DataKind hosts DataDive to work with big nonprofit data [data event]

All weekend this weekend, “data jocks” will bang on laptops in Manhattan’s New Work City to help leaders at major organizations develop new insights about the reams of data their teams have collected over the years. The DataDive event is led by DataKind, a Brooklyn nonprofit of data scientists working to use information to come up with better ways to address seemingly intractable problems.

Get on the waitlist to the sold out event here.

The organization operates out of Cobble Hill’s Blue Ridge Foundation. We wrote about its digital prototyping grant program earlier this year.

The three organizations and problems that information enthusiasts will have an opportunity to tackle this weekend are as follows:

• Amnesty International. Thirty years of action alerts in order to look for patterns or hidden indicators of what could become major crises.
• United Nations. The UN has put out a survey to the world to inform development priorities. They have had over a million responses.
• Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics. $100 million later the city has a lot of data points about about what it did to improve business climate in the city.
• Crisis Text Line. The service connects teens in crisis to counselors via text message. Teams will look at metadata from these texts (not the content) and counselor surveys.

We would suggest that you RSVP, but the free event is sold out. According to Julia Marden, Community Manager, 175 people have signed up, though they have a wait list. The website has a thorough description of how the event will work, which points out that participants aren’t assigned to a problem area nor required to work on just one all weekend.

Don’t worry, though, you haven’t missed your chance to find out more about the organization, if number wrangling is your thing. It should come as no surprise that an organization like this has a lot of information on its website.

We liked this story, about its work with New York City Parks to assess the efficacy of tree pruning. It encouraged us that TreeKit‘s efforts to log all the city’s trees will be put to good use.

If you need face-to-face interaction to determine whether or not you really want to get involved, though, they have that covered too. Their MeetUp page just announced a monthly open house on the second Thursday every month.