Manchester Council has teamed up with FutureEverything and OpenDataManchester to give birth to the Manchester Hackathon, hosted at MadLab on the 17th November. Local programmers and software developers worked on new ways to interpret and visualise data provided by the Manchester Council which ranged from data on taxi rank locations to Council tax bands. A wide range of local authorities including NHS Manchester and Greater Manchester Fire & Rescue Service donated their data to be used by the participants, all of which is available online here. This is great as by encouraging councils to share their data, they spend less on analysing the data themselves, whilst also engaging members of the public to directly benefit their local communities.
Posts Tagged ‘MDDA’
Hackathon Extravaganza at MadLab
Monday, November 19th, 2012Lovely Data Transport Hack Day
Sunday, February 13th, 2011
Lovely Transport Hacking
Title: Lovely Data Transport Hack Day
Location: MadLab
Description: Lovely Data is a series of Open Data hack days sponsored by Manchester Digital Development Agency (MDDA) and run in partnership with Open Data Manchester, DataGM, FutureEverything and the MadLab. The theme of the very first Lovely Data, taking place on Saturday 9 April 2011, is Transport.
Start Time: 10:30
Date: 2011-04-09
End Time: 17:00
Booking: Free, but please book a place.
Do you have ideas on how to improve public transport and travel information in Manchester?
Are you a developer or designer who wants to build great applications using public transport data?
Do you work in local government and want to know more about Open Data at a practical level?
Do you just want to get your hands on lots of Lovely Data?
Lovely Data is a series of Open Data hack days sponsored by Manchester Digital Development Agency (MDDA) – part of Manchester City Council – and run in partnership with Open Data Manchester, DataGM, FutureEverything and the Manchester Digital Laboratory (MadLab).
Read more about Lovely Data on the lovely blog.
The theme of the very first Lovely Data, taking place on Saturday 9 April 2011, is Transport.
We’d like you to share your ideas, play with public transport data sets, build cool applications that show off your skills, and give feedback on how public data can be improved.
You’ll learn more about the Data GM – the open data catalogue for Greater Manchester – and give feedback on how it can be improved.
You don’t need to be a super geek to get something out of the day (though super geeks are always welcome!). If you’ve got a great idea you can team up with someone who’s got some coding skills.
What you’ll need to bring
Ideas on improving public transport data! They’re always good.
A computer you can create, design and / or code stuff on.
Not a programmer? Bring a computer or mobile anyway and you can help with research on the day or testing the websites and things that people make from your ideas.
Some projectors will be available, but please bring your own VGA adapter if you want connect.
Any questions?
Leave a comment on the Lovely Data blog and Alan Holding at MDDA (that’s me!) will do his best to help.
Teas, coffees and lunch will be provided.
Please note that the MadLab will also be hosting a writer’s group meeting in the afternoon, so please be prepared to move around a bit to accommodate them.
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This event is sponsored by the BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT.
Marketing Your Own Business
Wednesday, December 8th, 2010
Digital Matters: MDDA’S Business Development Programme
Title: Marketing Your Own Business
Location: MadLab (Upstairs)
Description: DIGITAL MATTERS: MDDA’S BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME. A practical session aimed at introducing the delegates to focused themes essential to good project management as well as business planning.
Start Time: 16:00
Date: 2011-01-19
End Time: 19:00
Booking: The event is free if the business registers via the booking link Marketing your own Business. The business must be Manchester based and willing to complete the Manchester Digital Development Agency Workshop Monitor sheet.
EVENT OUTLINES
Event One: Marketing your own Business
The event will commence with speakers from the sector who will share their knowledge and experience on improving their business approach to activities suitable to find new businesses and generating additional leads. This will be followed by two parallel workshops, lead by practitioners who have been
successful in developing activities and strategies which have enhanced their businesses profiles at ‘face to face networking events and via online groups and activities. Both workshops will explore techniques that a new business could apply with a shoe string budget, and will consider methods to monitor and evaluate their effectiveness.
The event will seek to cover
- Review how you have used networking activities to raise your business’s profile.
- Consider where and how you might engage in meeting new potential clients & customers (both online and face to face networking)
- Reflect upon how you might ‘come across’ at events. Consider how you view yourself and how others businesses might see you when approaching networking activities.
- Develop and renew your business’s sales “elevator pitch”
- Equip yourself for different types of networking events / groups
- Consider how one might build partnerships or alliances with businesses beyond just the ‘sell’
Event Outline
4.00pm to 4.15pm Delegate Registration
4.15pm to 5.15pm Panel Introduction
Practitioners Overview: Speakers will provide an overview to the event by consider where to meet and convert new businesses leads.
