OD Camp 4

I spent the weekend at ODCamp. This was the fourth one and they move about. This one was in Cardiff which was very convenient. Here are some reflections on the weekend in no particular order.

I am not very good at explaining APIs to those unfamiliar with them

That there are many people in South Wales interested in or doing things with data who I did not know. How can we keep these conversations going?

I believe I have discovered (eventually) the optimum way to travel by bicycle between Cardiff Central Station and the Pierhead building.

As someone trying to make an ODI-node thrive, I am not alone.

There are much better ways to approach the modelling of Welsh language growth (hopefully) than the ones I had in my head. I pitched a session on this. I found it extremely helpful. It was written up on the ODCamp blog.

I’ll write a more detailed post about how we might, now, approach this on that over on the ODI-Cardiff blog.

It’s not just me. Data Maturity is important.

I really like the way the team organise ODCamp.

It’s easy to imagine that there is a consensus that opening datasets is a good idea. It’s easy to imagine that organisations want to make decisions based on evidence. It is probably reckless to imagine these things.

There are loads of data-communities (scientific data, GIS, open data, Tableau, digital humanitarian, OSM, data journalism, digital marketing). We could learn much from each other. Though I don’t know how to make that happen.

There is SO MUCH that could be done, that remains to be done, that seems urgent that it is very easy to be paralysed into doing nothing. I will really try not to do nothing for want of doing everything.

Thanks again. Everyone.