datafest ottawa - hacking migration - intro about open data and hackathons

OPEN DATA

Datafest Ottawa: Hacking Migration in the Capital

April 12, 2014

Richard Akerman

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Open Data - practically

open data is behind the scenes of many services you may use every day, such as weather forecasts and bus arrival times

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Open Data - practically

NOT JUST APPS – can power websites, voice response telephone systems and text messages

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For Researchers and Journalists

computer-assisted reporting

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Open Data - Technically

data (e.g. temperature measurements, bus times, immigrants per neighbourhood)

free to use, free to share, for any purpose (including commercial)

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Open Data - technically

http://data.ottawa.ca/en/dataset/2014-draft-budget-operating-summaries

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Open Data - community

Actually using Open Data, turning spreadsheets into charts, maps, websites, analysis – this is a group effort

Many skillsets:codingstorytellingvisualizationanalysis

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Open Data Ottawa

https://www.flickr.com/photos/jmacaulay/4562376940/

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Hackathon A hackathon is an intense effort to think

about how the available data and tools might produce interesting results, and do quick demos

Expect:discussions, brainstorming, creativitysketches, storiesvery basic proof-of-concept code (e.g. a web

page) experimenting with an ideamaking amazing connections for future projects

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Hackathon

Don’t expect:free consultantsproduction-ready, fully-completed, industrial-

strength complex software

https://www.flickr.com/photos/steve_lynx/5454042231/

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Pitch

small problems with a compelling story are best

remember you’re trying to attract people to volunteer to work on your idea – what will motivate them?

make it fun

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CC-BY-NC-SA

Copyright © 2014 Richard Akerman

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License