Data Sprint is a Dataharvest experiment. It’s your chance to join other datajournalists and work on a large dataset together, collaborating to find angles and stories, cleaning and enhancing the dataset as you go, working in small groups, with guidance and support from Dataharvest trainers who will help group members achieve what they agree to do with the data.
The space is limited, so if you would like to participate, please:1)
write an email to
adriana@journalismarena.eu and you will get a link to the kick-off session on Nov 24 via email
2) make sure to
also attend a
session on the data at 10:00 on the same day, Nov 24.
We will be using
data acquired by OCCRP on health service procurement in Europe during the Covid pandemic. OCCRP used it to
write this story (maybe you shouldn’t click this link if you want to keep an open mind about potential stories there may be in the data!)
There are many potential stories in this data. It’s also quite dirty. So each group has a wide range of options – they may choose to work across borders, or work together to clean and tidy the data, but use it for stories along national or local lines. The choice is yours.
If you register for one of the limited spaces on this mini-project, you commit to downloading and looking at the data before the first session, and so joining that session with some ideas of what you would like to do with the data.
Session 1 – what have we got? Ideas from first looks at a bewildering quantity of data.By the end of the session, each group will have been formed, and will decide together what action its members need to take, be it cleaning, analysis, further research. If group members need new tools or skills they simply say so in the Slack channel (see below)
Participants and some Dataharvest trainers/consultants will be enrolled in a Slack channel. During the time between sessions 1 and 2 participants ask questions, share ideas, ask for help within the Slack channel. Where help is not easily given in slack messages, it may be decided to arrange a one-to-one or a group session on a given topic. This, too, will be communicated within the slack channel
Session 2 - Discuss progress on what the group agreed to do. Adjust goals and tasks accordingly, set new targets and tasks for session 3
Session 3 – final check in. At this point each group member should be well on the way to getting a story, or having an agreed route-map to the story they want to pursue. This session will be a chance to present findings, progress, and even stories, to the other participants.
Post-session 3 For one month after Dataharvest the Slack channel will stay open for occasional consultation, for example, if groups decide to continue working and want to publish a story.
