Last month we held our first Open Data session. Digital Reporter Ben Williams was there to pick out some highlights and get to the bottom of what Open Data is and how it can be used. And it’s actually more exciting than you think…
You would be forgiven for thinking there was something dry about the word ‘data’. You might think of phrases such as ‘cell’, ‘calculate’ or ‘alphabetical order’. It reminds me of school and summer jobs filing in an office where the highlight was ‘dress down Friday’. But we’re wrong. Data isn’t just necessary; it’s exciting…no really! There is more to data than a 3D pie chart, and whether you’re aware of it or not, it’s already shaping our digital creative futures.
Some of those already in the know were the eager audience of representatives from key creative institutes (as well as this self confessed ‘digital gopher’) who packed into the sold out inaugural Discover Open Data session in the Annexe. So what is Open Data and why should we be excited about it?
The first speaker was Alan Holding from Manchester Digital Development Agency (MDDA). Alan is a self confessed ‘technical nerd’ and uses an Open Data creation of his own to illustrate the basic principle. Flickr is a popular online photo resource; they embrace Open Data and make all the information used in their photo archive available to their users. Using an API available from Flickr’s development pages, Alan made his own Flickr application. His customised Flickr Search Engine brings back images with a Creative Commons license and filters out any copyrighted results. Clever. Armed with some Open Data and a bit of technical knowledge he’s created something new and useful.
Given access to more data what else could developers do? Rachel Coldicutt is co-founder of Caper, an agency that inspires ‘disruptive thinking’, and are behind Culture Hack, an event designed to answer just that question. Culture Hack brings together ‘technical nerds’ like Alan and other creative thinkers at 2 day events where ‘hackers’ are encouraged to think strategically and make things quickly, using a few terabytes of donated data. “Thinking in an Open Data way can create new things” explains Rachel, like an application developed by Dan Williams that tells you the best day to visit a museum; it’s a simple and useful application made using creativity, developer talent and live data from Foursquare. As Rachel shows us more examples, I began to understand that Open Data is the basis for the recent wave of innovation we’ve seen in the mobile computer market.
Playing With Data
In the run up to this session Digital Content Producer Sarah Leech and Creative Industries Producer Isabelle Croissant got together with website developers OH Digital to play with the Cornerhouse database and see what new things they could create. The easiest to access, well-formatted data was film; using this with Google Maps they could visually plot the origins of each film shown at Cornerhouse over the past 12 years (only 4 from Kazakhstan in case you’re wondering) into an interactive map. By pulling data from the Cornerhouse Twitter feed and website comments section they also created word clouds (see images above) that visualise the discussion Cornerhouse users were having over the past few months (congratulations to Paddy Considine, you’re very popular here).
On a more practical level they brought together data for show times at Cornerhouse with GMPTE’s Open Data bus timetables to create a demo application that would allow visitors to see which bus to take to get to the cinema on time. In 2011 Cornerhouse opened up their data for Culture Hack North where another application was created which pulls together trailers, iMDB information and Rotten Tomatoes Ratings for Cornerhouse showings.
Culture Hack North gave The Whitworth Gallery and Manchester Museum reason to open up their data explained Julian Hartley and Steve Devine. Both took part in the event and are two of the organisations taking advantage of its exciting benefits. One of the hacks used their data to create a website that mapped the Whitworths Archive using Geo Tags (view it here), creating not just an interesting outcome, but something interactive and accessible which allows the general public to feel like a contributor. It’s also a fine example of opening up their data to be fed back on by users.
In a similar hack, The Whitworths data was mashed together with weather forecasts to create art based weather reports on The Guardian website (more info here). Hackers even managed to create a page where users could listen to pieces from Manchester Museum and Whitworth Gallery. This is fun and interesting, but as the audience said, there is still reluctance in some organisations to open their data. What problem does Open Data solve? It’s a good question, and one which Julian and Steve call ‘Looking For Bigfoot’.
The developer point of view
Giving us some helpful tips on hunting down Sasquatch was our final speaker Frankie Roberto; a man with considerable experience coding hacks from the days when data wasn’t so much open as it was hidden. He was behind the Open Plaques website, a site created in response to there being no data made available to the general public on where Blue Plaques in London were located and what they were there for. Frankie created the data himself and mapped it online. In turn visitors to the website contributed the details of plaques from across the country and it now forms a brilliant resource.
Since then there has been a change in the political mood – transparency is all the rage with the Government Releasing Data for everyone. This shift means that good data is readily available to utilise by anyone with a good idea, and many have. You can now download applications to your phone to find out whether the local primary school is any good, if your tube is running, or even how many people in your area have Antisocial Behaviour Orders thanks to the rather Orwellian Asborometer.
Frankie believes that to make a creative outcome that isn’t just interesting or a good resource but genuinely useful, then the data must be changing. Quality data means a good application; if it’s updated regularly it has more practical uses than something drawing from ephemeral sources. This may mean a more expensive project and exploring commercial opportunities to deliver the best service.
In summary, what we can draw from all our speakers is that data should be opened up and re-used rather than locked up in hard drives. Viewed in a new way, it could be given to a Culture Hack or managed with developers and users to achieve a functional application to open your organisation up to more people. In an open discussion that continued afterwards the speakers and audience enthused about the possibilities of this emerging idea and what they’ll come back to show us at the next session.
A few tips to take away…
- Only you know how interesting your data is
- Opening it up to others can release its potential
- Hacks are an opportunity to reach an exciting outcome
- Free Data can provide an interesting resource
- Partnerships can provide more up-to-date information
- EAT YOUR OWN DOGFOOD – Try your application regularly, if users find it doesn’t work, they won’t come back.