#VersusVirus Hackathon
Dear friends of open data,
From 3 April to 5 April, over a period of 48 hours, Swiss civil society came together to use their collective intelligence, inspiration and knowledge to come up with concrete solutions to the problems caused by the COVID19 pandemic crisis. The result was «the biggest sharing and caring experience that Switzerland has ever seen»: the #VersusVirus Online Hackathon.
4’500 participants in 263 teams with more than 500 mentors worked on 190 submitted challenges and came up with 279 projects (with the support of over 60 datasets and resources), with 24 members of parliament and Federal Council Alain Berset also joining in the effort.
We at Opendata.ch are proud to have been involved in this exhilarating and inspiring event. Of the 263 teams that submitted their ideas, each and every one made a valuable contribution to this monumental effort and deserves respect and recognition. You can find a comprehensive list of all submitted projects here. Furthermore, you can find an open list of relevant datasets and other resources here.
We would also like to take the opportunity to mention a few projects that we found particularly inspiring:
- pandemia-parliament: It is imperative that Parliaments are able to debate and make decisions during times like these. Yet the Covid-19 pandemic has forced members of parliament to stay home and thus brought the democratic process to a near standstill. Pandemia-parliament is an online space where parliamentary business can be conducted in a safe, transparent fashion, thereby bringing politicians back to work.
- Swissrefucare: Refugees in Switzerland and elsewhere are at a higher risk of getting infected with COVID-19 because they live in small shared spaces and do not always have access to necessary hygienic products. The platform connects refugees with Swiss authorities and with Swiss citizens and thereby aims to help in improving their situation.
- Covidfact: Citizens are overloaded with information related to COVID-19 and they don’t know which data source to rely on and where to find answers. “Covidfact” is a bot using the knowledge of experts to provides 24/7 and up-to-date information on the crisis based on trustworthy facts, guidelines and tips to help people get through this crisis with confidence.
- Fast2Gov: Software helping Swiss cantons to collect, aggregate and share reports and follow up on every patient in a fast, complete and accurate manner while protecting privacy of patients & healthcare professionals
You can find more dataful results in these blogposts by Oleg.
The corona crisis has shown why openness is important. Our association’s mandate and independent approach – all for one and one for all – remains true. We are supporting open data activities across all hackathons, platforms and confessions. We have a prerogative to be active community partners to e-government. And the #VersusVirus Hackathon has proven that together we can jump on chances to boost discovery of new and alternative open datasets and the open source apps that use them. But there is much more work to do!
Get in touch with us to give us your feedback or contributions. Stay home and stay healthy!Ps. In Case you are not an Opendata.ch member yet, you can change that here.
What to Do in a Lockdown
Dear Friends of open data
With the recent lockdown, the Coronavirus impacts all of our lives. Some of you we are sure, are feeling the negative repercussions very strongly and our hearts go out to you.
But as with everything else, there is also a small silver lining. Whether the daily commute falls away because we are working from home or our workplace is closed and we cannot work at all, many of us find that we unexpectedly have a little more time on our hands than usual. With everything closed however, the activities at our disposal are quite limited.
So maybe this is the chance to use some of that extra time to do some of those things that we have put off for a long time, or to learn some new interesting things, or maybe even to apply your knowhow to help limit the fallout caused by the Coronavirus.
We have put together a short list of things to do with your extra time. If you have suggestions for additions, let us know via info@opendata.ch.
Get Engaged
- Together with several other organisations we are organising the #VersusVirus Hackathon from April 3-5. It’s an online hackathon lasting 48h where we aim to develop functioning digital or analog prototypes in interdisciplinary teams for concrete solutions to oppose Covid-19. For more information, to suggest a challenge and sign up: visit our #versusvirus website.
- Now more than ever: Apply with your idea for a smart participation tool to strengthen Swiss democracy and develop your prototype with up to 100’000 CHF! Submit your project until 14 May. We can’t wait to learn about your great ideas!
