Later this week I will drive up to Aarhus in Denmark, to participate in the Aarhus Data Drinks. As I started the Copenhagen Data Drinks last October, of which the Aarhus meet-up is a spin-off they kindly invited me over to visit as the original pollinating bee.
Data Drinks (a name I adopted from Alper Cugun’s Dutch Data Drinks a few years ago) is an informal meet-up to bring together people interested in Open Data. In Copenhagen the group is meanwhile over 100 people strong.
Aarhus is part of various Smart City projects, of which open data is an ingredient. Just last week the city launched an open data portal for Aarhus, which I am eager to hear more about. Other topics on the menu are things like how to position open data as a policy instrument, how to recognize impact of open data when you see it, and how to feed the local (and internal) eco-system. These are some of the challenges I mentioned for open data in my key-note speech in Warsaw earlier this year. Preceding the data drinks I will be meeting up with various people and groups in the city.
That’d be cool. I want to become a data journalist, so I’m trying to learn the things I need to know. I wonder if your Copenhagen group would attract locals like me if you offered classes.