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We Have a New Home!

We have news! The node now has a home, a founding membership and confirmed its first events and training courses.

As of March 10th we have taken space on the top floor of Munro House, which will be the home for ODI-Leeds, The Leeds Civic Lab and Leeds Impact Hub. We are busy preparing the space and it will officially open on May 6th. Watch out on our Twitter feed for the before, during and after photos.

Our new home — Munro House!

The ODI-Leeds, Civic Lab and Impact Hub will be a place where projects are completed, where value is created and where people will work together, using data and open principles, to create benefit for the City Region of Leeds. It will also be the place that connects us to the ODI and back out to the global ODI-Node network.

We need to thank our confirmed Founding Members, who have provided financial and resource support as we have moved from a great idea, to a start-up, to a physical space in a matter of four months. These are:

  • Leeds City Council
  • Leeds Data Mill
  • Leeds Health Innovation Hub
  • West Yorkshire Metro
  • Leeds CC Smart City Team
  • Bloom Agency
  • CITU

Additional foundation members will be confirmed over the next few months. We are still recruiting, so if your business or organisation wants to play a part in establishing ODI-Leeds please contact us (details at the bottom of this post).

The space will be used for three main purposes:

  1. Collaboration space for projects in the Civic Lab
  2. Hosting of member teams working on Open Data and Technology Projects
  3. Events and Training

The ODI-Leeds will live-stream the ODI Friday lunchtime lectures and will be open to everyone on Friday afternoons to discuss projects, ideas or just drink tea and eat cake.

    Dates for your diary

    April 2nd: ODI-Leeds hosts Leeds Data Thing — come and find out what we plan and how you can be involved

    • April 7th: ODI-Leeds opens for business in beta mode with its Founding Members
    • May 6th: ODI-Leeds opens
    • May 21st: Training by ODI — ODI Open Data in a Day, booking opens next week on March 19th
    • June 3rd — 5th: Global Gov Jam

    Want to be involved?

    Whenever we speak about the ODI and the Leeds City Region Node, the conversation always gets to "and if we did this, we could do that and then we can really do something meaningful and amazing..." We call it the "and, and, and..." chat. It happens every time and that's the power of open data.

    So we have been very careful not to define what the ODI-Leeds will do and for whom. What we are clear about is that it needs to be a place that is around for the long term, completes projects and creates compelling stories.

    If you, your business or your organisation would like to join us on the journey please get in touch.