Introduction to OpenRefine for data manipulation & cleaning (See Methods group)

Please note Sign up at https://www.meetup.com/Knowledge-Workers-Toronto-Methods/events/116993142/

Who never found an existing data set that looked perfect for the task to be done ... until you open it and realized that the data are messy, inconsistent and/or partial?

Today's data comes in various format and spreadsheet tools are poorly designed to explore and transform them. On the other side SQL or other database related tools require a significant amount of knowledge to make a good use of them, leaving the business user with limited options to harness data.

OpenRefine (formerly Google Refine) offer a clean and user friendly interface to work with large amounts of data that are often hard to understand due to their size or format. OpenRefine is a powerful tool for working with messy data, cleaning it, transforming it from one format into another, extending it with web services, and linking it to databases.

This meet up is for anyone working with data transformation and cleaning, data reconciliation, ontology or metadata management.Recipes presented can be reused in any environment consuming data like library, research, Open Data, marketing ...

During this presentation Martin Magdinier will walk through the fundamentals of OpenRefine and you will learn how to create a project; have a quick, clear understanding of a new data set; clean dirty data and export it in the format you want.

Speaker

During the last six years Martin Magdinier has been heavily engaged with start-up and open data communities in France, Vietnam, and Canada. Through his recent projects (TTCPass (http://www.ttcpass.com/) and Objectif Neige (http://mystimu.li/portfolio/objectif-neige/)) and consulting positions Martin became intimate with data massage techniques. Coming from a business approach, his focus is on data management and transformation tools that empower the business user.

In 2011 Martin started to blog tips and tutorials on OpenRefine (http://googlerefine.blogspot.ca/) to help other business users to make the most out of this tool. In 2012, with Google releasing the software to the community, Martin helped to structure the new organization. Today he continues to actively support the OpenRefine user base and advocates its usage in various communities.

Agenda:

6 pm - doors open
6:30 pm - speaker
8:00 pm - meeting concludes

Note: To keep the administrative effort in organizing this group to a minimum, we ask for payment on line ($10). Payment at the event is $20; receipts will not be issued for in-person payment.

Please RSVP at: https://www.meetup.com/Knowledge-Workers-Toronto-Methods/events/116993142/