Immediate reflections on ODCamp5

Ulster Fry

This is a mega-quick post because I wanted to say something that wouldn’t fit in one tweet.

Just on the plane back from ODCamp5 - Belfast-style, and it’s been an incredible whirlwind of stuff . I was there representing both Open Data Manchester and Swirrl. I’ve met a load of great new people, caught up with the old crew, and generally had a tremendous time talking about open data, not open data, civic tech, ethics, responsibilities, divided communities, maps, food standards, pdfs(!), horror stories, good news stories, public access wi-fi data, cake, value chains, careers and many other things.

Coconut Jam Cake

I couldn’t go to the data as art, or data for fun, or accessible file formats, or charities, or APIs, or gender data, or dogfooding/champagning, or many other amazing sessions, and I’m gutted about that, but also I’m delighted that this is a problem that we have.

I want to thank all the attendees for coming along and being so willing to get involved, and helping make it an incredible weekend.

I want to thank my fellow campmakers, who’s energy, and passion, and hard work make it possible for me to be a part of tight but amazingly fun team.

Campmakers (Thanks to Drawnalism for the image)

Thanks to the OpenDataNI crew for doing all the local organising, and hosting, which is tremendously hard to do on top of your day job.

Thanks to the ridiculously-talented drawnalism team, who get better every year, helping us document the sessions.

And thanks to the sponsors, without whom none of it would have been possible.

So here’s to ODCamp 6, wherever it’ll be, and I really hope we see some of the noobs from this weekend when we get there.