Cross Posted from India Water Portal

Written by Aarti Kelkar-Khambete

This workshop organised by Transparent Chennai at The Institute of Financial Management and Research, Chennai was the outcome of the experiences of the earlier open data camp events organised by Transperant Chennai in Bangalore and Hyderabad, where there was a wide discussion among attendees who were excited by the potential of
data and the open data movement, but who did not have the necessary skills or technical background to work effectively with it.
It was felt that there was a much larger community of activists, researchers, and on-profits who could benefit from learning to use the kinds of tools presented at the camps. Thus, this event was planned differently from a data camp and focused on training activists, researchers and students to work with data where participants would learn about open data, data visualisation, spatial data and practical issues that come up when working with data in various forms.

The workshop thus aimed at helping the participants to:

• Understand various formats of data, diverse possibilities of data visualisation and effective tools for doing so, with a special focus on web-based tools
• Understand how to think through projects involving collection, processing and visualisation of data
• Develop a basic understanding of software packages and methods for visualising quantitative data, creating geo-visualisation and undertaking participatory mapping
• Understand the connection between data technologies and rights to access and use data.

Read the rest of the summary here.