It's fair to say that the most popular applications and services that exist today are all to be found in the internet cloud - rather than actually on your computer, as installed applications. Think social networks, email, photosharing, online documents, blogs - and much more of course.
These services are constantly being improved, and new services appear all the time. Users switch services or try out new ones all the time too, perhaps because their friends are using a different service, because there’s better functionality or faster performance elsewhere, or because they just want better service.
So let’s imagine you’ve been using a particular service for a while, and - for whatever reason - you decide to switch to a different provider. A lot of your data is now stored in the service - your photo collection maybe, your status updates, your contacts, your emails and so on. Which raises the question:
How on earth do I get all of my data out of this service and transfer it the new one?
At Google, that’s a question we take very seriously, so seriously, that we have a special team of engineers who spend their time doing nothing else but making sure that it is easy to stop using Google services, and easy to take your data with you, using open standards and formats.
The name of that team is the Data Liberation Front (and yes, for anyone who had spotted the oblique reference, they are Monty Python fans).
On Tuesday 20th of April, Brian Fitzpatrick, the founder of the Data Liberation Front, will be in Brussels to give a Google TechTalk. He’ll explain what "liberating data" actually means, why he thinks it's so important for internet users, for the future of the Internet, and for Europe.
As usual, the TechTalk will take place over lunchtime (there will be food available of course!), at the Google office.
We hope you can make it along. If you’d like to attend, please register here.
When: Tuesday, April 20, 12:15 - 13:45 hours CET (Sandwich lunch provided).
Where: Google Brussels - Chaussée D'Etterbeek 180 - Steenweg op Etterbeek 180, 2nd floor, 1040 Brussels
Brian Fitzpatrick started Google's Chicago engineering office in 2005. An open source contributor for over 10 years, Brian is the engineering manager for several Google products, a member of both the Apache Software Foundation and the Open Web Foundation, a former engineer at Apple and CollabNet, a Subversion developer, a co-author of "Version Control with Subversion", and a resident of Chicago.
Alain Van Gaever
Policy Manager - Google Europe
![[GoogleBrusselsTechTalk_300(2).gif]](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_jRmroAmiAkg/S2hSkkzExJI/AAAAAAAABA8/7ju6pWgkWa4/s1600/GoogleBrusselsTechTalk_300%282%29.gif)
new to gmail. CAN I CREATE A 2ND GMAIL SCREEN NAME, IF SO HOW?. I CAN'T FIGURE IT OUT.
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