All posts by Giuseppe Sollazzo

Open Data Camp #8: Wolverhampton, 1-2 July 2023

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Hi Folks. ‘Ow am ya? After a bit of a break, we have decided it is time for Open Data Camp to hit the road again. Making sure we hold these events in a wide range of places is really important to us and after our previous trips to Winchester, Manchester, Bristol, Cardiff, Belfast, Aberdeen and London it seemed like it was about time that we tried a jaunt to the midlands. With that in mind, we are delighted to announce that the next Open Data Camp will be happening in Wolverhampton over the weekend the 1st and 2nd July 2023.

Open Data Camp 8 - Wolverhampton

All the glitters is Old Gold. 

The eighth Open Data Camp will be held in at the Springfield Campus of Wolverhampton University

The University of Wolverhampton’s Professor Mohammad Patwary, Digital Innovation and Solution Centre is generously providing the host location of the Springfield Campus.

Why Wolverhampton? Logistics are a factor, the Springfield Campus is close to the train station and a wide range of accommodation choices very close by. It is a modern building which hopefully means good levels of accessibility for all attendees and it is a continuation of our commitment to make sure that these events happen in a wide range of geographic locations. 

We have not done one of these for a while, but the small team of volunteers that put on these events are as committed as ever to the importance of open data and for providing a safe and inclusive space for discussing the good, bad and frustrating parts of our collective efforts and community. We will be running the event as an unconference as normal running all day Saturday and Sunday.

We will be arranging a social event on the Saturday evening and are very excited to have a chance to catch up with people we have not seen for a while and to welcome some new people to our community 

A call for sponsors and a commitment to transparency

Running Open Data Camp is not free. While the organising team is fully formed of volunteers who offer their time for free, we always offer to pay for the extra cleaning , and we want to be able to offer good quality coffee to the attendees, potentially catering, a few drinks at the pub, and take some inclusion action. We hope to have at least 100 people attend and these things cost money.

Sponsor packages start at just £600, and all details are on this web page. We appreciate both small contributions from people and small companies in our community, and larger donations from larger entities. If you are interested in becoming a sponsor then please contact us via the online form or email your query to ODcampuk@gmail.com or via twitter @ODcamp (you can also contact @puntofisso, @I_am_LisaAllen or @mr_dudders directly on twitter).

At each camp, the surplus goes to the wider UK Gov Camp community. We are fully committed to transparency, and we’ll offer a full account of income and spending at the end of the camp.

Tickets

You can find tickets on Eventbrite. As usual, we will be releasing multiple batches over the next few weeks.

Open Data Camp is a two-day event, which gives us a great chance to cover loads of open data topics together. Sometimes people can’t make both days and that is fully ok. We will send a survey later on to get an understanding of numbers.

Open Data Camp: 7 up!

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Sarah Roberts, who is a member of the team at Swirrl, one of our Bronze Sponsors, has written about Open Data Camp 7 on Swirrl’s blog. Here’s what she said.

We’re happy to be sponsoring Open Data Camp again, which heads to London the weekend of Nov 2nd and 3rd. In honour of the seventh edition of the camp, here are seven recent bits of data discussion which have caught our eye …

In at Number One

Image Source

The recently published Northern Ireland Open Data Strategy, is straight in at Number 1. The strategy runs from 2020–2023 and has four main themes:

  • Increasing the rate of publication and sharing of government information as open data
  • Promoting original, useful ways of using open data to show its benefits.
  • Engaging with the public sector to promote Open Data through events, setting up an innovation fund and running open data competitions
  • Training so Open Data’s a business function, rather than an ad hoc activity.

There’s a lot of interesting content in the strategy, and it’s especially great to see ‘making data accessible and easy to use’ as one of its key principles. And a mention of tidy data. Be still my beating data heart.

Two: Sweet Harmony

And tidy data makes me think of another good thing going on with open data : The Connected Open Government Statistics project. This is a GSS project which aims to harmonise data across departments so it’s interoperable. There’s a lot of good stuff going on here to tackle the disparate data landscape in a standardised way and a lot of organisations involved. More on this here.

