[okfn-za] Liberate South Africa's data - 24th October

[Adi Eyal]

Hi All

We haven't received an official nod to talk about it yet, but why
wait? We're going to be launching a national open data portal,
hopefully in time for the open government partnership conference at
the end of the month. We are working with the Department of Public
Service and Administration and Microsoft with support from various
government organisations to develop it. It's obviously going to be a
long term process but rather than wait for the slow bureaucratic
wheels to turn, we decided to put our running shoes on and get on with
it.

Microsoft is hosting a two day hackathon today and tomorrow using some
of the data on the portal. Follow it on Twitter on #opengovsa. Our
data quests in Durban, Cape Town, Pretoria and Pofadder are going to
be running on Saturday. Register here (http://goo.gl/forms/aSzXAbWbQL)
if you want to participate (data scientists, storytellers, designers
and house husbands welcome). All comers get a cool #Data Liberator
t-shirt.

p.s. development on the portal is on-going, we'll share details as
soon as possible.

Regards
Adi

On Thu, Oct 15, 2015 at 2:15 PM, Adi Eyal <adi at code4sa.org> wrote:
> Hi All
>
> Something big is brewing in the open data world (we haven’t been given the
> all clear to say what it is exactly). In order to coincide with the
> announcement, we are hosting Data Quests in Cape Town, Durban and Pretoria
> (alas, we couldn’t get it together to arrange an event in Johannesburg).
>
> We’re inviting all you artists, data journalists, activists, teachers,
> carpenters, garage mechanics and cartographers to join us on the 24th of
> October to dig through South African data, find stories and build awesome
> visualisations. This is going to be a coordinated push across the country
> showing that there is a strong demand for government to open up its data.
>
> So warm up those Excel fingers and sharpen your dataviz skills - next
> Saturday is going to be a big day for open data in South Africa.
>
> P.S. If you would like to host an event in your town (Pofadder, I’m looking
> at you), send us an email and we will help you set it up.
>
> If you’re planning on coming, please fill in this form:
> https://docs.google.com/forms/d/17vS6tGNnJr65h5ONFXTnrpIOxoWhXR6wEeCrO5A1DaE/viewform
>
> You should also RSVP on our meetup pages:
> Cape Town:
> http://www.meetup.com/Code-for-South-Africa-Hackers/events/226054849/
> Durban: http://www.meetup.com/Open-Data-Durban-Meetup/events/226075253/
> Pretoria: still coming



-- 
Adi Eyal
Director
Code for South Africa
Promoting informed decision-making

phone: +27 78 014 2469
skype: adieyalcas
linkedin: http://za.linkedin.com/pub/dir/Adi/Eyal
web: http://www.code4sa.org
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