In the run up to news:rewired we’ll be publishing some thoughts from our speakers on the subject of their session. Simon Rogers is editor of the Guardian’s Datablog and Datastore, an online data resurce which publishes hundreds of raw datasets and encourages its users to visualise and analyse them. He is also a news editor for the Guardian, working with the graphics team to visualise and interpret huge datasets.
Simon’s session:
Linked data and the semantic web
- An introduction to linked data and the semantic web – what should you know and what benefits can linked data offer journalists? A session looking at where media on the web is headed and what skills future journalists and communicators will need.
With: Simon Rogers, datablog/datastore editor, the Guardian; Martin Moore, director, Media Standards Trust; Martin Belam, information architect, the Guardian; Silver Oliver, senior information architect, BBC.
Most of the data we deal with is historic – ie, by the time we find out about it, the event has been recorded and passed. So, predicting what will happen in the world of data is a risky business. But, if pushed, these are three trends I would predict for the world of data in 2011:
1) Larging it
2010 has been the year of enormous datasets: the Treasury’s COINs release and the Wikileaks releases – and that trend is only set to increase. The new year will see some more enormous datasets released by the government and journalists need to learn the skills to cope with them.
2) All about local
As datasets get larger, they will give us greater insight into smaller areas. People want the stats about their town, their neighbourhood and their street and the new year will see more and more of these hyperlocal datasets released.
3) How we see things
The trend in datajournalism over recent months has seen thousands of people around the world try their hand at data visualisations. Some have been amazing, some less so. The joy so far has been seeing them happen at all. From now on, the quality of those visualisations will become much more important. The ones that will pull through will be those which have a clarity that can be understood anywhere.
Follow this link to buy tickets for news:rewired – beyond the story.