The School of Data will go on expedition at this year’s Mozilla Festival. Join us on a quest through the worlds of data wrangling with the sherpas from the School of Data, OpenSpending and OKFN-labs.
Mozilla Festival is an annual un-conference to celebrate all things web. It happens from November 9-11. The School of Data team has a set of experienced Sherpas from all around the OKFN and will guide small groups of explorers into the realms of data…

Currently we are preparing to set out to three distinct expeditions:

• An expedition to the hidden islands of off-shore tax evasion,
• Drilling deep into the caverns of some of the extractive industries data and
• Responding to a call for help from three African nations to solve the mysterious drop in life expectancy they experienced

What is a ‘Data Expedition’?

Data expeditions are a experimental concept we at the School of Data have decided to try. They are hands on workshops with guidance and direction – however the participants (adventurers) are not lectured, they learn data-wrangling skills by being confronted with real life data, problems and questions. Our sherpas will guide their pack to useful data sources, tools and resources to help climb the data mountian, but exact routes taken and questions answered will be determined by the participants. In a Data Expedition, the amount you learn depends only on your ambition, we’re aiming to teach you how to learn, not to spoonfeed you answers. Be aware that if you keep wandering off into the woods there might be dragons (just to bring you back on the road).

Who can participate?

We’re looking for Adventurers and Explorers with skillsets ranging from storytelling via heavy code-forging to graphic design. All skill levels are needed and the more diverse the party the better chance to survive and complete the expeditions. Teaming up with people having different skillsets and levels will be beneficial for participants.

Will anyone die in the process?

Hopefully not. Data is generally safer than real blizzards, but can be equally overwhelming.

Where & When will the data expeditions happen?

Explorers and adventurers are welcome to join us on Saturday (10.11.2012) morning 10:00am at Mozfest.

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