Three: Stand(ards) and Deliver

Stand and Deliver by Adam and the Ants. Image Source

I don’t go to many conferences, but those I have been to this year have all included AI as a topic. I was talking about this to my colleague, Jamie Whyte, who said one similarity between AI and data science is that they both depend on the quality of data they operate on. Bill Roberts spoke about the same thing from a different angle at our Power of Data event a couple of weeks ago: the idea that if you want to do data science you need some data, most likely from lots of data sources. And if that data’s not in a good shape when it goes it, then the risk is that automation will generate poor quality results. Standards at the point of publication are the answer here — not Adam and the Ants, really. But enjoy the ear worm.

Four: Never Ending Story

Storytelling with data. I know, it’s not new but it’s still something that hooks me in. At the recent GSS conference in Edinburgh, Mark Robinson of NHS Health Scotland presented a really engaging talk on the use of data in interventions for health inequalities. He showed this Shiny app (screenshot below) in his talk, which allows users to select the area & health outcome they want to look at:

5ive

I’m totally showing my age now, I know. Image Source

In at number five are the Indices of Deprivation. This data was released last month by MHCLG and Bowie Penney covered some of its uses at the same GSS conference. The uses are wide ranging, from contextual funding use to estimating life expectancy, and people are already making stuff with it, like Open Data Manchester’s lava lamp visualisation, Rob Fry’s interactive map and Alasdair Rae’s work. Get to the IMD postcode app, area app and the Indices of deprivation datasets here.

Six: Stop, Collaborate and Listen

Slide from Jeni Tennison’s talk at Power of Data 2019

The Open Data Institute have been doing a lot of work around the idea of data institutions for the new data age. I love the Data Access Map (shown) and other related work includes research on Data Trusts and a joint paper with the RSA & Luminate on data rights and data ownership. Open Data Camp’s a huge collaborative effort and there’s another opportunity to meet up with people collaborative style at the next cross-government API meeting in Newcastle next month.

Seven: One Vision

Not the catchy Queen song (although, what a song) — the National Data Strategy. We were lucky enough to have Gaia Marcus, who heads up the strategy at DCMS, chair a panel on this at our event a couple of weeks ago. Panelists included Rosalie Marshall, Siân Thomas, Gavin Freeguard and our very own Bill and questions ranged from opportunities to improve public services through effective data use to priorities of data standards and data infrastructures. The videos will be up very soon — worth a watch!

This time Swirrler, and long time Open Data Camp supporter, Jen will be there — say hi if you see her there!

 

Open Data Camp 7

Open Data Camp #7: London, 2-3 November

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In the past few years, the Open Data Camp charabanc has travelled from Winchester to Manchester, from Bristol to Cardiff, and from Belfast to Aberdeen. We’ve always made a point of being as inclusive as possible and giving the wider Open Data communities a way to coalesce in England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland. We have avoided London as “everything happens there already”.

It’s time to visit the capital

But we felt it was time to bring the charabanc to the capital. We are very happy to announce that the seventh Open Data Camp will be held in at the Geovation Hub in London, on 2-3 November 2019.

Why London now? Logistics are obviously a factor, with many in the organising team possibly busy around Whitehall for a certain other event in October. However, hosting a camp in London also resonated with many people and organisations in our wider network. Many things in the data space have been happening in London and we don’t want to ignore them. For example, there is ongoing work in London, where the National Data Strategy and Data Policy teams are based, while the ODI is running a series of great initiatives from their HQ in London. But we also know that mySociety is running its TICTeC Local conference on 1 November, an event we strongly recommend to the Open Data folks because of a huge overlap of interests and intent with the Civic Tech community it attracts.

We do hope that this will keep the diversity of angles and participants strong.

A call for sponsors and a commitment to transparency

Running Open Data Camp is not free. While the organising team is fully formed of volunteers who offer their time for free, and Ordnance Survey are offering the venue at no charge, we always offer to pay for the extra cleaning , and we want to be able to offer good quality coffee to the attendees, potentially catering, a few drinks at the pub, and take some inclusion action. These things cost money.

Sponsor packages start at just £500, and all details are on this web page. We appreciate both small contributions from people and small companies in our community, and larger donations from larger entities. If you are interested in becoming a sponsor then please contact us via the online form or email your query to ODcampuk@gmail.com or via twitter @ODcamp (but you can also contact @drsiant or @puntofisso directly).

