I’m back from Open Data Camp 2; and I’m finding it difficult to make a coherent whole of it all. Perhaps it’s the nature of the lack of structure of an un-conference. Maybe the different stakeholders in the open data community throughout the various hierarchies have a common aim but different levers to pull: the […]
The Royal Statistical Society Conference–Exeter 2015
ScraperWiki have been off to the Royal Statistical Society Conference in Exeter to discuss our wares with the delegates. The conference was very friendly with senior RSS staff coming to see how we were doing through the week. We shared the exhibitor space in the fine atrium of The Forum at Exeter University with Wiley, […]
Summary – Big Data Value Association June Summit (Madrid)
In late June, 375 Europeans + 1 attended the Big Data Value Association (BVDA) Summit in Madrid. The BVDA is the private part of the Big Data Public Private Partnership. The Public part is the European Commission. The delivery mechanism is Horizon 2020 and €500m funding . The PPP commenced in 2015 and runs to […]
Spreadsheets are code: EuSpRIG conference.
I’m back from presenting a talk on DataBaker at the EuSpRIG conference. It’s amazing to see a completely different world of how people use Excel – I’ve been busy tearing the data out of spreadsheets for the Office of National Statistics and using macros to open PDF files in Excel directly using PDFTables. So whilst I’ve […]
NewsReader World Cup Hack Day
A long time ago*, in a galaxy far, far away** we ran the NewsReader World Cup Hack Day. *Actually it was on the 10th June . **It was in the Westminster Hub, London. NewsReader is a EU FP7 project aimed at developing natural language processing and Semantic Web technology to make sense of large streams […]
getting,stuff,done
In Berlin last week, a bunch of interoperability geeks gathered for the first csv,conf. Yes, that’s right, comma-separated value files. The conference was about getting stuff done. Data in, data out… With an ironic self-recognition that CSVs are weak in lots of ways, but still the best we’ve got. To give you a taste, here […]
World Cup Hack Day, London 10th June – a teaser!
With the England team just arrived in Miami for their final preparations for the World Cup, Mohammed Bin Hammam is back in the news for further accusations of corruption. This is interesting because we saw Hammam’s name on Friday as we were testing out the NewsReader technology in preparation for our Hack Day in London […]
NewsReader – Hack 100,000 World Cup Articles
June 10, The Hub Westminster (@NewsReader) Ian Hopkinson has been telling you about our role in the NewsReader project. We’re making a thing that crunches large volumes of news articles. We’re combining natural language processing and semantic web technology. It’s an FP7 project so we’re working with a bunch of partners across Europe. We’re 18 […]
Data Science (and ScraperWiki) comes to the Cabinet Office
The Cabinet Office is one of the most vital institutions in British government, acting as the backbone to all decision making and supporting the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister in their running of the the United Kingdom. On the 19th of November, I was given an opportunity to attend an event run by this important […]
Open data – the zeitgest
Open data [1] is becoming a brand – 61 countries are using the brand and many others are expressing interest. The week before last thousands of delegates from around the world descended on London for a host of open data events that ran throughout the week. There is something of the zeitgeist about open data […]