#school of data

LIVESTREAM | ADD TO CALENDAR | PERMALINK On Saturday March 28, 2026, BetaNYC will host NYC School of Data 2026 (NYCSoData) at CUNY School of Law NYC. NYCSoData is a community conference that demystifies the practices and policies around open data, technology, and service design. this year’s conference concludes NYC’s Open Data Week 2026 and is the TENTH edition of both NYCSoData and Open Data…

On Saturday March 29, 2025, BetaNYC hosts NYC School of Data 2025 at CUNY School of Law in Queens. This year’s event celebrates the 13th anniversary of the City’s transformative open data law and concludes NYC Open Data Week 2025. NYC School of Data is a community driven conference with a focus on open data, civic technology, and service design. The main stage will be webcast via ISOC.LIVE. ASL…

On Saturday March 23 2024 BetaNYC hosts NYC School of Data 2024 at CUNY School of Law in Queens. This year’s event celebrates the 12th anniversary of the City’s transformative open data law and concludes NYC Open Data Week 2024. NYC School of Data is a community driven conference with a focus on open data, civic technology, and service design. The main stage will be webcast live via a partnership…

Hace poco menos de un año, durante la integración inicial del equipo de SocialTIC nos propusimos un reto adicional a fortalecer a ciudadanos, organizaciones y periodistas en infoactivismo y seguridad digital. Nos propusimos empezar a vincular el conocimiento generado en comunidades de la incidencia cívica y la tecnología para formar a actores cívicos latinoamericanos en el uso, manejo y visualización de datos. 

Así, adoptamos la inercia de "School of Data" impulsado por Open Knowledge Foundation y nuestros hermanos mayores de Tactical Technology Collective. Después de varios meses de estudio, adaptación de contenidos e investigación, lanzamos la primera versión de la currícula del School of Data en Español a través de sesiones vía Google Hangout de una hora que buscan presentar herramientas, casos y experiencias relevantes en el uso de datos para la indicencia e influencia cívica.

Estos son los temas a cubrir en esta currícula para el uso, manejo y visualización de datos:

S1 - Introducción al manejo de datos S2 - Acceso a datos por medios oficiales y fuentes alternas S3 - Contar historias con datos S4 - Uso básico de datos en hojas de cálculo S5 - Transformación y Limpieza de datos  S6 - Gráficas Online y Offline S7 - Georeferenciación de Datos S8 - Infografías

La primera sesión consta de una introducción al manejo de datos y explica de manera general el uso que se le ha dado a los datos para generar impactos en esfuerzos de la transparencia y la rendición de cuentas en México y otros países. Cada jueves a las 7pm (México DF) se impartirá una sesión de 1hra hasta completar la currícula. Habrá involucramiento de especialistas en cada tema y posteriormente se realizarán capacitaciones presenciales con diversas redes y grupos cívicos, periodísticos y técnicos. 

Aquí se encuentra la grabación de este primer hangout. Agradecemos a las decenas de personas registradas y quienes participaron en la sesión desde diversas partes de la República Mexicana, Perú, Ecuador y Venezuela.

This post was originally published in the School of Data

Photo by Robert Banh

This week we want to use a few lines to talk about tools that you can use in your daily work. The School of Data offers a very useful compilation of online resources including tutorials, books and tools about scraping, data analysis, visualisation, etc.

But if you can’t find what you need, there are more options. Tony Hirst has just published a short post with some links to tools and applications that are useful for visualisations.

For those who want to learn how to manage digital data, there is an online training programme called Mantra that could be very helpful. If you are a ‘maps person’ you might find useful this new tool released by LA Times to convert GIS shapefiles into SVGs.  

But if you are more into statistics don’t miss this FAQ guide about basic data concepts. Are you passionate about code? So visit this compilation of apps used by the National Public Radio.

Inspirational

Sometimes, news about economy are a little bit hard to understand, particularly if they are about big numbers. The Guardian tried to solve this problem using visualisations to explain Autumn statement.

But data is not just about what is happening now. We can use it to understand the future, like David McCandless tries to do it with this infographic about CO2 emissions. But we can also have a look to the past, like this interactive map about London bomb sight during World War II.

And if you are really passionate about a book or a TV show you can also start collecting your own data and make some visualisations like this “statistical look back” at The Walking Dead series or this interactive graph about Game of Thrones (the books).

Good practice

The web is flooded with ‘infographics’ made by PR and marketing agencies that don’t pay much attention to the accuracy of the message.

But, as they have became so popular, many people think they are the original ‘information graphics’. Alberto Cairo is claiming the word infographic back.

If you are really interested in maps, I’m sure you will read this blog post from ProPublica where they explain all the choices and decisions they made to create an interactive map about migrations of african-americans from the countryside to the cities.

This is post was originally published in the School of Data

Photo by Elkit

This week we have big news. The first courses of the School of Data are already available. If you are new on this, have a look to them. You will see that data is not so scary as it seems. We also bring you some tips about how to design and make more functional your data visualisations.

First, you must keep in mind what Naomi Robins wrote in her blog a few months ago and that was recently republished by datadrivenjournalism.net: consider your message when choosing what chart to use.

But it’s not just about selecting the right kind of visualisation, it’s also important to make it look nice. Tony Hirst wrote about this a few days ago, when he saw the ‘chart equivalent of comic sans’.

And if you are a big fan of radar graphs, maybe you should have a look to this post by Alberto Cairo and read why he thinks you should avoid them 99.9% (he just used them twice in his whole career)

Open data

French organisation Regards Citoyens published in the OKFN blog a post about the revision of the Public Sector Information Directive in the European Parliament. Probably it will include some of the demands made by the open data movement, but the French group is asking citizens all around the EU to contact their MEP to make sure that the public sector starts using open formats.

But there are some countries in Europe without a Freedom of Information Act. For example, Spain, where the open data group Tu Derecho a Saber has released a report about transparency. According to their figures, 86% of the times that a citizen ask for information, he or she doesn’t receive a satisfactory answer.

And in the other side of the Atlantic, also in a Spanish-speaking country, they also have the same problem. In Argentina there isn’t a Freedom of Information Act, and from the newspaper La Nación they recommend more activism to make more pressure on the government.

If you want to contribute to the open data movement, the OKFN needs your help. You can make a donation or become a regular supporter.

Inspirational

There are pieces of work that can amaze data supporters and readers in general. Like this map made by LA Times using CartoDB. They show the response time of the fire department in the whole city.

And if you like to use data to analyze everything that your government does, have a look to this to projects made by The Guardian. In the first one they explain with numbers how the British work programme failed and in the second they visualise government spending by department.

But data is not just about ‘hard news’. If you want to relax and play some music, you can also entertain yourself diving into 50 years of concerts of the Rolling Stones. Mapped!

Events

If you are going to be in the United States this week, remember that The New York Times is hosting a HackDay the 8th of December.