Background

Before promoting the event we used a Google form to ask potential attendees questions, such as their data experience, which Library Carpentry modules they'd be interested in, and what they'd like to talk about at a data event.

How would you describe your experience of working with data?

We asked this so we could get an idea of how people viewed their experience with data. That could influence the training sessions we ran, but was mainly to get an idea of the mix of attendees. Any training would ensure every level of expertise was welcome.

Option

Description

Beginner

Maybe you don't work with data much, but would like to learn more

Intermediate

You use data, but would like to share experiences and see where you could improve

Expert

You do a lot with data and feel confident using it, but there's always more to learn

Which Library Carpentry modules would you most like to cover?

We wanted to make this a chance to learn data skills. Library Carpentry materials are lessons in different areas around data, automation and programming. We asked people to vote on which modules they would like to learn (they could choose as many as they liked).

Option

Number of votes

More Info

Introduction to Data

18

Tidy data and spreadsheets

25

Introduction to Programming with Python

20

Cleaning and enhancing data in OpenRefine

23

Introduction to Git

17

Unix shell command line interface

13

Structured Query Language (SQL)

18

What else would you like to cover?

We were interested in what people would want to talk about. Everyone will be free to pitch on the day, but these are a selection of suggestions we've already received.

Answers

Open data advocacy

How to talk to leaders and managers about open data

How to allay fears and influence senior managers

How to work with Local authority IT teams or departments

How to extract data from specific LMSs

Using/identifying tools for working with data, from data creation, data cleansing/normalization to manipulating data

Open data and libraries

What primary data libraries own and what they use it for.

Using R Studio (R)

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