Having survived (BARELY snowzilla, it was time once again to venture out of my Petworth Pad and into the data-wilds of DC. Fortunately for me, DataKind’s meetup did not disappoint. The crowd was almost raucous and the projects were good (for the community, that is!). The format was cool, if a little scattered – four socially-focused projects pitched us their data needs, and based on where we thought we could help we split up into breakout sessions.

The four groups in attendance were

1. The DC Central Kitchen
2. The Capital Area Food Bank
3. Stewards of Affordable Housing (aka SAHF)
4. InterAction NGO Aid Map

I ended up heading over to InterAction’s way, fueled largely by my desire to remain basically where I was as soon as they announced where the groups were meeting up. Plus, their tool looked fun, and they had a lot of data.

One drawback of the format was that you only had about 90 minutes to work your magic (or, in my case, 60 minutes + 30 minutes travel time to make it home in time for the Trumpless debate). I ended up making a simple little ipython notebook that, unfortunately, is on my work computer and not with me. I’ll get that sometime soon and update this for y’all.

I’m definitely going to hit up the DataKind nights in the future – they’re the closest thing I’ve found to my much-beloved ChiHackNights here in the District.