[ok-scotland] CodeTheCity 3 - Aberdeen - 7th and 8th feb

Wed Jan 21 14:35:18 UTC 2015

Code The City 3 - Hack Community Information - 7th and 8th February 2015.
Tickets now available: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/codethecity-aberdeen-feb-2015-tickets-15416650617

Following on from the success of the two events we ran in 2014, we now invite you to get involved in the first of 2015.

Background
The City Council, the local Health Service, and multiple organisations in the public and 3rd sectors all store and present information on local groups, associations, clubs and societies, in various ways.

This poses challenges for the organisations, for those supplying the data, and for the public who need access to it.

All of these data stores are managed independently. The information - which held in a variety of systems - can be significantly different, the frequency of updates not synchronised, and the means by which it is collected non-standard.

For local groups the burden of providing the information to multiple data custodians, and sign-posting services, can be considerable.

And for service users? Well, the challenge of finding trusted, accurate, up-to-date information that meets their needs can be daunting. You Google a query and it returns four listings for the same organisation, with different email addresses, phone numbers, address or contacts ..... You get the picture!

The challenge
Whether you are a service user (seeking to find and make use of information), a representative of a club or society, someone who works in the Health sector, local government, or the 3rd sector - or whether you are a coder, data-wrangler, CSS-monkey, UX expert, or service designer - we want you to work together to improve things.

You really don't have to know how to code HTML or write a SPARQL query for an API to attend (although we certainly won't turn you away if you can!)

We want you to share your own unique skills and experience.

What you will do
You will workshop solutions to this data challenge, look at how we can more effectively use local data, enhance it, make it easier to navigate or to visualise it, link it with other data sources, add to previous work we've done at CodeTheCity, http://codethecity.tumblr.com/ ,  build new applications and have some fun in the process.

In return, we'll show you new techniques for service design, idea generation, prototyping, and rapid iterative application development - and you will show others some tricks. too.

You might even get a Tshirt, a goodie bag and the best catering of any weekend workshop in the city!

Ian Watt
IMPORTANT NOTICE: This e-mail (including any attachment to it) is confidential, protected by copyright and may be privileged. The information contained in it should be used for its intended purposes only. If you receive this email in error, notify the sender by reply email, delete the received email and do not make use of, disclose or copy it. Whilst we take reasonable precautions to ensure that our emails are free from viruses, we cannot be responsible for any viruses transmitted with this email and recommend that you subject any incoming email to your own virus checking procedures. Unless related to Council business, the opinions expressed in this email are those of the sender and they do not necessarily constitute those of Aberdeen City Council. Unless we expressly say otherwise in this email or its attachments, neither this email nor its attachments create, form part of or vary any contractual or unilateral obligation. Aberdeen City Council's incoming and outgoing email is subject to regular monitoring.