Tag: Demographics

Open Data Week 2026 March 22-29, 2026 (and more!)

Move from language access awareness to action in this session hosted by the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, featuring the Department of City Planning (DCP) and CLEAR Global.

See demonstrations of DCP’s language data tools—both existing resources and new tools in development—and learn how to put language data to use. Discover CLEAR Global’s innovative approaches to building language datasets for humanitarian contexts and crisis response.

Building on the 2025 Open Data Week session “Decoding NYC’s Linguistic Diversity,” this session equips you with practical frameworks for collecting, analyzing, and applying language data strategically. Perfect for anyone ready to make evidence-based decisions about language access.

As part of NYC Open Data Week 2026, the CUNY Public Interest Technology (PIT) Lab will host a week-long Open Data Takeover of the NYC PIT Pop-Up at the Oculus / World Trade Center. The activation advances Open Data Week’s goals of accessibility, civic learning, and practical use of open data by bringing open data projects into a highly visible, public-facing space. Attendees can drop in at any time during the hours below for a demonstration of the tool and to speak with the presenter. Most of the demos will also be streamed live from the Pop-Up on its Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/cunypitlab). Inside the Oculus, the Pop-Up is located on the Main Floor C2, in the South Concourse, at Shop #53 (next to M.A.C. Cosmetics). View the full PIT Lab schedule. No RSVP needed, just stop by!

[2pm–6pm]
Mike Spade – DuBois Does Data
35 years after slavery, Du Bois set out to provide a definitive image of the Negro condition in the United States. His data efforts not only quantified economic parity or lack thereof, he also focused on where people lived, and how they lived. During the 1900 Paris Exposition, he shared his findings with the world. But how do those findings hold up 125 years later? What has changed? Has anything stayed the same? At Du Bois Does Data, engage with his visuals, portraits, and data in a multi-sensory experience. Scents derived from the life and experience of W.E.B. Playlists charting the course of Black American music from his birth to his death, a day before the “I Have A Dream Speech.” Books celebrating his work and a first edition copy of his completed passion project, Africana. Curated vintage stamps in his image, portraits, and his article in Africana will serve as activations for A/R experiences, bringing the nostalgia into the palm of your hand. In Du Bois Does Data, we also used Python to evaluate the condition of Black Americans 125 years after his exhibit using Census data in 6 Jupyter Notebooks.

Ray Brescia – Gamifying Know-Your-Rights Information
This presentation will explore the power of gamification and then describe one current work in progress, an online game, “Haunted Housing,” that is designed in partnership with community-based advocacy organizations in New York City to educate youth, particularly from immigrant communities, about housing rights.  Gamification can be utilized in many other contexts–from immigrants’ rights to school discipline–and I will describe our ground-up method for developing this tool and encourage others to explore similar initiatives in other contexts.

Merlin Valdez – VoteFeed.org
VoteFeed.org is a Twitter/Bluesky-like user experience that allows constituents to interact with their respective U.S. representative in congress by sharing their opinion on policies up for vote in the legislative agenda.

Ken Cobb and Marcia Kirk from the Department of Records and Information Services will present a discussion and demonstration of newly released voter registration records available on Ancestry.com. These records document the period from 1915-1956 and include several important events: women’s right to vote, both World Wars, and the Great Depression.

Open to researchers and people interested in researching genealogy, family history, local history, voting patterns, population movement. This is an in-person event at the NYC Department of Records and Information Services, 31 Chambers Street, NYC in Room 111.

Open Data Week 2026 March 22-29, 2026 (and more!)

New York is a city of immigrants, but its makeup is shaped by U.S. immigration laws. Join Donnise Hurley, a senior geographic analyst at the New York City Department of City Planning, for a preview of the upcoming publication of The Newest New Yorkers, 2026 where she analyzes federal data from the Office of Homeland Security Statistics (OHSS) to reveal the hidden impact of immigration policy on New York City’s demographic landscape. You will receive a snapshot of the lawful permanent resident (i.e., “green card”) categories most used by foreign-born groups during the 2010s and see how these admission patterns have shifted over time. You will also gain clarity on the difference between OHSS administrative data on lawful permanent residents and the more familiar U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) data on the characteristics of the foreign-born population overall. Whether you are a New Yorker curious about your community or a researcher, librarian, or policymaker, this talk offers insight into how the law sets the parameters for immigration flows to the city.

UnSchool of Data is BetaNYC’s open space unconference for networking, co-creating, and learning. It brings together city residents, technologists, civic leaders, students, advocates, policy nerds, government staff, elected officials, journalists, designers, and more to leverage open data to tackle some of the most pressing issues in NYC and beyond.

It’s a community driven day for turning open data into civic solutions.

UnSchool of Data has these underlying goals:

  1. Convene community members to share civic insights and ideas.
  2. Create processes/projects that people will use for further action.
  3. Foster formal and informal communities of practice and action.

Learn more about UnSchool of Data and how it works at www.schoolofdata.nyc/unschool.

Join Census Bureau data dissemination specialists Joli Golden and Monica Dukes to learn about the datasets that the Census uses to measure poverty, how the Census defines poverty measures, and the numerous data tools you can access to explore poverty by geographic area and demographic group. You will see how to access the most recent poverty briefs and reports and poverty data tables. We will also introduce SAIPE, a tool for Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates.

A Census Bureau poverty Subject Matter Expert will be on hand to answer your questions live in the chat and at the end of the presentation.

Join Census Bureau data dissemination specialists Joli Golden and David Kraiker to learn how to use data.census.gov to access the most current and relevant demographic, socioeconomic, and housing statistics about your community. During this presentation, you will learn about the Decennial Census, the American Community Survey (ACS) and other Census Bureau programs, geographies, and datasets. Plus, you will see live demonstrations of the search and navigation features in data.census.gov as well as how to download tables, create charts and generate thematic maps. This training is recommended for all data users.

NYC School of Data is BetaNYC’s community conference that demystifies the policies and practices around open data, technology, and service design. This year’s conference helps conclude NYC Open Data Week and features 40+ sessions organized by NYC’s civic technology, data, and design community! Our conversations and workshops will feed your mind and inspire you to improve your neighborhood.

To attend, you need to purchase tickets. The venue is accessible, and the content is all-ages friendly! If you have accessibility questions or needs, please email the BetaNYC team at [email protected].

Thank you to Reinvent Albany for their support as Lead Partner and helping cover conference costs to make it possible to meet in 2026. Additional sponsors include HaydenAI, SVA Masters in Data Visualization and Communication, Nava, The Center for Urban Science + Progress (CUSP) at NYU Tandon. and Cyvl. 

If you can’t join us in person, tune into the main stage live stream provided by the Internet Society New York Chapter. Follow the conversation #NYCSoData on Bluesky.

Purchase your tickets here.