Property Data User Group Meeting Recap

The first User Group meeting for property data was held at the East Liberty Carnegie Library the afternoon of March 3, 2016. The Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center launched Data User Groups to help people to build relationships with other data users, learn from one another about data, contribute to efforts to improve data quality and documentation, share data publication priorities, provide feedback to data publishers, and collaborate on projects. 

Over forty people joined us for the meeting. In a brief presentation, participants were introduced to the concept of open data through projects and tools from other cities, and were provided with an overview of the  tools and features of the Regional Data Center’s open data portal. Our partners at the City and County were also on hand to talk about the publishing process at each organization. 

The heart of the meeting was a group discussion. The Regional Data Center wanted to use the conversation to inform our plan for new tools, research, training events, and activities. We also wanted to identify high-demand datasets for future publication. The discussion was organized around the following questions:

• How have you used property data in your work?
• What ideas do you have for using property data?
• Which datasets are at the top of your wish list?
• Are there things you find most difficult about using property data?
• What are your favorite tools/methodologies for using data?
• What do you most want to learn?