Sam Milsom – Open Data Manchester

I Can’t Believe It’s Not Data!

Tuesday 26th March, 18.30 – 20.30
Federation House
Federation Street
Manchester M4 4BF

Do you have a tale of bad stats, strange correlations, malicious intent or plain, downright stupidity?

Toy Story 2’s production famously hit a snag after losing a couple of months worth of work due to an accidental and erroneous command being executed.

In 1999 the Mars Orbiter Climate spacecraft crashed because engineers used computer software which produced output in non-SI units of pound-force seconds (lbf·s) instead of the SI units of newton-seconds

And in 2003, Manchester City Council received a £7,500,000 budget cut due to an error with the census data, which essentially lost 25,000 people.

I Can’t Believe It’s Not Data is a night for sharing YOUR data horror stories.

Similar to Open:Data:Night we’ll have a couple of speakers but we also want to hear from YOU. If you have a story or cautionary tale that you’d like to share, drop an email to sam[at]opendatamanchester[.]org[.]uk. There’ll also be some quick-fire slots on the night.

Tuesday 26th March, 18.30-20.30

Techniques for learning and teaching data skills #2 Storytelling with Data

Thursday 14th March, 13.00 – 17.00
Federation House
Federation Street
Manchester M4 4BF

In partnership with 360Giving

In this increasingly complex and digital age, knowing how to turn data into information is a powerful thing. Communicating complex numbers and crafting meaningful stories from them is a desirable skill that can help to move policies, create new partnerships and lead to positive change.

During this workshop, we will build compelling stories for grantmaking from datasets. We will start by focusing on the ‘who’ we are telling the story to and how to craft a narrative that is compelling to them.

We will also review best practices for using stories crafted from data to build a better understanding of our stakeholders and their needs. We will explore data – 360Giving’s, your own, or other data sources – and think about the story it tells us, drafting stories for our audiences.

This is a train the trainer session where we will teach how to facilitate this activity, but it’s open to everyone who wants to learn how to tell stories with data.

Mapping Your World – a beginner’s guide to using Open Street Map

Tuesday 26th February, 18.30-20.30
Tech Incubator
Oxford Road
Manchester M1 7ED.

OpenStreetMap is a free and editable map of the world, created and maintained by a huge international community. It’s used in numerous projects by local communities, governments, software developers and more, with nearly 5 million registered users and 1 million contributors from all over the world.

It includes data about roads, buildings, addresses, shops and businesses, points of interest, railways, trails, transit, land use and natural features, and much more.

We’ll explore the fundamentals of mapping with OpenStreetMap, some tools and apps, best practice, and some re-use by 3rd part projects.

Whether you’re completely new to OpenStreetMap, or whether you’ve used it before and wish to dive a bit deeper, then this is for you.

An Introduction to Open Street Map

Saturday 2nd February, 11.00 – 17.00
Federation House
Federation Street
Manchester M4 4BF

Join us for a day’s introduction to Open Street Map, the free and editable map of the world, created and maintained by a huge international community.

This workshop will act as a ‘beginners guide’ to OSM, but with a slant towards looking at how we might map accessibility and mobility features, as informed by our Mapping Mobility Stockport project.

Whether you’re completely new to OSM and want to know more, you’ve used it before and wish to dive a bit deeper, or you’re an OSM pro but wish to explore accessibility and mobility features in more detail, then this is for you.

We’ll be joined by OSM pro Andy Mabbett, who will take us through the fundamentals of mapping with OpenStreetMap. We’ll explore some tools and apps, best practice, and how the map has been re-used by 3rd party projects. Some of the things that we will be covering include:

What is Open Street Map?
Policies and rule
OSM editing tools, including ID and JOSM
Basic OSM mapping concepts, tagging & accessibility-related tagging
Hands-on editing
Apps
Where to find help
Data imports, explorts and 3rd party re-use.

