The Data Place

The Data Place (TDP) was developed out of DATA Play 1 by Martin Howitt @MartinHowitt, Lucy Knight @Jargonautical and Simon Gough @mistergough.

The inspiration

Martin, Lucy and Simon were working together in their spare time at @ODIDevon on various data-related projects for over two years, including working with Plymouth City Council to support their DATA Play events, before The Data Place (TDP) was born.

During those two years, they were generally frustrated by a lack of suitable platforms for data publishing; ‘suitable’ meaning affordable, accessible, flexible and available enough to suit their requirements ranging from short-term projects to permanent data stores. So they decided to build their own.

The project

Their first customer was Plymouth City Council who they provided a simple data store (DATA Place Plymouth) to house their growing portfolio of datasets and form the backbone of their growing use of open data to foster innovation in the city. That relationship allowed them to spend a considerable amount of time getting to grips with the needs of a local authority with a passion for data publishing, and in doing so, understand what they really needed in a data store.

Not long after developing the first data store for Plymouth, Plymouth City Council decided that they liked the product enough to be more than just a customer. And so Plymouth City Council became their first investor, providing the resources needed for them to scale the offering to more customers and put together an ambitious roadmap for freely available data infrastructure.

Before properly launching late in 2017 they managed to encourage more customers, including Libraries Unlimited, to sign up and they also successfully joined the UK government’s Digital Marketplace procurement platform.

The outcomes

Over the last 14 months it stopped being a gleam in their eyes and is now a very real thing. They have entered their second year busy with several ongoing contracts, and a few new ones starting up soon. Their developers have been busy automating the existing platform, and they’ve also been making it more usable (and easier on the eye) by refactoring the front end.

They’ve also been lucky enough to work with a couple of other local authorities helping them with their open data, are supporting a couple of local businesses with using data better for business results and have also started to work with partners in higher education and other social enterprises as well as national organisations.

The insights

What started as a passion for open data and was nurtured and incubated by the DATA Play movement The Data Place is now a solid and growing business with full time staff. They are based at ThinqTanq in Plymouth, an active part of Plymouth’s digital community and committed to working with local developers and data people.

The product has grown out of a desire to use data as building block for thriving communities. It made sense to build The Data Place as a social enterprise; meaning that it will continue to develop ways to have a wider impact, both through the way they operate and the community benefit of the product they offer.

Looking ahead

There are more sites (and more changes) to come but for now you can see the revamped DATA Place Plymouth site.

News
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DATA Play 11... tackling the climate emergency together

^{Published 6 September 2022}
DATA Play 11 was a great success with discussions around the climate emergency and the environment.

Save a new date for DATA Play 11

^{Published 24 February 2022}
We’ve rescheduled DATA Play 11 to 7 April 2022 due to the coronavirus situation and on advice from Public Health.

DATA Play 11: Climate emergency

^{Published 9 December 2021}
Join us on 11 March 2022 for DATA Play 11 to look at how open data and technology can be used to help the climate emergency.

Save the date for DATA Play 11

^{Published 8 December 2021}
Join us on 11 March 2022 for DATA Play 11 to explore how data and technology can help the city’s challenges around the climate emergency.

View the Plymouth Plan Annual Report

^{Published 23 July 2021}
This annual report provides an overview of progress over the past year, for each of the different elements of the plan.

Tune in tomorrow for the Climate Challenge live final

^{Published 2 December 2020}
The top three projects will now be taking part in the LIVE final taking place on Thursday 3 December at 7pm…

Join us for a Plymouth Climate Challenge live event

^{Published 26 September 2020}
The top three supported projects will be awarded an additional £2,500 and be invited to the live event on Thursday 3 December…

Progress on the delivery of the Plymouth Plan

^{Published 23 November 2020}
We’ve added a new Plymouth Plan section with infographics to show our progress on the Plymouth Plan primary indicators…

Competition time! Plymouth Climate Challenge LIVE

^{Published 24 September 2020}
Plymouth City Council and Crowdfunder have teamed up to award £15,000 prize-funding to 10 climate emergency projects in the city…

DATA Play 10 is here... looking back and forward

^{Published 1 November 2019}
DATA Play 10 kicked off to a great start with some really interesting discussions around past and future challenges…

The Data Place