Open data day 2016

Saturday 5 March 2016, marked International Open Data Day, a global grassroots initiative that connects people from around the world to talk about, hack and promote open data. In South Africa, Code for South Africa kicked off the day with Easter Egg Hunts in Khayelitsha at Whizz ICT Centre and Durban, headed up by our friends at Open Data Durban!

What is an Easter Egg Hunt? That is very simple; it is the search for hidden message(s). In the case of our open data day hunt, finding answers to questions inside a data set or multiple data sets. The Easter Egg Hunt itself is not a competition, but rather a way of interrogating data by looking for specific answers to carefully crafted questions.

Our participants were not the seasoned data wranglers that you would imagine, but rather a rad mix of the curious, inexperienced and interested, from across many different fields: ranging from nurses and lab technicians to tech students and front end developers. Our registration responses below give a glimpse into our participants’ starting points, which makes the outcome of the day, even more awesome.

Our 20 participants in Cape Town were given 4 hours, 4 data sets and 40 questions to get through as many as possible. Open Data Durban used 4 data sets and 28 questions specific to their area. Though Durban’s Easter Egg hunters answered more questions, Cape Town got a larger portion correct. Go team Khayelitsha!

Here are the results:

Keen to give our Easter Egg Hunt a stab? You can complete it online, in your own time (and in your pyjamas)! Here are the datasets and questions - GO! Let us know how you do!