[open-economics] DataParties

Fri Feb 10 12:43:12 UTC 2012

Dear group,

I want to thank you for joining the City DataParty #3 this Wednesday and I
would also like to share and improve the concept of DataParties with you.

Generally, a DataParty could be a useful tool to search for data and find
what is out there prior to organising a Hackday on a certain topic. All new
datasets could be added to the DataHub
http://thedatahub.org/group/economicsand thus shared with the rest of
the Working Group and the world. The
DataHub is in process of development and improvement, so any ideas and
suggestions on what can make it more usable and attractive are very
welcome. Beside the links to existing public data, the datasets of economic
researchers are especially valuable because they can be used to replicate
results and to build on the existing knowledge base.

It would be really useful to rethink the concept of DataParties in aspect
of:

- Preparation - writing a short blog post on the DataHub blog (and on
openeconomics.net)
- Writing a glossary of terms or manual, which can be helpful for new
people,
- Aims and tasks - some data-cleaning and data-merging can be most
efficiently done by a single individual, so what is the benefit of having
collective data-wrangling? What tasks are best crowd-sourced? We can
specify tasks for a group of people to complete - search for specific
information or data-coding...
- Announcement the event - most people would not necessarily sign before
attending the DataParty, but would come anyway - so is it useful to have an
Etherpad where people sign or should be just use the IRC channel #okfnecon
and remind everybody to join

Do you have ideas and suggestions? Do you want to organise a DataParty with
a specific topic and crowd-source data-mining? The next DataParty will be
in two weeks and you are welcome to suggest a topic and co-organise.

-- 
Velichka Dimitrova
Open Economics Working Group Coordinator
Open Knowledge Foundation
Twitter: @okfnecon, @vndimitrova
Website: www.openeconomics.net
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