At each camp, the surplus goes to the wider UK Gov Camp community. We are fully committed to transparency, and we’ll offer a full account of income and spending at the end of the camp.

Tickets

Open Data Camp is a two-day event, which gives us a great chance to cover loads of open data topics together.

Sometimes people can’t make both days but, with our regular ticketing arrangements, that means we’ve included them in the headcount even though someone else might have been able to attend instead. So we’re trying something new this time: we will issue three types of tickets:

  • tickets for both days
  • Saturday-only tickets
  • Sunday-only tickets

If you can make both days, please take a 2 day ticket. If you can only make one day, please take a Saturday-only or Sunday-only ticket. This should mean that more people can attend because we won’t have vacant spots. We’ll be reviewing the take-up of these tickets as we release batches so we can adjust the proportions to match demands. Please let us know what you think.

The first ticket batch will be released at 12 noon on Wednesday 31 July on our Eventbrite page.

Would you like to run a session at Open Data Camp? That’s awesome. Here are a few tips.

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Whether you have been to an unconference or not, we are thrilled you would like to run a session at Open Data Camp! Many attendees reach out to us beforehand asking if a topic is suitable or not, and how to best run the session. After years of feedback and experiments, what we know is that we don’t want Open Data Camp to be too strict about formats. We’ve seen all types of sessions: conversations, presentations, panels, “unkeynotes” (a posthumous definition), debates (I had something akin to a – friendly – boxing match with Jeni Tennison last year!).

If you still have doubts, the short story is simple and based on two broad tips:

1) have some ideas ready beforehand, summarise these in a short pitch on the morning, adjust according to feedback

2) the Law of Two Feet is your master: people might go if the session isn’t what they were expecting, and that is good.

Don’t worry about attendees numbers or about rehearsing to give the talk of your life. An unconference isn’t TED. I’ve once been the only attendee in a BarCamp session about 3D printing your own CT Scans (a bit creepy, I know), and I still remember what I learnt.

Open Data Camp is all about discussions, so please imagine your session with a major conversational component. However, attendees often ask if they can bring a presentation. After loads of discussions and past experiments, we have decided that we don’t want to discourage people who come with a prepared slide-deck, but we have some caveats:

1) first of all, we cannot guarantee projectors or screens at the camp, so please make sure your presentation can work without slides, or by showing them on your laptop

2) try and limit the frontal presentation to about 10 minutes and imagine it as a kickstarter for a discussion; Gavin Freeguard did this amazingly at Open Data Camp 4 with his “Tale of two datasets”

3) alternatively, use your slides as a prompt for the discussion, and have something to engage in an exchange every slide or two; John Murray with his legendary sessions about LIDAR, or Alasdair Rae with his great session on gaining insight from mapping are good examples to follow.

Photo CC BY-SA Adam Tinworth

Tell people honestly what you would like to do and ask them what they expect: your sessions needn’t be a monologue worth of George Bernard Shaw, it is ok to have an unpolished set of ideas and present them as they come. Think, however, that alternatives to presentation are often better received. The aforementioned debate between me and Jeni Tennison was pitched on the day out of a random conversation, and it was entertaining for us to hold it as well as for the over 40 attendees that turned up. If you prefer a conversation that doesn’t involve defending positions, that is fine too: make sure you allow all opinions to be expressed in full.

Of course, you might want to have some support. If you fear you might not be able to stop someone speaking for too long, for example, talk to us beforehand and we’ll send you one of our lovely campmakers. All a campmaker will do is to ensure that the session allows everyone some space, and that no one takes over without reason. Equally, if you want someone to take notes at the session, please let us know so we can send a note-taker or arrange for the notes to be broadcast on our blogs.

If you have any question, please do not hesitate to get in touch!

 

Open Data Camp 4: bigger, better, wetter

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This post is a repost of Giuseppe’s Medium blog post

I am slowly coming back to life after Open Data Camp. Being in Cardiff was amazing, if not for the weather, which is partly to blame for my current heavy cold. I have not been that wet since I walked up the Snowdon six years ago. Despite the weather, this Open Data Camp has been probably the most amazing we have run since starting in Winchester two years ago — with some caveats. Here are some stats coming from the participants who shared their data (>50%).

