Our next Data Expedition is taking place as part of an event of the association Digitale Gesellschaft, a non-profit organization in Switzerland whose purpose is to preserve and promote a free, open and sustainable digital society - particularly committed to the protection and defence of fundamental and human rights in the digital space, as well as questions of consumer protection. The full program (in German) and tickets for the event are available here:

Register now!  

(GERMAN) In einer Datenexpedition kannst Du lernen, mit frei verfügbaren “offenen Daten” zu arbeiten und große Mengen an Informationen aus legalen, authentischen Quellen zu sammeln. Überlege dir Fragen, die du an Themen, welche dir wichtig sind, stellen möchtest. Wir führen dann gemeinsam Recherchen auf Datenportalen und Suchmaschinen durch, führen dich in die Petitionierung und das Crowdsourcing (on- und offline) von Daten ein. Der Verein Opendata.ch veranstaltet Hackathons und Expeditionen in der ganzen Schweiz, wir suchen nach relativ aktuellen Datenquellen mit Potenzial für neue Anwendungen, die so frei wie möglich von Einschränkungen und Zugänglichkeitsfragen sind - im Idealfall nach der Open Definition. Aus den besten Daten, die wir gemeinsam entdecken, wollen wir hochwertige Datenpakete und/oder Online-Tools/Visualisierungen erstellen, die für die breite Öffentlichkeit zugänglich sind.

In a Data Expedition, you can learn to work with open data and collect vast amounts of information from legal, authentic sources. Think about some questions you would like to ask, issues you care about. We will run searches on data portals and search engines together, introduce you to petitioning for data and crowdsourcing on- and offline.

The association Opendata.ch, Swiss chapter of Open Knowledge, runs hackathons and expeditions year round. We are always looking for sources of data which are relatively up to date, with potential for new applications, and which are as free as possible of restrictions and accessibility issues - in the ideal case, open according to the Open Definition.

From the best data we discover together, we aim to create high quality Data Packages and free, online tools accessible to the general public.

The first step is to register for the workshop at the link above. Meanwhile, in the our virtual community (sign up here to our Mattermost open chat server, or use the hashtag #makeopendata on Mastodon, Twitter, Facebook), as well as through the discussion forum, we will be sharing updates on our progress.

Get started }{

With the following steps, you can participate ahead of schedule, or even if you are not able to join the workshop itself:

1. Discover data

Using web sites like opendata.swiss, datahub.io and datacentral, you can find datasets published in accessible and carefully published form. Look around to understand what is meant by Open Data. Think about some questions you would like to ask, issues you care about, or datasets which could help us to be better citizens of the digital society.

Run searches on open data portals or search engines. If you find something interesting, or have an idea of something that is missing, hold on to it for the next step.

2. Make a suggestion

Ideas can be shared on our forum, social media, or by contacting us. We are looking to support a moderated, public process of raising attention to possibilities in the open data spaces. In particular, we are looking for sources of data which are relatively up to date, with potential for new applications, and which are as free as possible of restrictions and accessibility issues - in the ideal case, open according to the Open Definition. From the best data we discover together, we aim to create high quality Data Packages.

3. Package the data

From the issues list, we will download and test datasets, clean-up as necessary, check the licenses, create and validate a Data Package, documenting any issues in a README. Current proposals will appear here:

If there is a dataset you wish to see supported, you can also start by making a fork our boilerplate and create a Data Package yourself. If you publish it online, please send us the URL for review.

Tips and tools

There are lots of resources in our Forum, and you may also find our data wrangling Toolbox and information on Data Packages useful. By this time you may have other things to share or ask, so let’s chat. Then join our next Data Expedition or Hackathon, and make something amazing!

Any questions?

• This Data Expedition is facilitated by @oleg and @nikki
• Use the chat server, forum or our contact form if you have any questions to the team.
• Sign up for e-mail updates from our forum or newsletter to be notified of upcoming Expeditions and other Events.

Feb 23, 2019 • School of Data in Switzerland