DataJam North East is nearly here…
Celine McLoughlin and Ryan Dunn
It’s the eve of DataJam North East and the culmination of months of work by a group of people who had an idea to build on the One Team Gov principles and create something quite unique here in the North East. We have certainly taken the experiment and iterate and take practical action principles on board here!
Not just another conference
We have written about the format the next two days will take. It will not just be a hackathon or just an unconference but a combination of both. There will also be a series of exciting workshops and demos running over both days by our amazing sponsors Orangebus, Different Group, Accenture, Microsoft and the National Innovation Centre for Data.
To be completely honest we have no idea how this combined format will work in practice! We have, with a team of very committed volunteers, planned as much as we can to ensure that there will be something for everyone and put in place all the foundations to allow real progress to be made over the two days. However the most exciting part of any hackathon and unconference is that the script is completely open for the attendees to write for themselves.
Flexible agenda but focused outcomes
For us we have been balancing a number of key aims throughout all this planning. Not only do we want to start a new conversation about how we can integrate data and design together better, we also want to continue and build on national conversations about embedding data in organisations and the value of opening data up across organisational boundaries.
To really bring all these aims to life the event will focus on key themes which have emerged through conversations with different organisations. We believe these areas will really benefit from focused, collaborative activity giving the added benefit of making tangible progress on real problems while we prove our point!
Not just London
We are both incredibly passionate about the North East. The themes for the hack teams have been chosen by our partners to tackle areas we know are particularly challenging for people who live in our region but the conversations and outcomes are equally relevant at a national level.
We hope that the approach we are taking here will be one that can be replicated across the country and we are excited that we are starting it here in the North East.
What happens next
No matter how successful and energising the event is the only way we will truly add value is if this is the start of something bigger rather than a one-off event. Already through the planning and publicising of the event we have spoken to so many new people and organisations and made key links across what we are doing in our ‘day jobs’.
The hack teams will be working flat out over the two days. Each theme has a different kind of problem statement which are at a different stage of development.
Child attainment for example is very wide ranging which means that the outcome may be articulating the crux of the problem, supported by a range of data, and visualising this in a way which helps policy makers and organisations fully understand the problem that exists and the impact of not taking any action to address this.
Conversely the skills theme has lots of relevant data and a well formed problem statement. This means that the hack team in this area will be able to move quickly into designing and developing potential solutions ready to test and take away at the end of the event.
We don’t want the legacy of the event to just to be products from the hack teams. The unconference sessions and planned workshops and demos will provide numerous opportunities for learning, sharing and hopefully lots of inspiration. There will also be lots of space and chances for conversation and new connections — helped along by the social evening on day one!
How we use data to understand and design our services is one of the biggest challenges facing the public sector today. We want this event to be the start of a new way of having this conversation and we hope that the end of day two we will be ready to really get started on the hard work!
Get involved
You don’t need to be at the event to be a part of it! We will be tweeting over the days so follow us on the hashtag #DataJamNE to keep up to date with everything that is going on at the event and we will publish all our blogs about what next here too.