- The Prototype Fund also started a collaborative list of Civic Tech projects in Switzerland and abroad. These initiatives can serve as inspiration and even basis for your own projects. Check it out and add further projects. Civic Tech is a very dynamic field so we need your support in extending this list. Thank you!
Start Learning…
- The Statistics Office of Zurich has started a Hackathon to monitor the COVID19 effects in order to making data and analysis on the impact of the Covid-19 epidemic visible. You can screen through their first results and watch the live stream of their results presentation.
- For those of you still learning about the potentials and possibilities, but also the risks surrounding data, take a look around our Data Café website. There you will find some useful information on how to better understand, protect and use data. Two examples are:
- [DE] In order to form your own well-rounded opinion on the matter of data, try to hear as many perspectives as possible. The new magazine on «the value of data» by Stiftung Mercator explores the topic through conversations with various experts taking on different perspectives.
…with your Kids
- For those of you who are at home with their kids: since it may be a while until kids can go back to school, we found a blogpost with tons of free educational resources for kids (in English).
Use Digitally Sustainable Tools
- On ethical.net you can discover ethical tools for collaboration, messaging and more.
Take care and stay healthy,
your Opendata.ch team
Der Prototype Fund Schweiz
Le moment est enfin venu, nous lançons le Prototype Fund en Suisse!
It is finally time, we launch the Prototype Fund in Switzerland!
Es ist endlich soweit, wir lancieren den Prototype Fund in der Schweiz!
Hast du eine Idee für eine digitale Lösung, um die demokratische Partizipation in der Schweiz zu stärken? Der Prototype Fund Schweiz ermöglicht es dir und deinem Team eure Ideen zu realisieren. Bewirb dich ab dem 17. März um bis zu CHF 100’000. Weitere wichtige Infos findest du hier und mit unserem Newsletter bleibst du auf dem Laufenden. Wir hoffen, dich an einem unserer Events zu treffen und freuen uns auf deinen Projektvorschlag.
Weitere Infos:
- Träger: Der Prototype Fund ist eine gemeinsame Initiative des Vereins Opendata.ch und der Mercator Stiftung Schweiz.
- Bewerbung: Jede*r mit einer innovativen Idee für eine digitale Lösung mit einem hohen Potenzial für positive Auswirkungen auf die demokratische Beteiligung kann sich bewerben. Allerdings müssen die Bewerber*innen 18 Jahre alt sein und eine gültige Arbeitsbewilligung in der Schweiz besitzen.
- Auswahl: Bewertet und beurteilt werden die eingereichten Projekte von einer Expertenjury aufgrund unserer Auswahlkriterien. Weitere wichtige Informationen findest du auf unserer FAQ-Seite.
- Ablauf: Die Bewerbungsphase läuft vom 17. März bis zum 14. Mai 2020. Die erste Prototyping-Phase beginnt am 1. September 2020 und endet mit dem Demo-Day am 2. März 2021 (Programmablauf)
Unser Ziel ist es, möglichst viele und überzeugende Projekteingaben zu erhalten. Es wäre daher super, wenn ihr die guten Neuigkeiten teilen könntet, zum Beispiel auf Twitter @prototypefund.ch.
Annual Plan 2020
Starting this year, we have decided to publish an annual plan in order show what we’re working on, what we aim to achieve and to help you – our community – to get involved. Since this is our very first public version, we’re more than happy to hear your feedback and learn how we might improve accessibility and comprehension.
Open Annual Plan 2020
Our annual plan 2020 is set up as an Open Google Sheet. Within this document you can find:
- one tab called [09.01.20] to which we wont apply any more changes during the year and
- one tab [living] that we will continuously update and complement.
Alternatively, you can find the annual overview above as jpeg (status: 09.01.2020), or as pdf. You can also reach out to us via info@opendata.ch if you want the document in another format.
Our Highlights & Priorities 2020
We are very much looking forward to the many and diverse projects coming up in 2020. Special highlights for us are:
- The launch of the Prototype Fund Switzerland: We’ve been aspiring to implement a local version of the Prototype Fund Germany since their start in 2016. This year we can finally start supporting local open-source projects here in Switzerland with the aim of strengthening democratic participation. Our call for projects will start on March 17.