Things Manchester 2019 – We Are Open

Tuesday 21st January, 18.30 – 21.00
Tech Incubator
Oxford Road
Manchester M1 7ED.

The Things Network and LoRaWAN is the breakout technology in the IoT space. Increasingly adopted by industry, civic and commercial bodies – but still supporting experimental and small-scale usage – The Things Network has seen rapid evolution over the last few years.

Join us for our first meeting of 2019. After a few months away, we’ll have a recap introduction to LoRaWAN and TheThingsNetwork, with slots for show-and-tell and open discussions. Bring your plans for devices and deployments, questions, ideas or just plain old networking hats, and join the biggest – and original – Award-Winning open IoT community in the UK!

Started in 2015 the Things Network has become an global IoT phenomenon. Manchester was one of the first communities to develop outside Amsterdam and since September 2018 the Things Manchester network has been under the custodianship of Open Data Manchester CIC.

Open:Data:Night

Tuesday 29th January, 18.30 – 20.30
Federation House
Federation Street
Manchester M4 4BF

Kicking off our 2019 programme of public events, Open:Data:Night is an open session for anyone with an idea, project or interest related to open data and data practice.

As in previous sessions, we’ll have a couple of speakers talking about the work they’re currently doing in open data in the Greater Manchester area, but we’ll also have a number of quick-fire slots available on the night.

If you want to present what you’re doing, find a collaborator, co-conspirator or get feedback on a project, come along.

If you’ve never been to an Open:Data:Night before, you can read a summary of the previous event here.

Find out what the Open Data Manchester community is doing, what it’s all about and the benefits!

Why we need better data on towns and rural communities

Tuesday 27th November, 18.30 – 20.30
Federation House
Federation Street
Manchester M4 4BF

“We need better data” is a constant in our work at Open Data Manchester. Nowhere is this more true than with geographical data. We have national and regional data, and relatively good data at the local authority level, but there is a gaping hole in the availability of data at the town level. We still haven’t decided what a town is! This is particularly important given that the last two decades have seen the dominance of cities and city-regions as engines of economic growth. If we are to construct better place-based policy, it makes sense to have much better place-based data.

Which is why we’re bringing together Ian Warren – Centre for Towns, Professor Cathy Parker – Institute of Place Management (MMU) and Tom Forth – Iamactivate and ODI Leeds to hear about why these issues are critically important for everyone and what we need to do about it. During this session we want to look at the state of publicly-available data on local transport, high street retail and arts & culture to understand why better data would equal better policy, and what we can do about it.

So you think you know your country – revealing the hidden patterns in local democracy

For six weeks over the summer we had Pamilla Kang, a placement student the University of Manchester, work to update the data around political representation in local documentation.

She’s written a blog post about her experiences which can be found here.

The updated dataset can be found on our github here.

Linked Data in Digestible Form

Tuesday 30th October, 18.30 – 20.30
Federation House
Federation Street
Manchester M4 4BF

Join us at Federation as we invite Swirrl to present a whistle-stop tour of linked open data.

Open Data Manchester’s very own Jamie Whyte will be joined by Swirrl’s Julija Hansen and new Swirrler (and experienced open data enthusiast) Jen Williams.

They’ll discuss:

what linked data is
why it’s useful
where can you find it
some tools and recipes to help access it.

The evening will feature some practical sessions, so we recommend bringing along a laptop to work with.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Re gister here.

Image: Alex Warren bit.ly/2O6tAls

Joy Diversion 4

Saturday 20th October, 11.00 – 17.00
Federation House
Federation Street
Manchester M4 4BF

Join us for our fourth Joy Diversion – and the final one of 2018!

As before, we’ll be starting with maps of Manchester and Salford from 150 years ago, proposing expeditions to uncharted territories or revisiting previously explored places, strange meanderings and any other diversions that people fancy.

Adventurers will be split into parties and encouraged to map, photograph, document and bring back their findings to share with everyone.

We’ve put together a summary of September’s Joy Diversion which you can view here.