[School-of-data] Announcing the Kick-Off sprint!

[Laura Newman]

Hi all,

Many thanks for waiting so patiently for news about the School of Data.
Things were quiet initially whilst we waited for funding confirmation, but
I am now delighted to announce that the School of Data will be co-supported
by both Open Society Foundations and the Shuttleworth Foundation. Many
thanks to OSF and Shuttleworth for making this possible!

Particular thanks also to those of you have volunteered to build learning
challenges, to mentor courses, to offer interesting datasets and resources,
or who have shown an interest in joining the collaboration. *This is your
chance to get involved!*

Please do drop an email to this list to share your interests and ideas. We
would be particularly delighted to welcome you to our virtual sprint next
week!

*## School of Data kick-off sprint *

Next week, we will be holding a School of Data kick-off sprint. This will
be a hands on workshop to share ideas, source materials, and start building
content for the school.

On the afternoon of *Thursday 24th May*, we will be holding a designated
online sprint. This will take place on *IRC *(#schoolofdata on freenode)from
*12-4pm UTC. *All are welcome!

Sign-up on the etherpad:* *http://schoolofdata.okfnpad.org/kick-off-sign-up*
*
On the day, we particularly welcome:
* Suggestions for content and courses
* Recommendations (or donations!) of high quality, openly licensed
materials and resources, including interesting datasets to work with
* Offers to build a specific learning challenge or track
* 'Testers' willing to try out and improve the content available so far

If you can't join us at the designated time, please do feel to drop into
the IRC room at other times - we will try to ensure someone is in there
whenever possible. Additionally, please do feel free to use this list (
school-of-data at lists.okfn.org) to begin sharing ideas and resources.

*## Social Evening*

If you happen to be near Berlin, come along for our social evening!
Following the virtual sprint, we will be meeting in
Oberholz<http://www.sanktoberholz.de>at
*7pm *on *Thursday 24th May *for a relaxed and informal gathering.

Sign-up here: http://lanyrd.com/2012/opendata/

We are really excited to see plans for the School of Data moving forward.
With your help, we're sure that this will be a great success. It's been
really encouraging to read all the messages of support that were submitted
via our original form, and we hope that we can now begin putting some of
those excellent ideas into practice!

If you have any questions, do feel free to contact me directly or via
schoolofdata at okfn.org at any time.

Many thanks,
Laura


-- 
Laura Newman
Community Coordinator
Open Knowledge Foundation
http://okfn.org/
Skype: lauranewmanonskype
Twitter: @Newmanlk
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