I see “Dead” Data @ Mozfest
[Cross-posted from TextonTechs (blog) by Heather Leson. Mozilla Festival was held in London UK on October 26 – 27, 2013]
We are all teachers of the Open Web. The School of Data team with 28 participants are Learning how to run at Data Expedition at Mozilla Festival.
Data and knowledge need to be activated. People are often intimated by data, so our goal is to teach a world of data makers. We’ve divided into 4 teams consisting of storytellers, analysts, engineers, scouts and designers are doing a fast-paced exercise in expeditions. We will take “dead” data and activate it. The experience is to help others teach data expeditions.
Using Immigration Data to Learn about Data Expeditions
We’ve collected 3 different datasets about immigration data. The teams are reviewing it and determining stories and potentially activation methods. (eg. maps, diagrams) One team is analyzing datasets to determine the number of deaths of people attempting to migrate from Africa to Europe. Another team is using the data to show the true costs and benefits of immigration to the UK. Using Cartographe team 3 is building a map of countries that are difficult to travel. Comparing economic data and visa requirements is the mission of the fourth team.
Outcomes /Learnings
- Leave the exercise raw. This opens us up to new ideas and potentially minimizes assumptions
- Always save your projects (One team lost their work)
- Build a clear problem analysis before going down the data or tool rabbit hole
- Be aware of simplifying data and what context you might lose
About the data:
- FRONTEX Budgets
- Visas by country – List of countries with travel freedom (not requiring VISA)
- Lists of death/injury of those seeking to migrate to UK/Europe
Are you Data Curious? How would you activate this data?
Anyone can participate in this data expedition. The full details and collaboration space about the Mozfest data on Etherpad. Be a Data Expeditioner Too!
Anyone can be a data maker. How can we get to the next 100, 000 data makers teaching and sharing data stories?
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