DataDive Kathmandu: Getting back to the community
After hiatus of almost two years, it was refreshing to get back to the open data community. Engaging in different communities, and meeting enthusiastic people, has really shaped how I perceive technology, development and innovation. The community has always been supportive and welcoming of people from every academic background.
On 13th March, 12 people gathered at Women in STEAM’s meeting hall, on the invitation of Open Knowledge Nepal for DataDive Kathmandu. The goal of the gathering was to work alongside teams of volunteers, data scientists, developers, and designers to explore the key climate and environment data sources of Nepal.
The open-source contribution is not about how much impact, how much expertise you bring in, but rather a community where everyone collaborates and in the process contributes to the greater goal of enriching the open data field in Nepal. DataDive Kathmandu reminded me of the very core values.
Nikesh Balami, CEO/co-founder of Open Knowledge Nepal welcomed all the individuals and oriented on the tentative goal of the gathering. He mainly highlighted the core values of coming together as a community, and in the process contribute to the common goal. The gathering was more of an informal collaborative forum, and it was rightly highlighted by Arogya Koirala from Kathmandu Living Labs. He opined the need for developing a peer learning and collaborative open community rather than a top-down approach of coaching the participants. It was interesting to note, how we all passively agreed to the notion of more informal, open peer-based learning in community settings.
After the introduction session, the event free flowed. Everyone worked on what best fits the goal of the event, as per their expertise and through collaboration. Some of the works included:
- Solving bugs in the ‘Open Data Nepal’ portal
- Developing a data scraper for scraping the data such that it would be convenient to convert it in open format.
- Brainstorming for the designing logo of Air Quality Nepal bot (currently available on Twitter).
- Refining data from Kalimati Fruits and Vegetable Market Development Board.
- Researching on government portals and other relevant organizations, discovering useful data, making it open and uploading it in the Open Data Nepal’s portal. If you are also interested then, you can simply register and start uploading the relevant datasets. These open datasets help the large pool of academicians, innovators, policymakers, students and engineers.
We also got to learn new things from each other. As for me, I got to know about overpass-turbo which lets us query Open Street Map(OSM) data. I found out all the bridges present in Nepal within a minute!
I, personally, would like to thank Open Knowledge Nepal for the invitation and Women in STEAM for hosting the meet. It was an enriching and refreshing Saturday.
As I reflect back now, I can remember how this community has been a good influence in the lives of so many people. Some still contribute, despite being busy in their own professions. And at the same time, I felt young volunteers should look to join the community. If you are a student or even a working professionals, it’s never too early and never too late to start contributing and get involved in the community. Feel free to research and reach out.
