What is this?

It’s a gathering of Toronto (and area) developers, statisticians and data scientists to write applications, liberate data, create visualizations and publish analyses using closed media data to show the world what Toronto has to offer in the data sector and encourage the adoption of BIG data by the world's publishers, regionally and nationally and internationally.

Who is this event for?

Everyone

If you have an idea for using media data, want to find an interesting project to contribute towards, learn about how to visualize or analyze data or simply want to see what's happening, then definitely come participate! No matter your skillset or interests, we are encouraging opportunities for you to learn and help the global open data community grow.

Developers

We need computer cowboys and cowgirls like yourself to wrangle data into something useful. That means visualization, notification, integration, etc., all in the name of doing something crazy and fantastic.

Designers

We need people like you to make the everything look amazing, feel intuitive, and have a smooth user experience. The best application in the world that no one can use... isn't much use! You know the drill.

Statisticians / Data Scientists

I heard you folks like data, data modelling and stats! And eat catalogs of data for breakfast... You beautiful people are going to scour the earth for interesting data, help the rest of us figure out what’s important, and generally be useful.

How Will It Work?

These hackathons, like small pieces, will be loosely joined by these basic principles.

It will happen on Saturday, April 27rd from 9am until 9pm It can be as big or as small, as long or as short, as you'd like it. Anyone can organize a team event Want to help organize your team / friends / co-workers to participate? Add your team name (or just your own), along with the Project name here You can hack on anything that involves our media data Could be a local or global app, a visualization, proposing a standard for common data sets, scraping data from our API or even creating your own data catalog of our media data. What to Expect

A lot will be going on. So... expect to:

Learn more about media and their open data. Find out how local and national media offer data and what could be done with it. Meet & network with tons of cool people in your city and around the world. Voice your opinion & share your ideas with the people and media attending. Find out about apps being created, and get to play around with them as well. Help out with parts of the conceptualization, creation, design, and testing of apps. Conduct an open tutorial sessions around using the data. Have lots and lots of fun. What to Bring

Anything! Bring your laptops, mobile phones, phasers set to stun, etc. but above all, your energy and your brains! We’re trying to make this event very hands on, so feel free to bring all your wacky geektronics so that you can participate in all the fun.

Where is it?

All of this will be run out of the Ryerson DMZ, hosted by Viafoura Inc. We have space in the heart of Toronto, the coolest place in the country, in Dundas Square. Easily accessible via TTC, GO, on foot, on scooter, or even by jet pack (we do have a landing pad on top of the building)!

Get started now

App Ideas are always welcome. Add your app here and register on eventbrite here

Data Sets

We will be using the Guardian’s open API data. It is available for you to start playing with at http://explorer.content.guardianapis.com/

Talk to us

Looking forward to high-fiving you when you show up, but until then you can reach us at bdw@viafoura.com

Background

The idea for the first Open Data Day started out as an international brainstorm involving some of these characters:

Victor Anjos @victorfanjos Ali Ghafour @AliGhafour

Lots of cool people are helping make this happen including many, many, many not listed above. They rock. This is all very unofficial and very awesome.