Panel Speakers:
- Penny Lines No-Nonsense-Marketing
- Jim Symcox Business-Powerpack (Presentation on how to maximise you use of LinkedIn)
5.15pm to 6.30pm Parallel Workshops
Both workshops will be lead by a practitioner who will share their experience of using online and face to face networking.
Workshop 1: Chris Roberson, 247 Uptime
Face 2 Face Networking
- Exploring the different types of networking events – their suitability, target audience, expectations and their potential for digital, creative and ICT businesses.
- Consider some of the selling skills – developing your own pitch, elevated pitches, face to face selling, having an impact
- Reflect upon whether networking is for finding collaboration rather than just to sell – looking for potential partners and alliances
Workshop 1: Chi-Chi Ekweozor, Real Fresh TV
An introduction to Social Media & Online Networking & Promoting your business
- Consider which social media platforms / groups are most effective for marketing your business
- Explore social media marketing techniques to increase your business profile
- Evaluate the use of LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter whilst on a shoe string budget to generate suitable and qualified leads.
- Review and evaluate your own profile on social media.
6.30pm to 7.30pm Informal networking over glass of beer / soft drink.
MadLab at Play Space
Wednesday, November 24th, 2010
Play Space at the Contact Theatre
Here at MadLab HQ we’re getting very excited our lovechild of art & technology, which is no doubt going to come out kicking & bleeping!
This is PlaySpace, a day of experimentation for all visionary brains to fool around with hi-tech toys & find out whats been jumping, skipping & karate chopping over the smudged line of the creative & the digital- all with the theme of identity.
The Creative’s Approach to Project Management
Wednesday, November 17th, 2010Digital Matters: MDDA’S Business Development Programme
Title: The Creative’s Approach to Project Management
Location: MadLab
Description: DIGITAL MATTERS: MDDA’S BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME. A practical session aimed at introducing the delegates to focused themes essential to good project management as well as business planning.
Start Time: 16:00
Date: 2010-12-08
End Time: 19:00
Booking : Please reserve a space
EVENT OUTLINES
A practical session aimed at introducing the delegates to focused themes essential to good project management as well as business planning. The session will link the ability of the delegates to review time and cost management skills with need to effectively breakdown tasks and activities that meet the requirements of the business as well as the customer. These actions should ensure that your delivery of the project is feasible and profitable within the requirements of the customer’s tender.
The structure of this session will be delivered over two integrated workshops. It has been designed to enable delegates to ‘take away’ techniques, processes and tools appropriate to their own business’s needs. It will include the opportunity to design your own action plan which is appropriate to your businesses resources, expertise and involvement in the tendering process.
Due to the practical nature of the event places will be limited to 14 delegates to ensure maximum time to reflect, share experiences as well as develop appropriate actions for your own businesses.
The event will seek to cover:
- Open up your business to the external and internal benefits that could be gained from selective use of project management techniques within your creative / digital business. Consider practical and easily adoptable elements of project management that would be suitable for your business.
- Develop an understanding of ‘requirement analysis’ and defining the customers actual needs and/or requirements. Expand your awareness of the techniques in break down tasks / projects into measurable and meaningful objectives which can then be effectively scheduled. Consider how you might apply evaluate tools to the project to ensure that you are delivering what the customer has asked for.
- Develop manageable ways and processes to effectively improve time (and cost) management within your work and projects. Consider what processes could be utilised to monitoring and control our work activities. Examine how feasible the customer’s requirements are within a tender document and consider how you might allocation a project cost to the required proposal
- Develop your business’s action plan to implement project management
The event will commence at 4.00pm with short introduction:
Consider the external and internal benefits of Project Management to the small digital & creative agency or freelancer.
This will be followed by two workshops (1 hour x 2), lead by practitioner who have been successful in developing activities and strategies which have enhanced their businesses.
Workshop One
- Introduce the concept of “Requirement Analysis”
- Defining the customer’s needs and requirements
- Introduce Task Analysis and Scheduling – Measureable and Meaningful Objectives
- Consider evaluative tools for projects
- Exploring the paradox of customer requirements and the profitable project
Workshop Two
- Explore time and cost management principles
- Consider priority setting processes
- Review monitoring and control mechanism for work activities
- Matching customer requirements with tender document
- Consider facts necessary to allocate cost to tender proposal
The event will conclude with an informal session of Q & A and action planning over cold beers / soft drinks.
The Workshop Leader: Nicola Teece