- A new awareness campaign about the value of data: We want to strengthen awareness and understanding for data in Switzerland in order to get more people involved in shaping our (digital) future. You will soon hear more about this initiative.
- Taking our Open Hackdays to the next level: As Hackdays become more and more popular, it is important to us to define our Hackdays’ values, open up our guidelines and improve our infrastructure. Thereby we hope to improve your Hackdays experience and increase our impact. If you want to get involved in this endeavour, please reach out to us.
‘Open Data Hackdays’ goes Tourism
“Different sectors and disciplines need to come together in order to bridge the silos. It’s about creating something new together.”
– Martin Barth, CEO of the World Tourism Forum Lucerne
The Open Data “Tourism edition” Hackdays were the first of their kind for Opendata.ch: The students from HSLU’s ‘Applied Information and Data Science’ class took over the driving seat. They shaped this new Open Data Hackdays format according to their vision, with Opendata.ch at their side for support and guidance.
Tanja Schär, lead of the student organisation committee for the Hackdays, shares her perspective on the beginning of this new collaboration: “The exchange with the Opendata.ch team, who bring a lot of experience to the table, was highly valuable for us. For me it was a a pleasure to experience what can be achieved in practice within such a short time frame. When the Hackdays finally started – after several months of organisation – I was especially happy about the good vibe on location!”
Solving real challenges of tourism in Switzerland
The first Open Data Hackdays were all about tourism data and prioritised the concrete challenges of Swiss tourist offices. Rafael Enzler, founder of the tourism agency gutundgut observed: “The challenges presented at the kickoff of the Hackdays actually represented the key problems that the Swiss tourist offices experience in regards to data.”
One noticed that small tourism regions struggle to gather, analyse and use data, given the limited capacities they have. This causes a critical lack of insights about potential clients, visitors’ needs and optimisation potentials. Luckily, the Open Data Hackdays were here to help. The 12 projects that came to life during the two days are:
- Thur-Guide: A platform for automised individual travel guides in Thurgau.
- Tourist Forecasting: A prediction tool for tourist requests (visitors, calls and mails) in Arosa and Lenzerheide.
- Dashboard for GastroSuisse: Bringing the annual tourism data analysis from paper to the digital world in an interactive way.
- WLAN City Lucerne: An anylsis of the potential of open WLAN data in the City of Lucerne.
- WC-Guide goes Open Data: Integration of 5000 datasets on toilet locations by integrating them into OpenStreetMap and WikiData.
- Tourist Tax Control: A new approach to check the reported overnight stays in Flumserberg.
- Guest Card Lucerne: A concept for the expansion of data generation and data use of the Guest Card Lucerne.
- Open sourcing water fountains: Integration of the data on over 100 water fountains in Nidwalden into Wikimedia, WikiData and OpenStreetMap.
- Pedestrian volumes: Forecasting of pedestrians in any given location.
- Email Management System: A tool that recognises email queries and stores them in the appropriate folder.
- Event Dashboard: An individualised platform to discover touristic highlights in Thurgau.
- Tech Management Visit Lover: A tag-manager for the online platform of the start-up VisitLovers.
Hackers, students and Tourism experts coming together
Around 70 participants gathered to work on the proposed tourism challenges. Rafael Enzler was impressed by the interdisciplinary collaboration in the room: “The collaboration between the students, the Tourism practitioners and the Open Data community is unique and working out perfectly. In general, the passion one can feel in this room is amazing!”
What other’s wrote about the Hackdays
Here’s another report of the Hackdays by Oleg, board member of Opendata.ch and Hackdays enthusiast: https://forum.opendata.ch/t/29-30-11-open-data-hackdays-tourism/569/7
And here’s a publication on the Hackdays in Zentralplus: https://www.zentralplus.ch/36-stunden-am-computer-hacker-tuefteln-fuer-den-tourismus-1667265/
