Open San Diego

We have to be able to collect the data in the first place. We have a Chief Information Officer for the first time. And I’ve made a proposal to the legislature that we make a capital investment, not just an operating cost investment, in the most modern capacity for technology transfer of every kind, hardware and software. But that’s going to take tens of millions of dollars in order to do that because we’re so far behind, because our technology capability is so primitive now in the state. But we’re assembling exactly what it will take in order to accomplish that. And I’m hopeful that the legislature will give us a start this year, and then when we come into the new legislative session and new biennium after the election, we’ll have a full across-the-board proposal for that. The questioner couldn’t be more right, we need to do that, but not just for the public as such, we need to do it internally across the state, so the public can have the best possible information.”-Hawaii Governor Abercrombie

Come Learn R with Us!

Our very own Brian Conner (who is great) has offered to provide a high speed introduction to R, a free software environment for statistical computing and data visualization. From installation to data manipulation to plots and maps in one hour.

We’ll be holding it at the San Diego Foundation (map) at 6:30pm on April 20th.

Here’s what you can expect:

15 min:

• What is R for? Outline a basic process of data analysis
• Installation & Packages
• Basic R Syntax (math, variables, loops, conditional logic, getting help, etc)
• Vectors (the most basic R data structure) and functions

15 min:

• Loading data
• More Data Structures (Data Frames, Factors)
• Manipulating & Exploring Loaded Data

25 min:

• Graphing & exploring data with ggplot2 (and some other packages)
• Writing a function (if time allows)
• Plotting data on a map (if time allows)

Hopefully we’ll have time for questions too!

Important! This class is designed to be suitable for programmers and non-programmers (excel-level users) alike. It’s easier for us to accomplish our goal of making data available for people to use if we can help more people use data! Please don’t be intimidated and come on out!

Recommended materials and links on GitHub.

The future belongs to the companies who figure out how to collect and use data successfully. Google, Amazon, Facebook, and LinkedIn have all tapped into their datastreams and made that the core of their success. They were the vanguard, but newer companies like bit.ly are following their path. Whether it’s mining your personal biology, building maps from the shared experience of millions of travellers, or studying the URLs that people pass to others, the next generation of successful businesses will be built around data.

EVENT: Introductions and Wiki Night

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Come out to Media Arts Center San Diego (@macsd) at 6:30pm on Tuesday, October 5th and meet fellow San Diegans interested in improving our fine city through the power of open data.

We will…

• Eat pizza and get to know each other
• Introduce Open San Diego, our mission and our current plans
• Work together to build out our wiki
• Get to know one another and gather ideas for future events

Then some of us will probably go out for drinks somewhere on 30th St.

RSVP so we know how much pizza to get. To RSVP, leave a comment on this post or send an email to events@opensandiego.org

• When: Tuesday, October 5th, 2010 at 6:30pm
• Where: Media Arts Center San Diego, 2921 El Cajon Blvd, San Diego, CA 92104 map
• What to bring: yourself, any ideas you have about where to find data about San Diego

Make a pledge to San Diego teens today!

Huge thanks to the awesome people at Media Arts Center San Diego (@macsd) for letting us use their large room and wifi for this meeting.

Please consider supporting their Teen Producers Project on Kickstarter. The project helps teens become media literate by making documentaries about their community. We believe it’s a very worthy cause.