Diving Down a Rabbit Hole

Whilst rummaging around some websites to do with work, I came across a new one today.  It came about as I was following links within other sites and this particular one appealed to my nerdity. Diving down the rabbit hole of links within links, I found myself on The Open Data Institute website.

The site states that they help organisations, including governments, to make better decisions with the use of open and trustworthy data. It offers practical tips for open data, with guides, blogs, case studies and so on.  It brings together commercial and non-commercial organisations and governments to consider global responses.  It offers training events, online courses, talks and webinars.

I had a quick flick through the site and looked at what courses it had to offer and whether they would be appropriate for what I’m currently doing.  I did find one that might be useful but for £100 minimum fee, I’m not going to pay that myself, and I couldn’t consider it a good use of public funds by asking work to pay for it.

There was a brief, free introductory online course on open data essentials.  It has 16 different modules!  I got as far as module 9 before bailing as it was time for dinner.  I might go back to it another time.

It was quite interesting stuff and even talked about the different types of creative commons licences and what their usage is.  This could be interesting from a #bellringing perspective when we want to use images and data to help with public relations to the external world.  I’ll look into that one a bit more I think.

Data nerdity satisfied for today.