With the title Open doors in a quantified society, I ran an open lecture for students of the Master of Advanced Studies in Interaction Design at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI) in January:
In this workshop we will talk about the big picture on data in a digitised world, and take a look at some of the technical, legal and social constraints that block or channel information flow. A preview of the data that the Swiss eGovernment project will release next month will be complemented by demonstrations of outstanding apps and dataviz projects. Our aim will be to explore the concept of Open Data, put in context of Open Hardware, Open Source and other related movements, share the history of the movement in Switzerland and around the world – and enable you to make the most of this rapidly developing field in your creative work.
Thanks to Serena Cangiano and all the students who participated and engaged me in a highly stimulating discussion of the ethical and practical reasons for using open data sources. Through our conversations I learned about new bridges into open devices, and the creativity of your projects and ideas had me inspired (as did the awesome fab lab!) I look forward to hearing about your progress, and to more exchanges in the future.
My slides are online, and here are a few additional links I sent to the class:
Asking questions:
http://theodi.org/blog/data-as-culture-how-will-we-live-in-a-data-driven-society
http://www.wired.com/insights/2015/03/economy-trust-transparency-changing-tech-industry/
Places to find data:
http://opendata.swiss/ (soon!)
http://make.opendata.ch/wiki/data:ch
http://index.okfn.org/place/switzerland/
http://opencoesione.gov.it/opendata/
http://www.europeandataportal.eu/en
http://data.okfn.org/data
http://datahub.io
https://www.google.ch/search?q=(filetype%3Acsv+OR+filetype%3Axls+OR+filetype%3Axlsx)
Collecting data using scrapers:
https://morph.io/
https://scraperwiki.com/
Exploring open data:
http://make.opendata.ch/wiki/resource:tools
http://blog.utou.ch/2014/pandas-with-python/
https://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/portal/de/index/ogd/blog.html (in German)
Inspiration:
http://make.opendata.ch/wiki/project:home
http://bl.ocks.org/enjalot/raw/211bd42857358a60a936/
Putting data on maps:
To get help & start collaborations: