Millions of passengers use Germany’s railway system every month – but which trains are often running late, what are the structural problems? Doing an interactive piece about that complex network is of great worth for both journalism and society. Stefan Plöchinger, editor-in-chief of Süddeutsche Zeitung’s online news site, and Lorenz Matzat, co-founder of OpenDataCity, give an overview of the project: idea, process, obstacles, working with data, doing journalism with data and reactions.

Pieter Colpaert will talk about Informing commuters in Belgium In 2008 our not-for profit organisation created a simple mobile web-app to look up train schedules, called iRail.be. As no other mobile app existed, this became a huge success, until we had some dispute over copyright in 2010. In 2012 our servers are still up and running, we started a legal structure supporting 30 volunteers, and we are promoting digital creativity using open transport data.