Have you joined BuzzData and then gotten a bit stuck because, well, you have no datasets to work on yet? Don’t fret — we heard you.

 We don’t want users who are intrigued by (but new to) data to be held back, and so took it upon ourselves to track down, collect and clean up BuzzData-curated public data for you to play with and explore. BuzzTopics will be a treasure trove to info-viz enthusiasts especially, who want good clean data with which they can hone their evolving viz-tool skills.

We will be focusing on building our discovery and search capabilities further on down the line (we know it’s a bit of a thorn in people’s sides right now, don’t worry, we’ll get to it), in the meantime you can get the full list of BuzzTopics available by searching for “Buzz” in the search box at top right:

“We made sure that we were going to all the right places, to publishers that had high-quality data,” says BuzzData business analyst Anthony Ilukwe, who published nearly a thousand datasets with the help of three others in a fairly short time span.

Below is the full list of BuzzTopics so far — this is just a start and it will continue to grow. And if you have requests for data, ping us at blog@buzzdata.com and we’ll track it down. Have fun!

BuzzEducation

55 Datasets, including: Lists of Colleges & Universities, Periodic Table of Elements, List of U.S. presidents & more.

BuzzGeography

10 datasets, including: coastline per nation, tallest mountains, highest & lowest points per country. 

 BuzzBusiness

184 datasets, including: GDP per nation/industry, government subsidies & employee compensation per industry, cost depreciation of durable goods, etc.

 BuzzCanada

22 datasets, including: population by year, aboriginal income, language prevalence, certified organic products, charitable donations by province.

 BuzzDemography

26 datasets, including: global populations, birth and mortality rates, urban data, age demographics by country, migration rates; literacy data.

 BuzzEnvironment

34 datasets, including: CO2 emissions per fuel source, threatened plant and animal species, forest area.

 BuzzNYC

55 datasets, including: locations of daycare centres, water fountains, showers, firehouses, subway entrances, etc., birthnames of NYC citizens, district demographics.

BuzzGolf

3 datasets, including: strokes by golfer, pro career earnings, driving accuracy.

BuzzAuto

15 datasets, including: fuel efficiency by model and manufacturer, vehicles in circulation by country, car production per country.

BuzzScience

12 datasets, including: volcanoes around the world, the Periodic Table of Elements, inventions and discoveries; list of constellations.

BuzzMovies

27 datasets, including: cinematographer earnings, bestselling DVDs of all time, worst movie by viewer rating.

BuzzSoccer

55 datasets, including: player discipline by year, top scorers by year, World Cup and Euro Cup winners.

BuzzCricket

53 datasets, including: batting averages, series results.

BuzzRugby

38 datasets, including: Guiness Premiership, player stats, Six Nations results.

BuzzHealth

20 datasets, including: life expectancy, infant mortality rates, HIV/AIDS prevalence, birth and death rates.

BuzzChicago

15 datasets, including: crime incidents, sex offenders, locations of hotels, health clinics, police stations, community centres, etc.

BuzzWeather

150 datasets, including: monthly average weather by various regions.

BuzzHistory

10 datasets, including: most populous cities at different periods in time, lists of U.S. and Canadian leaders.

BuzzHockey

56 datasets, including: draft entries by year, Stanley Cup and other trophy winners.

BuzzEngineering

14 datasets, including: conversion tables, engineering industry demographics.

BuzzFootball

52 datasets, including: passing, receiving and rushing leaders by year, standings, offense and defense statistics, Super Bowl MVPs.

BuzzCalifornia

22 datasets, including: vacancy rates, state revenue, list of schools and hospitals, electricity consumption, fatal collisions, race and ethnic projections, employment data.

-Momoko Price

Every once in a while, it’s nice to be reminded that open data isn’t about data sets or apps, it’s about people and ideas.

Last night our CTO Pete Forde herded the BuzzData team over to the Gladstone to check out the latest Tech Talk Toronto speakers, a couple of young guys from Ottawa who work for an web company called Shopify. It wasn’t what I expected, but it was definitely a welcome surprise.

FROM LEFT: toronto.ca/open open-data curators Derek Matthew, Joseph McLarty, and Reham Gorgis, alongside the Tony Robbinses of Ottawa’s open data scene, Edward Ocampo-Gooding and Daniel Beauchamp. Photo courtesy of E. Ocampo-Gooding.

Though Edward Ocampo-Gooding and Daniel Beauchamp now work full-time at Shopify, their talk wasn’t a promotional plug for the brand. Instead, they gushed effusively and with unbridled enthusiasm (to borrow from Seinfeld) about the open-data community they helped forge in Ottawa.

“We don’t have that many datasets, we’re kind of envious of Toronto’s data,” Beauchamp said on stage, comparing the City of Ottawa’s open data catalogue to Toronto’s comparatively diverse data site. In fact, when the two first started compiling public data more than a year ago, the city didn’t even have a catalogue. “We had to go to the sites and write our Perl scripts and what-not and grab all the data from it — a real pain in the ass.”

The remarkable thing is they went and did it anyway — they scraped the public data, put together an effective promotional campaign for a hackfest, made the effort to target a broad audience across the city, and most impressive of all, got non-technical citizens engaged and participating as well.

“That’s my little cousin there,” Beauchamp said, while clicking through photo slides of the April 2010 hackfest. “She’s like 11 years old, and I said, you know what, I’m going to invite her out because open data is for everyone, so why not get kids there, too?”

Ocampo-Gooding pointed to another slide, this one of a woman, saying, “This is a mother who walked in and said, ‘Hey, I heard about you guys on the radio. What is this open data stuff about?’”

Rather than alienate her with technical talk, Ocampo-Gooding said he asked her point-blank what frustrates her most in her day-to-day life. “She said, ‘Oh, well, figuring out what to do with my six-year-old son on a Saturday morning is a monumental pain in the ass. It would be lovely if I could be informed of the things I could do.’ ”

From there, Ocampo-Gooding consulted his girlfriend Mary-Beth Baker, a local librarian and “the brains behind the operation,” he claims — about what city data would address this problem. Then, after assigning a developer and a designer to the team, “they were proto-typing in four hours.”

All told, Beauchamp and Ocampo-Gooding attracted more than 100 people that day — “on a Saturday morning,” Ocampo-Gooding boasted gleefully — including mothers, artists, librarians and journalists, in addition to designers and developers. Together, they built about 20 apps in a single day. When Ottawa’s CIO Guy Michaud stopped by, Ocampo-Gooding claims “his mind was blown” seeing citizens brainstorming city improvements together and having fun doing it. Clearly, open government and e-government can work, provided city leaders keep an - ahem - open mind about it.

“The first thing that happens with open data is people think ‘apps,’ ” Ochampo-Gooding said. “Someone thinks, ‘Oh I know what we need — developers!’ ‘Developers, developers, developers, developers! That’s exactly what we need!’ ”

“It’s not true, it doesn’t work,” he went on. “All you end up with is a sausage party. It doesn’t get things done.”

Beauchamp and Ocampo-Gooding’s commitment to keeping the open data movement inclusive and fun fosters a communal, gregarious energy that’s infectious — I felt it firsthand at last night’s Tech Talk. The audience laughed freely at the pair’s whimsical, jestering style, called out suggestions and comments and stuck around to chat and meet new friends long after the talk had ended.

Thanks for coming, guys!

-Momoko Price