Seattle Public Library is ‘Up and Running’
Halfway through July and Seattle Public Library’s (SPL’s) Open Data projects are moving along at a good clip. While there have been minor adjustments over the last few weeks, we continue to hit green lights in planning both Open Data workshop events. To date, we have renamed the workshops, settled on dates for both events, decided on Breakout Session topics and tracks for both public and staff events, created marketing and promotional materials for the event, and confirmed breakout session leaders.
There have been two main adjustments made to the events: changing the event name, and changing the event dates. We changed our event name to Up and Running with Open Data. This change was primarily made to make the title a more understandable reference while allowing for easy reproducibility.
The other significant change was around the event dates. Originally, we were going to have the staff event first. In discussing this work with other Open Data leaders at the city, we decided to switch the events around, making the public event first. The catalyst for this change was to tie our workshop into a community Open Data hackathon happening shortly after our event. Supporting all efforts around Open Data is a great way to build a strong Open Data community at both the municipal level and with the public at large. The public Up and Running with Open Data event is set for September 9, 2017; the regional library staff training will be September 20, 2017.
Finally, we have firmed up speakers and breakout session leaders, as well as names and descriptions for breakout session tracks. There will be two breakout sessions for each event, each with two tracks; Beginner Level and Intermediate Level. The first breakout session will serve as an introduction to Open Data concepts and tools. Tracks for this session are Open Data 101 and Open Data Toolkit. The content for breakout session 1 will be the same for both the public and regional library staff events. The second breakout session is more hands-on, where participants will dive into working with Open Data. This session content is different for the staff and public events. The public event tracks are Using Open Data and Running Analysis, while the regional library staff event tracks are geared toward Open Data and library services.
The next steps will be to promote the event while continuing to develop lesson plans and content for the session tracks. In addition, I will be continuing to document this process by compiling materials utilized in planning for other libraries and municipalities to use in the future.
