This year’s School of Data conference was a huge success and it absolutely wouldn’t have been so without you. After three years, NYC School of Data has built a collaborative framework of relationships that has demystified data and technology, fostered participatory democracy, built cross-borough relationships, and mentored a new generation of civic leaders. THANK YOU FOR BEING A PART OF THE NETWORK!
For 2019, we kicked off International Open Data Day and NYC’s third Open Data Week — we deepened our partnership with New York City Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics (MODA) and the New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunication (DoITT) to solidify this conference as the city’s premiere open data & civic technology conference. With 90% of sessions featuring government representation, NYC’s School of Data provides a safe space for discussions around digital privacy, encryption, smart cities, open government, civic technology, and digital transformation. We achieved this though government and community partners who organized highly interactive workshops and presentations.
Thank you to 2019’s sponsors:
- Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
- Microsoft Cities
- Fund for the City of New York
- Mozilla Foundation
- Manhattan Borough President Gale A. Brewer
Thank you event partners:
- Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics (MODA)
- NYC Open Data Week Team
- NYC Open Data Team
- Sitter Studios
- International Open Data Day 2019!
- Data & Society Research Institution
Event Statistics:
| # Sessions | 37 |
| % Sessions with government representation | ~ 90% |
| # Speakers | 106 |
| # Volunteers | 63 |
| # Sponsors & Partners | 18 |
| # Ticket holders | 496 |
| % Government Ticket holders | 32% |
| # Checked-in Ticket Holders | 370 |
| % Government Checked-in Ticket Holders | 35% |
| # Children | 18 |
| # Pronouns – Her | 215 |
| # Pronouns – His | 198 |
| # Pronouns – They | 16 |
| % agreed to share info w/ sponsors | 48 |
Featured Live Stream Sessions:
- Morning kickoff — Morning VIPS — John Paul Farmer from Microsoft Cities, NYC’s Chief Technology Officer Alby Bocanegra, NYC’s Chief Analytics Officer Kelly Jin, NYC City Council Member Ben Kallos, Chair of the Technology Committee & NYC City Council Member Peter Koo, and Manhattan Borough President Gale A. Brewer.
- Building Anti-racist Solidarity Networks in Tech introduces audiences to leading figures in the technical civil rights space. Panelists tell their origin story, describe their work and speak to how they are promoting racial justice in the New York City civic tech ecosystem.
- Smart city, public spaces: privacy and open data in the public realm, a roundtable session will explore the ethics of aggregate, non-personally identifiable data collection on the movement and activity of people in public space—an increasingly relevant topic given the emergence of “smart cities” sensor technologies and new projects being piloted in NYC and elsewhere. Specifically, it will address how such data is recorded, shared, and acted upon—and, crucially, by whom. Participants will leave the session feeling empowered to engage in debates about what democratic, transparent, and accountable data collection looks like in the context of the public realm: streets, public parks, and other shared urban spaces.
- Fighting Tenant Harassment with Open Data with JustFix.NYC, Mayor’s Public Engagement Unit – Tenant Support Unit, ANHD, and CAMBA which hosted a primer on what tenant harassment is, some of the work that is currently being done to fight it, and how you can join the fight.
- Teaching Civics through Open Data and Computer Science with NYC Department of Education’s Computer Science for All & BetaNYC – If information technology is one of the greatest powers to manipulate public opinion, how do we build frameworks for the future to be better than today? Our three panelist will explore the importance of building educational frameworks that meld – civics with open data and computer science and where that is powerful and also detrimental. The old adage that with great power comes great responsibility, leads us to the most important question of all — how will we encourage the next generation to save us from ourselves?
Featured Recorded Sessions:
- NYC Open Data Town Hall with NYC’s Chief Analytics Officer and NYC Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics
- Neighborhood Challenge: Helping Commercial Corridors
- Using Data to Improve the Laws of New York City with New York City Council
- Can open contracting hold smart cities accountable? With NYC Mayor’s Office of Chief Technology Officer, Sunlight Foundation, & Reboot
- A Survey of Unique Identifiers in NYC Open Data: Joins, Sorrows, and Surprises
- Assessing Tenant Harassment Through Open Data
- Smart Cities and Privacy, can they co-exist?
- Exploring Automated Decision Systems (ADS) through metadata
- Scaling Comprehensive Public Benefits Screening Via Application Protocol Interfaces (APIs)
- A Survey of Unique Identifiers in NYC Open Data: Joins, Sorrows, and Surprises
- Teaching Civics Through Open Data and Computer Science
- Can open contracting hold smart cities accountable?
- Neighborhood Challenge: Empowering Community Based Organizations Through Data and Technology
- Opening Data and How to Do it
- The future of community owned networks in NYC
Selected Featured workshops included:
- Introduction to NYC Open Data via Data Journeys and BetaNYC’s BoardStat
- Data Visualization 101 Workshop
- Introduction to NYC’s Campaign Finance Data
- Getting started with ArcGIS and NYC’s Open Data
- Metadata for All: a Hands-on Workshop
- Data For Humanity Game, learn about open data though a board game
- NYC Planning Labs Application and Developer Tools Showcase
- Scraping Human Services Data & Seeing How Money Gets Spent
- Building Apps with DIY Databases
- Improving NYC’s Parking and Camera Violations / Parking Violations Data
- Biases in Open and Administrative Data