CodeAcross / Open Data Day 2015

Saturday's activities have been moved to Sunday

Friday, February 20 from 5:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

Waldo Jaquith, director of the U.S. Open Data Institute and a Virginia Tech graduate, will speak on "Open Government Data in Virginia" in Newman Library's Multipurpose Room (1st floor, behind the cafe). After the talk we'll also have a brief event welcome to give more detail about Saturday's activities.

Sunday, February 22 from 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Join us for Blacksburg's first Open Data Day / CodeAcross event, hosted by Code for NRV and Virginia Tech's University Libraries in Newman Library's Multipurpose Room. Participate in themed roundtables that explore challenges and solutions to issues related to open data. Then begin to implement those solutions at the hackathon. The hackathon team that presents the most promising project will win a chance to present their app to Virginia's government information technology leaders and Governor Terry McAuliffe at COVITS 2015.

Please register! All events are free and open to the public, but registration will help us plan for lunch, the day's events, and wireless access for those who are not VT faculty, staff, or students. Feel free to register for any or all of the events. Lunch is provided!

Parking: On campus, visitors do not need permits if they are parking after hours (5 p.m., or 8 p.m. around the Drillfield) or on weekends unless otherwise noted by a sign. In town, parking is available on nearby streets (College, Otey, Roanoke, Draper, etc.)

More about CodeAcross and the day's activities:

CodeAcross is a weekend of civic hacking events hosted by nodes of the Code for America network around the world. It is timed to coincide with both the last weekend of the Code for America Fellows residency and International Open Data Day. The goal of CodeAcross is to activate the Code for America network and inspire residents everywhere to get actively involved in their community.

Who should get involved? Urbanists, civic hackers, government staff, developers, designers, community organizers, and anyone with the passion to make their city better.

Roundtable Discussions

Theme based, one hour discussions between experts, stakeholders, and technologists where we explore applications of open data and how technologists can help solve problems experts are facing.

Open Data & Mapping (Sunday Feb. 22 @ 10 AM)
Hosted by Peter Sforza, Director of the Center for Geospatial Information Technology

Maps can be powerful tools and storytellers when paired with the right data. But what are the issues that surround all that mapping and the data that goes along with it? What service(s) can you trust to get reliable data from? Is Google Maps better than Bing or Yahoo Maps, or if we’re focusing on open data, shouldn’t we just use Open Street Maps (OSM)? How does one know they can trust the data they find in OSM? What about in rural areas where OSM coverage is sparse? Some geo-data does come from authoritative sources, but if these are ingested into map layers, how do those stay in sync? Who should be responsible for maintaining and updating all of the map data being created? There are many questions about open data and mapping that have no easy answers, but instead require a dialogue and ongoing discussion. Come join us as we talk about some of these important questions.

Open Data & Journalism (Sunday Feb. 22 @ 11 AM)
Hosted by Erica Corder, Collegiate Times Editor in Chief

Did you know that The Collegiate Times maintains a database of faculty salaries from major universities around the country? At one time, The Virginian-Pilot had an API for data updated daily with every HRVA city's crime reports. Last year, a reporter from The Roanoke Times and a volunteer from Code for New River Valley collaborated to make it possible for journalists and anyone to search court records in every clerk's office from a single place...for free...over a weekend.

We can do more than publish PDFs of spreadsheets and put pins on Google maps. Journalists have some awesome databases that developers would be eager to utilize if they connected with each other. Let's get together and talk about what we can all do.

Open Data & Public Policy (Sunday Feb. 22 @ 1 PM)
Hosted by Megan Rhyne, Executive director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government

Opening government data is more powerful than most people realize. The first achievement is transparency, but the real power is in what comes next - Data Driven Government. Maryland has one of the best school systems in the country and they attribute that to data driven decisions. In Louisville, a Jail Population Management Dashboard helps judges and other stakeholders understand the conditions in the metro jail and use this data to visualize how their decisions affect program, facility and inmate outcomes. Other applications, like Open Budget and Citygram make data easier to access and understand.

Sometimes, building the app is the easy part and the challenge is in opening the data. Volunteer developers want to help solve both of these problems, but they need help understanding challenges & opportunities. Let's get together and talk about what we can all do.

Open Data & Health (Sunday Feb. 22 @ 2 PM)

Building technology that puts the user first can make it easier and more affordable to feed, shelter, and treat those in need. Civic-minded volunteers can help promote a culture of health by applying human centered design and modern technology to the delivery of services. Already, volunteers have built text message systems that help people stay enrolled in government services and maps that combine census and health services usage data to help identify underserved areas. At the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute’s Ebola Hackathon, a participate built an API that allows other developers to easily access epidemiological data.

Volunteer developers in Blacksburg are ready to build more applications like these, but they need help understanding challenges & opportunities. Let's get together and talk about the possibilities.

Open Data & Research (Sunday Feb. 22 @ 3 PM)

For many researchers, good data is essential to their work, but it can be difficult to find and use. Civic-minded volunteers are giving up nights and weekends to scrape data, convert it to open standards, and make it available in easily accessible data portals, but these portals are useless if no one takes advantage of them. Researchers also have much to gain by making their own data readily available to others and there are resources that make it easy. Let's get together and talk about the challenges researchers face and how volunteers might be able to help.

Open Data Hackathon

The Open Data Roundtables are just the beginning. Team up at the hackathon and start working on solutions to the problems discussed at the roundtables. The hackathon team that presents the most promising project will win a chance to present their app to Virginia's government information technology leaders and Governor Terry McAuliffe at COVITS 2015.

Ideas don't have to come directly out of the roundtables. If you'd prefer, start a project around one of the datasets below:

• Virginia's Open Data Portal
• Virginia Circuit Court Data
• Virginia Resturant Health Inspection API (Mobile App)
• US Census API
• Blacksburg Transit Real Time Bus API