A retrospective over the past year follows - but first, here is how you can continue to take part in the School of Data working group and Swiss chapter in 2017. Pro tip: sign up and use this forum, our mailing list and public calendar to keep up to speed with the next events!
- Start the year with a tasting of data: come to Bern on January 14 to take part in our first Data Expedition of 2017, and prepare the ingredients for upcoming hackdays.
- If you have already supported an event and gained experience in facilitating expeditions, share your availability and interest in joining our team of data coaches or simply participate in our projects to build up material and experience online.
- Help us by promoting our goals within your institution - the first step to opening doors in support of the data literacy cause. Ask people to visit our new website at Schoolofdata.ch, and support our work by becoming a member or donating to Opendata.ch
As you may have already noticed, we have been going through some structural and organisational changes: please join me in welcoming Heidi Seibold, researcher, data wrangler and community organiser extraordinaire, now helping to lead the project at a national and international level and ligning up some great events with us this spring!
One of our first priorities will be to put in efforts to make the project more consistent and communicate better on different platforms. Our online discussions have moved to forum.schoolofdata.ch - and we are likewise transitioning other soda.camp proto-sites and tools to this domain.
Meanwhile, our data arts projects are not going dry! Au contraire, we hope to soon be able to announce an exciting new initiative to make our creative collaborations more tangible and present than ever. Slack in & 
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Highlights
And now for a brief look back at the year (almost) behind us.
Whether in discussions with A scuola di opencoesione and Datenschule, our community workshops, hosting and supporting the Coder Dojo and Bünzlireboot - our Youth Activities kept us connected and motivated throughout the year. Heartfelt thanks to Jörg, JP, Sara and Daniel for their continued engagement.
This year we had the chance to run several really cool data expeditions, public events and art actions in the neighbourhood. My sincere thanks to Martina and fellow residents at Warmbächli, as well as to Olaf for connecting the dots and his commitment to opening energy data.
Tanti saluti to Serena and each of the students of the open lecture and summer Adventures in Data Visualization workshop, an inspiring and educating experience in the southern part of the country - one that has prepared us well for tackling serious challenges with a positive attitude in the months ahead.
Dankeschön to our friends in Zürich who came out on Open Data Day and Mini Maker Faire and ran awesome projects of their own over the course of the year - Thomas, Rae, Fidel, @opendatazurich team, and all others in the community: you are a continual source of support, advice and dataspiration. Looking forward to seeing you again at latest for Open Data Day 2017!
Last but certainly not the least - merci beaucoup to our colleagues at Opendata.ch and the Open Knowledge community for support and encouragement, online, in person, at the (un)conference in Lausanne, continued hackathon series, and open data meetups. We especially thank Florian for his support in the summer months, tightening our links to the international School of Data community and helping to put in place technical and conceptual foundations. Looking forward to continuing our collaboration to another year of challenges in openness, surely no less than this one brought!
Thanks for making it to the bottom of our round-up post. On behalf of the School of Data, we are wishing you warmth and repose over the holiday season…
…and look forward to senseing and visualising you, and our world of data, in 2017!