Open Data Day 2021 : our team declares its love for open data

You must be familiar with International Women’s Rights Day, World Peace Day, the day dedicated to water, and perhaps even the day that honors unicorns on April 9.

Did you know that there is an International Open Data Day, also called Open Data Day?

Every year since 2010, it takes place between February and March and inspires hundreds of events around the world on the subject of open data, like conferences, hackathons, workshops, etc.

The opendataday.org website also offers an interactive map to explore all the events organized on this occasion.

At Opendatasoft, the entire team cultivates the culture of sharing, from our customers’ stories, data news, to our favorite yummy recipes. So it seemed natural for us to take part in Open Data Day.

In this article, 10 members of our team share their stories about open data. This is an opportunity to discover data from various horizons: chocolate, Australian beaches, air quality, local products… or even sheep!

Frédéric gave us a read of his crystal ball into the future of open data. He envisions more concrete use of data in people’s daily lives: no longer doing “open data for the sake of open data” but creating services instead.

And to get us on track, Frédéric mentions his favorite initiatives: “Frais et local” and “Direct Fermiers 31”. The future is in consumer applications, to help consume locally, sustainably and efficiently!

If you are interested in the subject, read our article : open data in agriculture, on how to Use Open Data to Promote Agriculture.

When we ask Kiki what is preventing companies and organizations from embarking on open data, she answers without hesitation “the fear of transparency.”
This fear was discussed during our webinar on Data Acculturation in February 2021. The “zero-defect myth” often keeps employees and their organizations from sharing their data.

To learn more about this topic, please read this article to learn how to involve your colleagues in your open data project.

Audrey proclaims herself to be a real foodie. If she was an open data set, she would be a directory of all the baking recipes that exist in the world.

Unfortunately, this dataset does not exist yet, but we can count on Nutriwi which offers us many recipes.

You can also browse this dataset which lists the ingredients of 211 cookies to judge which ones help define the ideal cookie. And yes, open data also brings a lot of juicy information!

Speaking of cookies, we recommend this article on the subject of legal notices and consent to cookies.

In our profession or our personal life, we all have a reference, a model or an example that we often reference to illustrate what we are saying.

Claudia, our Account Manager, told us which dataset she quotes most regularly in her calls with customers and prospective customers.

It is an open dataset by the city of Ghent in Belgium. What’s so special about this one? It allows you to follow in real time, the position of a herd of sheep from the city that is walking around doing eco-grazing.

Many of us in the office – including Claudia – follow their movements on a regular basis.

If you want to know more about : open data in Ghent.

For all those who want to virtually “adopt” these sheep.

The question Sabrina had to answer is not the most obvious one. We asked her to summarize open data briefly, as if she had to explain the concept to her grandma.

She took up the challenge with flying colors: “Today’s world generates a lot of data: before it was on paper records, now it’s on smartphones, connected objects, in the Cloud. Open data is what makes it possible to share that data with the whole world.”

Open data has entered a new era, testified by the use cases presented at the 2020 Data on Board summit.

In this article, Chloé looks at the challenges of open data V2, between the editorialization of data and the culture of data “self-service.”

We entrusted Florent with a difficult task: to name the benchmark open data portal in his opinion. Hard to make a choice! Florent has proposed two portals that everyone can agree on.

The first is Our World in Data. This site offers visualisations on a wide variety of topics on a global level: deforestation, demographic change, human rights, etc. In all, you will be able to browse 3,125 data visualizations on 297 different subjects!

Florent also cited Opendatasoft’s Data Network. There are currently 21,802 data sets (yes, that’s precise!) that are fully open, accessible and reusable. Feel free to have a look and filter the catalog data by theme or by producers. And if you are looking for geographic references to enrich your catalog and your own data, discover the benchmark datasets consolidated by our team.

Thank you Florent, we’ve got our hands full for a little while.

Wondering how to launch an open data portal? Manon shares her advice: “go step by step, starting with a small number of data sets, and don’t hesitate to get help to make the most of these data sets once opened.”

To help you get started with the opening of a data portal, here are several resources at your disposal:

• This article to prepare to launch your data sharing portal
• Our guide to be able to launch your data portal today

Our entire team will be happy to discuss your open data projects with you. You can contact us.

Environmental and sustainable development issues are very relevant within Opendatasoft.

As a result, Sébastien’s answer to the question “is there a set of data that everyone absolutely must know” was widely acclaimed.

Indeed, Sébastien quoted the “World Air Quality” mapping. This enables us to see air pollution in the world in real time. Beware, it’s a bit addictive, since at a click of a button, you have the numbers from all over the globe, with levels at different times of the day to see changes and developments.

Australia is not to be outdone when it comes to open data. Holiday alert!

Given the somewhat gloomy situation, we thought it would be a good idea to talk about a dataset that boosts morale when it rains or when it’s cold … and Franck has THE perfect dataset !

When he’s feeling low, Franck goes to the Open Data portal of Randwick City Council in Australia and takes a look at the “Smart Beaches” page.

The city has set up sensors to measure real-time parameters such as water temperature, number of people on the beach, etc. You also have the opportunity to be on the beach in real time and see the waves, the sun, feel the spray and the wind on your skin. You better believe it!

To finish our little survey on open data, we asked Charley what datasets he would like to see shared in open data in the future. His response sent a wave of nostalgia through the offices. Charley would indeed like to see more datasets related to cultural and tourism events.

Did you know? Every year, 3,136 festivals are organized in France. Find them in this dataset from the Ministry of Culture and plan your upcoming cultural re-entry.

Charley also spoke of his wish to see more transparency by large companies on subjects such as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), which is increasingly important to the public. Companies such as Kering or Vallourec have already taken the plunge by opening up their data related to this theme.

Are you interested in data and CSR? Good news, we’re organizing a webinar on the subject on May 4th, to find out more, contact us!

You now know a little more about open data and our team. To conclude on an interesting note, we invite you to (re)discover ODS Academy et the inspirations of our community of customers.

That’s where we go to unleash our creativity. Our user community always has good ideas to make their data bright!