Update 2017
PEI Open Data Hackathon 2017
Hackathon And Open Data Workshop
Update for 2017
2016 In Review

2016 In Review

Happy New Year! Here are some links to various meetups, talks, and other online artifacts from 2016.

January

  • At the January meetup, Michael Easter spoke on PDF Box.
  • Also in January, CBC Maritime Noon interviewed ODBC on the PEI Landmarks project. (This is a light-hearted interview about landmarks, not Open Data per se.)

February

  • At the February meetup, Robert Hughes, CAO with the Town of Stratford provided an overview of the services provided by the Town, and an initiative on Open Data and Open Government.
  • Also in February, Michael Easter spoke at a CIPS PEI Luncheon on ‘Open Data and Generation Open’. Several ODBC members attended as well. Web-viewable presentation here and PDF here

March

  • PEI Devs and ODBC held a hackathon, in observance of Open Data Day. Sean Whalley wrote up a fabulous review here. Also, Dustin Sparks was interviewed by the CBC.
  • Hackathons require a lot of planning/energy, and so the March meetup was simply a review for those who couldn’t attend.

April, May

  • Some members of ODBC traveled to The Port City, Saint John, NB for the Canadian Open Data Summit 2016. Our own Michael Easter joined Catherine McGovern and Richard Pietro for a lightning talk on the Open Data Book Club concept.
  • Due to the conference, there was no meetup in April; the May meetup featured a recap by Evan Porter and Michael Easter.

June

  • Arguably the most significant event of the year, the June meetup featured Carol Mayne, Director of Business Application Services (in Finance and ITSS), with the Gov’t of PEI, unveiled new data sets as part of the Open Government License.
  • This work was influenced, in part, by the Directors’ Forum in Dec 2015, which featured presentations by Peter Rukavina and many members of the ODBC.
  • Some CBC articles are here and here.
  • Our ODBC members have been experimenting with various visualizations of this data here.

September

  • July and August meetups consisted of summer socials, but the September meetup featured Paul Alan, Director of Communications at Elections PEI. Paul presented on the plebiscite on Electoral Reform. We had hoped for a strong turnout, but suspect that we were too early in the calendar for this issue. Thankfully, the small group rallied with excellent questions.

October

  • The October meetup was hosted by Robertson Library at the University of Prince Edward Island, as part of International Open Access Week. The evening featured two presentations: The Value of Open Data in Climate Research by Dr. Adam Fenech and _Health Data in an Open Data World by Mary-Ann MacSwain.

November

  • Finally, the November meetup featured elder-emeritus Bob Shand speaking on Civic Address Data. Terry Scott and Steve Dickie were on-hand as blue-shirts, representing the province. The evening represented the essence of the ODBC idea: with gov’t reps and engaged citizens getting face-time on a specific data set.

Recap

A busy year, for sure! This recap does not cover various evangelical efforts in the form of informal meetings/lunches, planning, and so on to try and explain the Open Data concept to various people & agencies across PEI.

Many thanks to the ODBC members for their support, whether it is via attending meetups/hackathons, contributing to GitHub or Slack, or even RTs on social media. You have made a difference.

The schedule for early 2017 is unclear, with a major exception: PEI Devs and ODBC are planning another hackathon for Open Data Day on March 4, 2017. Save the date!