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Open data, Open Government Data and Data journalism news from the Media Mill project.
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HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO the ODI who are celebrating turning five. Jeni Tennison reflects on five years and Commercial Director, David Beardmore reinforces the nudge approach with a look at the value of open data for the private sector. 

The OKN have released the final version of their State of Open Government report for 2017. If you want more journalism with your data then try the Reuters Digital News report. (look for the one mention of data journalism and stay for the insight into the media industry!)

There's more data journalism talk in a podcast from the school of data. Eva Constantaras and Natalia Mazotte describe the lessons they've learned in getting journalists to use data that can drive social change

Last week I mentioned Swirrl's  PowerofData17 conference. Now Jamie Whyte has put up a great roundup of his takeaways from the event  including video

The power of data journalism is celebrated in the Data Journalism Awards who announced their winners this week. Some interesting projects. 

The Manchester chapter of HacksandHackers was relaunched this week with a session looking at data, Chatbots and audience engagement. It looked like an interesting line up including (award winning) Megan Lucero from the Bureau Local. Nice to see the Manchester chapter back in action and it sounded like some interesting conversation and views expressed both in the room and beyond in response.  The hashtag #HHMcr is worth a look.

The Grenfel Tower story continues to dominate coverage in the UK and in an interesting take hyperlocal london asks Could A Functioning Local Media Have Saved Grenfell Tower Residents? It tells an interesting story of the changing media landscape and the gaps left behind. Gaps often filled by hyperlocals

Ross Hawkes continues a great thread of posts and comment on the hyperlocal market by writing about Why being a hyperlocal journalist is giving me an identity crisis… In that weird way the web works, that post popped up in my feed alongside the news from the Pew Research centre in the US noting that regular local voting and community attachment are  strongly linked to news habits. It resonates with much of what Ross says -  Civic and social attachment, passion and commitment are driving factors in local news. 

Jamie Fawcett rightly recommends this "really interesting post on mental health, personal data and AI/machine learning that looks at ways to stop impulse buying online. 

The BBC have a nice piece by Pete Sherlock and Paul Bradshaw that festivals are dominated by male acts. The raw data is there to play with and it had a distinct R focus and some extra features including a nice network analysis. Oh, and if R for data journalism is your thing then thank Mara Averick‏ for reminding me of Christine Zhang's nice resource for R data cleaning tips.

I liked Mapbox's feature on the way Melbourne are using 3d maps to help visualize development in the city (below).
 
ProPublica have launched the Data Access project which uses web automation platform IfThisThenThat (IFTTT) to create applets to create more functional access to government data easier. Applets include getting an email when the National Science Foundation announces a new discovery. Simple stuff, but the kind of interactivity that comes low down the UX priorities of many open data portals. 

Neil Richards reviews Manuel Lima's  Book of Circles asking Why do we visulise in circles?  If the question s how not why we draw circles fear not Quartz analyzed 100,000 drawings of circles to show how culture shapes our instincts- apprently the way you draw a circle says a lot about you! Andy Kirk thinks that if choosing a Bivariate chloropleth map makes you a "a hipster's viz"

Tasty data viz of a different type and a tip of the hat to Peter Yeung for making a data viz out of Percy Pigs. (below) It reminded me ( a little)  of the Data Cuisine project  
Academic paper klaxon time (this time with a french twist) Its for an interesting paper drawing on two case studies from France called the  Rawification and the careful generation of open government data. It explores the challenges of creating open data and the visibility of the labour involved.

And finally, thanks to Paul Denya for pointing out that there's a subreddit called ProgrammerDadJokes. It is indeed amazing
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