Guest blog by The City of Edinburgh Council
We all know the future has data at its centre and that we need to uncover and recognise the value of our data to take full advantage of its potential – whether internally, externally or strategically.
- How many of us know how we will achieve this?
- How do we prepare and open up our data to make it as accessible as possible?
- How do we encourage as wide a range of users as possible to help us answer challenges and issues we face?
- How do we find the good practice examples that will help us decide on the approach we can take?
The Open Data for Scotland is an event which aims to help the public sector answer some of these questions. It is a bit of a first for the public sector in Scotland and it’s hoped will attract a wide range and variety of people. Although there will be a lot of focus on data, it’s not just for data scientists and data managers. Anyone who wants to understand how they can use their data more will find it useful to attend. You will definitely:
- Understand more about open data.
- The potential it can offer to organisations.
- How to identify, prepare, publish and work with the data.
- Methods to innovate with open data.
- Learn what you need for a successful eco system to drive open innovation.
- Find new partners and colleagues to work with on this journey.
There is a lot to cover so we decided to run this event over three days – the first being more of a seminar, but with lightning talks from practitioners, organisations and individuals using open data. We’ll be asking participants to discuss themes here on Knowledge Hub and the challenges we all face. We expect health, energy and transport to feature but expect there will be quite a few others! The more people share, the more we begin to see the data areas that need to be covered.
On the Friday participants will take part in break out sessions to discuss the themes and challenges, and decide what everyone will focus on through the weekend.
Three days may seem a big commitment but the more relaxed and informal weekend will provide a focus for your thinking and a real opportunity to move forward project ideas alongside an experienced and knowledgeable range of facilitators who want you to go away with knowledge, new tools and projects primed to begin. Everyone will have their own priorities but we want to encourage groups to work together, alongside developers and creative’s, to design their solutions and go away feeling this has been a really worthwhile investment. It’s a great opportunity to meet like-minded people. We hope to see people from across many different areas of the public sector, and see this as the first of many such sessions, as we work together to make Scotland an international name for open data.
The event will take place on Friday 6th to Sunday 8th November, at the Informatics Forum, in Edinburgh.
You are coming to Edinburgh as well – if you haven’t been, come and enjoy the atmosphere and discover why Edinburgh’s Old Town and Royal Mile are visited by so many thousands every year.
More information and registration available on Eventbrite.
