Exploring the City of Portland 2023 open data day – Open Data Disco Tech
The City of Portland celebrated the open data day last month of March with two main events: public presentations on March 22 and an Open Data Disco Tech. The open data disco tech was a hands-on event inviting Portlanders and data analysts in the City to work with open data.
What is an open data disco tech?
The 2023 Open Data Disco Tech was a public event <link> dedicated to the Portland community interested in exploring public data. This event was open to all. We prioritized individuals coming from communities or groups that have been historically underserved.
This event is the first hands-on event that the Smart City PDX open data program has coordinated. A group of volunteers joined biweekly to coordinate this event. Volunteers included members of organizations like Code for PDX, PDX Women in Tech, and Portland State University’s Population Research Center.
This event used the Democracy lab’s platform to recruit team members for specific projects and enable collaboration.
Screen capture of the open data disco tech kickoff meeting.
What where the projects?
For this event, we tried to focus the use and exploration of the City of Portland’s open data in four different projects or working tables:
· Introduction to data 101 - data basics
· Exploring Portland neighborhoods
· Mobility data
· Public safety data
Hugh Harker from Code for PDX shared a presentation on how to get started with a data project. We used it to introduce basic concepts to people who joined with little experience working with data.
Every project included suggested City open datasets to start data exploration. This blog post lists all these datasets: https://www.smartcitypdx.com/news/2023/3/23/exploring-the-city-of-portland-open-datasets-for-disco-tech-2023
Results from these worktables were share on GitHub in this repository sponsored by Code for PDX:
https://github.com/orgs/Community-Data-DiscoTech-Portland-2023/repositories
Some teams were able to take notes and the public safety group added results to share in this document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IBVXHfB_IHkAIfTwSglkHDr3Jck-GO0IveiQa-VYY5g/edit?usp=sharing
Gallery and public participation
Picture of the start of the event at the Portland Building.
Work tables at the 2023 .pen Data Disco Tech
Data basics table at the 2023 open data disco tech.
Final projects presentations at the 2023 open data disco tech.
Final presentation on public safety showing a heat map with incidents recorded in Portland.
Final projects presentation at the 2023 open data disco tech. This graph shows what neighborhood have the most people moving in.
What is next?
This event was a success in many ways. People joined and were able to connect with other data practitioners and build connections with each other.
The Open Data program will be working on consolidating the City of Portland’s open data in a single place of discovery. Although, there is no timeline for this work, it aligns with the data governance ongoing effort inside the City.
The open data team is considering another hands-on event for the GIS day in November 2023. Stay tuned.
Send us your comments and requests to smartcitypdx@portlandoregon.gov and suggestions for future events in your community.