al 2024
1 month ago