ODCamp 7: Getting started on a guide to getting started

Post lunch on the second day of Open Data Camp 7, and Simon Worthington from Register Dynamics set up a practical session to making a start on a guide to getting started with open data. With sticky notes, of course. So, he asked participants, what would they have needed to know when they were getting started? And what resources would they have pointed people towards the answer those questions?

Questions and answers

The sticky notes collected around two different users: the producers of open data and the consumers of open data. So for producers, issues might be: What would be the motivation for doing open data? What are the use cases? How should information be structured? Interestingly, there were fewer suggested answers and resources for these notes: suggesting there may need to be more material in this space.

And for consumers the issues might be: What is this thing? How do we do this thing? What the costs and benefits? What do I need to get started? And then perhaps How can I get started: for which a guide to existing resources, worked examples and, crucially, a glossary might all be handy.

A first stab at answering at least some of these questions was made and captured in the session notes. There were only 45 minutes. A start was made on getting started. Anyone interested in following the work or contributing to it can follow Simon on @51M0NW

[Session Notes]