Yesterday, in line with the campaign #mapthebanks, a bunch of opendata interested people met at Liip Zurich. Organized by OpenCorporates in cooperation with Opendata.ch and Open Data ZĂŒrich, we discussed about mapping companies – not just for banks, also non-financial companys like Monsoon Accessorize or Facebook. But how should this work?

Actually it's just a simple idea of bringing existing information in a visual context – creating a systemic view. So no one needs to read through all the documented company information on opencorporates.com or other sources and build the connections itself. An impressive example is the universe of British Petroleum (BP). I had no idea about all the existing connections in the BP Company! Do you know, how many affiliate companies belongs to the BP Universe? Have a look: tinyurl.com/opencorporates-bp.

Now, OpenCoroporates started a new campaign. Alike the BP campaign, they'd like to map the banks. In other words, they want to create a systemic view about companies (interestingly there are not just banks) with permissions or licences for banking, debt collection or other financial related stuff. They see their mission in bringing the data to the open. But as they say, it is a gargantuan task and they won't be able to manage it by themselves. So if you can code or connect data: Just join #mapthebanks. You'll find more information on mapthebanks.com.

Many thanks to Hera and Chris from OpenCorporates, which gave us a great overview about the work of OpenCorporates and promoted the idea of using the existing data and not just let them lie idle.