This blog post is part of our on-going Network series featuring updates from chapters across the Open Knowledge Network and was written by the Open Knowledge Austria team. 

On February 2nd we held the first Data Pioneers Create Camp in Vienna. The goal of the Data Pioneers Program, which is run together with Wikimedia Austria as part of the OpenDataPortal, is to support businesses initiating Open Innovation processes.

It was a successful first run of the Create Camp which involved 50 participants with diverse backgrounds from design, communication, programming or entrepreneurship, and resulted in seven projects demonstrating the use of Open Data, and many lessons learned and insights gained. 

Below are the summaries of the seven projects with their corresponding team members: 

• OpenDataAT Assistant

Austria now has an Open Data Assistant. The chat bot access all Austrian Open Data Portals to search for data by keywords. Currently, it is reachable via Facebook and is developed further by a team made up of Svitlana Vakulenko, Sebastian Neumaier, Timea Turdean, Tomas Knap and Brigitte Lutz. Read more about the OpenDataAT Assistant here [in German]. 

• Sentinel Wetland Monitoring

Until now it wasn’t possible to continually monitor the wetlands around Vienna – which mostly are under protection – as well to observe the fact that the Lobau (a floodplain) is partly drying out. Andreas Trawöger is using ZAMG Sentinel satellite data, to change this situation. Read more about the Sentinel Wetland Monitoring here [in German].

• Bodyparts (Johanniter data)

Data from the Johanniter (a first responder organisation) was used by the team made up of Bernd Haberl, Manu Schmidt, Max Limbeck and Susanne Formanek and visualised around factors like age, sex, and others. This helps, for example, to show which body parts are impacted the most during a fall.

• Alternative mobility options

This idea was formed around the Ubigo datasets (on-demand mobility, carsharing, ridesharing, p2p-carsharing timetables, dynamic ride sharing) aims to strengthen alternative mobility options in rural areas. The team members for this project are Tobias Haider and Maria Angerer was supported by others during the day in further formulating the concept.

• Windmills as display

The wind turbine data of the Verbund (an energy provider) gave the impulse for this artistic idea. Stefanie Wuschitz developed the art project of using wind power stations as a display for any kind of information. She continues to work on the project together with Clara Landler.

• netCDF challenge

Julia Diessl, Dominika Heller and Franz Rinnerthaler dedicated themselves to a fundamental problem: climate change. They worked on ZAMG data (Global Radiation Climate Index) which are not available in a common format – which poses challenges for re-use.

• Bottl for Klamottl (ZAMG data)

This project around ZAMG weather data provided some exhilaration at the evening presentations. The team of Patrick Wolowitz, Kerstin Zimmermann, Alexander Ostleitner and Jasmin Berghammer developed a chat bot-prototype, with which one could (based on Amazon’s Alexa Skills) have enjoyable conversations around fashion consultancy.

In February we held a meetup at the Vienna Impact Hub, where the seven project teams pitched their ideas and discussed further developments with the community.

In March and April, we continued the format of monthly Data Drinks, which have an increasing number of newcomers and regulars (around 20-30). For us, this shows that a regular, open and low-barrier format is an important pillar of building up a community and keeping it going.

Check out the Data Pioneers pilot site: www.datapioneers.at

Christopher Kittel

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