Reflections from Bologna: CKAN and the Power of Community Data at csv,conf,v9
CKAN community members share insights from csv,conf,v9 in Bologna — exploring open data, community impact, and the power of digital public infrastructure.
The first CKAN Extensions Demo Day brought together developers and practitioners to showcase practical enhancements for CKAN-based data portals. Each extension directly addresses common operational challenges—improving usability, security, metadata management, and user interaction.
Here’s a recap of the tools presented:
Presenter: Oleksandr Cherniavskyi (Link Digital)
ckanext-unfold adds the ability to preview archive files (ZIP, RAR, 7z, and others) directly within CKAN.
Key features:
This extension provides a much-needed update over older tools, especially for portals that store datasets as archives.
Presenter: Andrés Vázquez (Open Knowledge Foundation)
ckanext-push-errors improves monitoring by automatically sending unhandled errors and critical logs to specified endpoints (such as Slack or any HTTP server).
Key capabilities:
This extension is especially useful for managing CKAN instances where developers do not have continuous infrastructure access.
Presenter: Joel Natividad (datHere)
The new DRUF-enabled DataPusher Plus introduces automatic metadata suggestion during file uploads, supporting easier data ingestion and improved metadata quality.
Main features:
This helps streamline the metadata entry process, reducing manual work and improving dataset quality.
Presenter: Michael Polidori (Datopian)
ckanext-querytool enables the creation of interactive visualizations—charts, maps, and tables—directly within the CKAN user interface.
Capabilities:
It provides portal users with more ways to interact with datasets beyond simple downloads.
Presenter: Jesse Vickery (Open Government Canada)
ckanext-citeproc allows CKAN portals to generate formal citations for datasets and resources in multiple academic styles.
Key points:
This improves dataset credibility and facilitates citation in academic and professional publications.
Presenter: Thomas Hanke (Fraunhofer IWM)
ckanext-chat implements a chat interface powered by Pydantic-AI that allows users to query CKAN through natural language.
Main functions:
This extension lowers the technical barrier for interacting with CKAN and can assist in metadata management tasks.
The extensions presented during Demo Day Part 1 address practical needs encountered by open data publishers: from better file handling and real-time error monitoring, to easier metadata entry, improved visualization, and enhanced user interaction.
We look forward to seeing further developments and contributions at CKAN Extensions Demo Day – Part 2 on April 23, 2025.
If you are developing a CKAN extension or thinking about it, there is still time to get involved:
👉 Submit to present
Open source grows stronger with every real-world solution shared. Thank you to all presenters and participants for contributing to a better CKAN ecosystem.
The full recording is available on CKAN’s YouTube channel: CKAN Extensions Demo Day (Part 1) at CKAN Monthly Live.
This CKAN Monthly Live session once again showcased the remarkable innovation happening across the CKAN community. Each extension addresses a real-world problem — from security and scalability to maintainability and usability.
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CKAN community members share insights from csv,conf,v9 in Bologna — exploring open data, community impact, and the power of digital public infrastructure.
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