The Library has been quiet lately, mostly because the Director doesn’t have time to properly manage projects, and because he’s not very good at it. So, we’d like to find a volunteer to manage projects. This is a volunteer role that would involve:

• Talking to nonprofits and journalists about data needs
• Recruiting other volunteers for data projects
• Setting up meetings and finding rooms
• Participating in data projects

We’ve got two projects that need some attention: the Health Food Access Data Library and a crime prediction contest. If you are interested in data and have good organizational skills, please apply by sending email to Eric Busboom, eric@sandiegodata.org.

Here is the schedule for the data contest hangouts this week. The next one is Monday at noon, and will present tips on accessing data from the Ambry databases. We’ll be broadcasting these events via Hangouts on Air. Visit our Google+ Page to attend the event.

_The Student Data Contest is in less than two weeks, so it’s time to get your tools ready. If you are a student and want a shot at $2,100 in prizes, signup for the contest. _ One of the best tools available for quickly visualizing data is Tableau, and best of all, if you don’t need to connect to a database, Tableau Public is free. Tableau allows you to quickly produce beautiful charts and tables, and makes it easy to embed those visualizations on the web. Tableau runs on both Mac and Windows, but while it has a very well designed user interface, it does have its biases; you’ll want to spend some time learning how it expects you to build visualizations before the contest. So, download Tableau Public and spend a bit of time learning how to produce basic visualizations. It will really pay off during the contest, and you’ll have a valuable addition to your tool box for future use.

Along with SDSU and Teradata, the San Diego Regional Data Library is running a data analysis contest for San Diego area High School and College students. The contest starts February 28. Top prize is $1200. For complete details and to register, see the contest announcement page.

For the Dig Into Data meetup this Wednesday, we’ll be talking about tools to use for analyzing data. If you’d like to follow along in the meeting, you can install these tools before you arrive. The two applications are:

• Tableau public, for analyzing tabular data. It is a great tool for basic data mining.
• QGIS, for geographic data.

Tableau Public is the free, limited version of Tableau’s professional data mining tools. It is really easy to install, just visit their download page to get started. Tableau Public runs only on Windows, but I run it on my Mac with Parallels. It does a bit of a learning curve, though. QGIS is and open source GIS application. It is an excellent tool, but a bit rougher. For Windows users, there is a a Standalone Installer that works great. For Mac users, you’ll have to do more work – installing QGIS required installing two frameworks first. To install it, visit this page, then install both of the packages linked in the section titled “Requirements.” Then download and install the QGIS application in the last section. If you are unfamiliar with these tools, you’ll get a detailed guide in the presentation on Wednesday, and I’ll be producing a few videos to demonstrate their use this week. eric.

This is, unfortunately, how data sharing actually works.

As part of working with the City of San Diego to develop an Open Data Policy, I and others have proposed that the city create a position for a Chief Innovation Officer, a person dedicated to identifying and developing new ways for the City to accomplish it’s job. To get a better idea of what a Chief Innovation Officer would do, see the job description for the position from the city of Austin. It’s by far the most polished job description I’ve ever seen, and demonstrates how significant the role will be to Austin’s future. It is important to note that this is not a technical position; the most specific skill requirement is ‘people skills.’ Innovation involves technical problem solving, but the most important skill is linking people who have problems with the people who can solve them, and ensuring the two are speaking the same language. If you are interested in the position, you’re too late. Austin hired Kerry O’Connor, previously a program director for the State Department.