The highest participation ever recorded at an Open Data Camp

The most mind-boggling figure from this camp is the total number of attendees: we checked in 125 people on day one, and 103 people on day two (most of them, but not all, returners from day one). To put things in perspective, the highest participation on any day one had been at Open Data Camp 3 in Bristol, with a total tally of 93.

What’s more striking is the very low drop-out rate. We counted 134 unique attendees out of 147 tickets sold. In the unconference industry, a drop out rate of 30% is considered normal, and ours was only 9%. A 91% attendance level for a free event is something I would have never expected. It is testament not just to Open Data Camp being a great event — hey, I’m blowing my own trumpet here! — but to the community being very committed to attending.

Most of the UK was covered

Look at the pin map on the left (or play with Angharad’s interactive map). People who declare their travel origin are from all over the place: Sunderland to the North, Norwich to the East, Hastings to the South. However, the map on the right suggest the magnitude of attendance is higher somewhere in the South of the country. Let’s make a chart…

 
Participant origin in the UK

We can still do better, location wise

Looking at the data, it is evident that most attendees come from the English South or Wales. Is transport an issue? Potentially. However, one of the ideas behind Open Data Camp is in fact to bring Open Data around the country, rather than getting people to attend, so I would not be extremely negative about it. If anything, these chart suggest where to bring Open Data Camp next — if almost 70% of the attendees come from Wales and the South (including London), we should focus on making the next event happen where we only have few attendees: Yorkshire, the North East, Scotland, Northern Ireland.

Attendance by town and region of origin

Some people travelled a long distance

I had a huge grin on my face when I realised we had attendees from 4 continents. The non-European attendees were just 3, but their contribution was really useful. Hearing about Open Data in Seattle and Bangalore is certainly something that can make UK Open Data better.

The median distance travelled was 86 miles, which is more or less how far Southampton, Oxford, or Plymouth are from Cardiff.

 People travelled some distance to get to Open Data Camp

Diversity

Of course, some thought needs to be given to the diversity of Open Data Camp. The organising team did relatively well on gender balance, with over half of the members being women. So I was a bit disappointed upon realising that overall the event saw twice as many men as women (I leave those who did not declare their gender here in the chart, as I think this might be another symptom we need to address). What was your feeling as an attendee?

Open Data Camp seems to be pretty well received among people of a diverse range of ages, but if there is anything we can do to improve please let us know.

We have no data about ethnic background at this stage, but it might be something we would need to monitor in the future.

Gender and age data

On the way to Open Data Camp 5

It’s going to be difficult to beat Open Data Camp 4:

  • the biggest Open Data Camp so far
  • the first in a (former) parliament building
  • the first with armed police
  • the first in which I pitched a session (pushed by Jeni — and actually this was the first session I ever pitched at an unconference…)

When we started organising Open Data Camp in late 2014, I was skeptical: I thought this would be a one-off event and I was resigned that interest would move elsewhere. Instead, if I can summarise Open Data Camp 4 in one key learning point, I can say that interest in Open Data is getting hotter and hotter.

There were many users of data, new to the community, who are extremely keen on data releases and clear, open processes; there was an incredibly well attended session, “Open Data for beginners”, which had to be repeated due to demand; we had, for the first time, data journalists attending, interested in keeping pressure on the government to publish data timely and accurately; we had professionals who work in fact-checking, now using government data to partially automate their fact-checking processes.

Equally, there is a demand for better data, open standards, and clear processes by veterans of Open Data. Open Data shouldn’t come at a massive expense to the taxpayer, but I still think it is beneficial to the efficiency of the public sector if processes that generate data are made clear, de-duplicated, and documented — and the Open Data agenda has clearly been pushing in this direction.

It seems evident to me that Open Data needs to be consolidated — and, preferably, approach releases from a problem-driven perspective (as I somewhat suggest here) — but it is also evident that the community is becoming richer thanks to people belonging to different areas of expertise, interest, and activism, starting to join in. I look forward to continuing the discussion at the next camp.