A look back @ Open Food Facts Days 2024
It’s been a few months that we have been excitedly waiting to meet together as a community again !
Although we are hoping to not do our annual weekends only in Paris or France, we were able to secure the same venue – the Académie du Climat, free of charge, thanks to the city of Paris.
Fortunately the community was out in force this September. We’ve welcomed contributors from various cities in France, but also from Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, United Kingdom (England & Scotland).
“Thank you for a great weekend of open-food-facting! ”
James (Scotland)
Saturday 21st September – DAY 1
We were lucky enough to start the day on Saturday under blue Parisian skies, and everyone enjoyed hot pastries and coffee before the programme kicked off.
Members of the permanent team launched the community weekend with a presentation on the project’s progress and future prospects. Among them, Raphaël B. (Machine Learning engineer) talked about Nutri-Patrol (new moderation tool), the updated version of Nutri-Score, and the on-going development of Open Product Facts. This introduction ended with a giant icebreaker to allow everyone to get to know the other participants. Bingo!
Next up, the community itself took the floor in the form of a series of short presentations (lightning talks), highlighting various subjects such as food prices, personas, financing and the food industry.
You can watch all these Lightning talks here:
Open Food Facts User Personas (April & Ben)
Share & Access EU Digital Product Passports (Claude)
Food Logging – where’s my data ? (John)
What about Open Products Facts ? (Pierre)
Access to Nutrition Initiative – NGO (Aurélie Reynier)
Transparency in the spirits industry with dans ma bouteille (Adrien Tréchot)
“We share with this community the magnifying glass 🔎 and the need to spread information ♻️.”
– Adrien Tréchot, founder of dansmabouteille🍾
Collective intelligence loading…
Saturday was also an opportunity to take part in a wide range of workshops, with plenty of room for ideation and action. Here are just a few examples of the topics covered:
- Open Prices, what’s next ? (this project is the fruit of a workshop at our Open Food Facts Days 2023!)
- The permanent Open Food Facts team has disappeared: rebuilding the project from scratch
- Open Food Facts in your country: creating a map to connect local communities
- How can we reach a younger audience?
- Modifying the wiki to improve the quality of certain pages
- Demonstration of the taxonomy editor to add ingredients in your country
- The Curse of the Cordon Bleu: a card game about industrial ultra-processed food and its impact on health.
Special thanks to some contributors 🏆
After several hours of discussion, creation and reflection, we brought the day’s work to a close with a some trophies to reward some of the most committed contributors over the last few years.
This year’s trophies went to :
- Raphaël Odini: initiator of the Open Prices project
- M. Tanuki: Major contributor to the mobile app since its launch
- Alex F.: Contributor involved in Hunger Games, adding products, as well as a regular representative of the project at various events.
- telperion87: Largest Italian contributor of all time and the 3rd largest editor of Open Food Facts.
- Marie: Contributor committed to data quality and product editing.
- Annelotte: Faithful contributor of translations and product additions.
- Segundo: 2nd largest Open Food Facts product editor.
Of course, this ceremony does not mean that we do not thank you, the contributors, without whom the Open Food Facts project would not be what it is… Who will receive the next trophies for the 2025 edition? 😉
Cheers
The first day ended with a scan-party, our community’s signature activity, where a few bottles of wine were part of the exercise for the first time!
“Undeniably the friendliest conference I’ve attended this year!”
– Arthur Delcourt, Aktina ASBL
“Saturday was a great day, well organised and inspiring. Well done for all your hard work!”
Florence Devouard, on the Open Food Facts board of directors & former chair of the board of directors of the Wikimedia Foundation
Sunday 22nd of September – DAY 2
Sunday morning saw another session of Lightning presentations from a wide range of participants:
- Laura C. shared her thoughts on the challenges of food waste,
- Manon presented her work with manufacturers and the day-to-day role of Open Food Facts in relation to the food industry,
- Marius shared his experience as the first Open Food Facts ambassador to the Nordic countries (Project grantee 2024) (video),
- Jeremy shared about his work ‘Spellcheck’, which uses machine learning to improve the extraction of ingredients from images of food packaging.
“It was fabulous to be back in Paris, speaking French with intelligent people equally motivated as me to change the world of nutrition for the better. Oh and the croissants were fabulous too.”
– Laurentia Campbell, nutritionist & neuroscientist
The rest of Sunday was given over to a Hackathon (a collaborative project based workshop on a specific theme), where participants got together in several groups to brainstorm their ideas for Saturday & attempt to turn them into concrete solutions.
The end of the programme was marked by each team giving feedback to the rest of the participants. It was great to see what had been dreamed up in the space of a weekend! We hope to continue building on the initiatives that came out of this latest edition.
Until next time
And as all good things must come to an end, we all headed back to our respective environments with our heads and hearts full! 🧡
“This weekend was exceptional, rich in encounters and ideas (…) I immediately felt at ease and legitimate even though I didn’t know any of you.”
– Antoine D., Framasoft
“Thank you for allowing us to meet so many wonderful people. Together we will get there.”
– Claude, Atkina
Once again, we’d like to thank you warmly for coming. This project, which is international in scope, would not be as close-knit as it is without these moments of physical togetherness.
If each and every one of us remains committed and continues to believe in our actions, we will succeed in making the Open Food Facts impact even bigger in the years to come.
Don’t hesitate to let us know your feedback and ideas for future editions. It helps a lot to improve & make it the best experience for each guest !
Here you’ll find a replay of the lightning talks & update of the project (Big up to Edouard for filming them & making them available).
Huge thanks also to our photographers, Cathy & Charlotte, for these wonderful images that capture some of the spirit of this magical weekend.
Hope to see you around on our Slack, our forum, on virtual & physical meet-ups… And maybe see you next year ?👋
Take care,
Open Food Facts permanent team 🍊
“The Open Food Facts Days – A fun weekend with the OpenFoodFacts community! 🍊
This weekend I was lucky enough to take part in Open Food Facts Days, an unmissable event for the Open Food Facts community. It was a great opportunity to collaborate, learn and share exciting moments with people driven by the same mission: to make food more transparent on a global scale!
I’ve been inspired by the enthusiasm and creativity of this international community, which is helping to improve the food database and promote more responsible consumption.”
-Valentin, developer & work-study student @ Open Food Facts
