After 2 weeks, 68 hours of lesson and 8 guest lectures, the 19 “divers” have arrived at the turning point.
In the first part of BIG DIVE, the course aimed at boosting the tech skills to extract value from data and to generate effective impact, students learnt the key topics in the field of Big Data – Development, Visualization, Data Science –, thanks to the resident teachers by Axant.it, ISI Foundation e ToDo, and to the lectures from the guest speakers. Until now the Divers have met Enrico Ferro (ISMB), Dario Taborelli (Wikimedia Foundation), Bruno Gonçalves (Aix-Marseille Université), Michele Barbera (SpazioDati); also the theme “Legal face of BIG DATA” has been addressed thanks to Nexa Center for Internet & Society; finally Paola Pasino and Colin Birchenall (Glasgow City Council) explained the case study “How urban policies respond to data and in particular the case of Sauchiehall District”.
The students have just started to work on their Final Projects, a great opportunity to deal with real data, thanks to the datasets provided by BIG DIVE 4 Data Sponsors – deltatre; Gruppo Banca Sella, with Consel and SellaLab; Dimar Group and Tierra. Data Sponsors presented data, context and “challenges” during the second week and there is an high expectation for what “divers” will develop by the end of the course.
The closing event is scheduled on July the 10th, in that date the Divers will obtain their certificates and the final projects will be presented in front of an audience made by experts and stakeholders.
Meanwhile, the mood is good, as Tobias, one of the Divers, said: “People are cool, city is cool, Big Data are cool… thanks a lot!”
