Are you ready for Open Data Challenge 2018?

The 2018 Open Data Challenge Hackathon isn’t for several months (it usually aligns with the June 4 National Day of Civic Hacking), but the annual event really gets started Feb. 10 at 10:00 a.m., with the year’s first Open Data Challenge Workshop.

While the workshops aren’t a requirement for participating in the hackathon (which last year awarded $17,500 in grant money from the Delaware Department of State), they’re designed to prepare community “data ninjas” to compete and learn valuable skills along the way.

Workshop No. 1, “Plotting with Plotly & Pandas,” will be presented by data journalist Chris A. Williams:

Python is increasingly being used for data science, but it’s still easiest to share results on the web. Luckily the Plotly team has written libraries for both Python and Javascript, and you can migrate from one to another by simply sharing the JSON used to build the chart. In this workshop we’ll be using the Python Pandas library in a Jupyter Notebook to do some basic data analysis. Then we’ll create some data visualizations with Plotly, and then transfer our final visualization to Javascript.

Looking to get started with #Python? Want to build your first #dataviz? RSVP for our 1st #ODC18 workshop! https://t.co/w4U2IJLBIv #netDE

— Open Data Delaware (@opendatade) February 1, 2018

The workshop will be held at the Brandywine Hundred Library at 1300 Foulk Rd. Participants will need their laptop and free accounts with Microsoft Live and GitHub.