Spirit of St Louis

The ScraperWiki truck will be in St Louis, Missouri this Thursday 23rd February.  The NICAR event is a wonderful opportunity for us to meet the IRE delegates and to understand the on going issues that investigative reporters face when digging up data.  We already have some data sets nominated and these are listed in no particular order below.  We hope to have this data available for download through the IRE site from Friday.  All we ask is that you please cite the kind data digger who liberates the data and the ScraperWiki truck that helped to get it to you.

Datasets

The state official stonewalling release bfm.sd.gov/ledger/employee.asp
The prisoner database for the federal system www.bop.gov/iloc2/LocateInmate.jsp
U.S. Defense Department Budget Materials for fiscal 2011 comptroller.defense.gov/defbudget/fy2011/ (This is PDF)
Political spending of public employee unions kcerds.dol-esa.gov/query/getOrgQry.do
FDA import refusals http://www.fda.gov/ForIndustry/ImportProgram/ImportRefusals/default.htm
FDA food/drug products recalls www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/default.htm
What is this nuclear data http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/
Catholic Bishop and their movements www.usccb.org/about/bishops-and-dioc

We will kick off the evening at 18:00 with some nibbles and light refreshments and then we will commence a ‘Learn to Scrape’ session at 19:00 for about 1.5/2 hrs – this will be similar to the training event that we ran at Columbia University with Julian Todd and Thomas Levine.  After the session will get on with the real task of liberating the data.  There will be some ScraperWiki mugs and t-shirts awarded as prizes for best in class. Please bring your laptop along and we will provide the wifi.  We look forward to seeing you in the wonderful city of St Louis and lets help the data do some talking!

…and a big thank you to Mark Horvit and his team for inviting is to be part of the conference!