[open-data-day] Publish and tag your data to our HackFest 2011 Community Page

Thu Dec 1 20:12:02 GMT 2011

Hello fellow Open Data Hackathon Day participants!

Hope you're getting excited for Saturday. We've gotten Toronto organized;
should be fun.

I wanted to reach out to the community to let them know about two new
initiatives we're trying this year:

1) *On BuzzData we've created a HackFest 2011-specific Community
Page<http://buzzdata.com/topics/hackfest-2011-odhd>,
with which users can tag datasets they use during the event.* We hope this
works well for helping funnel as many international ODHD efforts — both
city- and individual- — to one bustling place that also happens to get
fantastic SEO traction. It'll be like a real-time feed (with data!) that
you can contribute to, follow and discuss in real-time.

Publishing datasets on BuzzData and starting your own local HackFest City
data account is super-easy. You can see how to do it
here<http://buzzdata.com/faq/getting-started/upload-publish-a-dataset-publicly-or-privately>.
Because it now accepts any file type under 500MB and allows versions and
annotating changes<http://buzzdata.com/faq/getting-started/add-new-versions-and-record-changes-to-a-dataset>,
BuzzData would be really useful for collaborative "data liberation" efforts
— ie: soliciting help to get a data source in a difficult format (say a
govt pdf) into a better one.

*2) We would really like to encourage participating cities to start
HackFest 2011 accounts and collect/publish their cities' open-data
efforts*so that it's easy for media and non-hackers to find the fruits
of our
labour and discuss it, both during and after the event.

Here's what a starter demo account we created for our hometown of Toronto
looks like <http://buzzdata.com/toronto-odhd> — I myself will be compiling
the day's efforts for T.O. and hope other cities will too!

The general convention I used is:

*Username:* <mycity>-odhd
*Name:* HackDay 2011 - <mycity>
*Description: * <My city's> data hub and resultant projects from
International Open Data Hack Day 2011 #odhd #YYZ
*Topic tags:* Cities, HackFest 2011

Hope this helps get people organized! Hosting and publishing your data &
projects should be the last thing on your plate. Less time on event
logistics, more time on brainstorming and problem-solving :)

And if you'd like to open a HackFest account for your city but need a bit
of help getting oriented, by all means feel free to bug me directly at
momoko at buzzdata.com.

Have fun this Saturday, all!

Momoko (buzzdata communications director)
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