Join us for Baltimore Data Week 2023!

Monday, July 17th – Friday, July 21st

Virtual Workshops: July 17th – 20th, In-Person Conference:  July 21st

2023 marks the 14th annual Baltimore Data Week (formerly Baltimore Data Day). This event is a week-long series of virtual learning sessions, culminating in-person meeting on Friday, July 21st. These events help communities expand their capacity to use data and technology. During Baltimore Data Week, presenters from across the city share their knowledge about data availability, accessibility, and how data can be actionable for communities

At this year’s event, held July 17-21, 2023, community leaders, activists, nonprofit organizations, governmental entities, foundations, and civic-minded ‘hackers’ will discuss the latest trends in community-based data, technology, and tools and learn how other groups are using data to support and advance constructive change.

Baltimore Data Week, hosted by The Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance – Jacob France Institute at the University of Baltimore, collects, analyzes, and shares community-based indicators and information describing the quality of life in Baltimore’s neighborhoods.  

Registration for Baltimore Data Day 2023 is now open!

Registration for our in-person event, Baltimore Data Day, is now open. This free event, held on Friday July 21st from 9:00 am – 4:00 pm, takes place at the University of Baltimore. Presentations and workshops at this event help communities expand their capacity to use data and technology. Baltimore Data Day 2023 will feature a presentation on Vital Signs 21, panel presentations on topics requested by community members, and information tables from regional organizations.

Baltimore Data Week 2023 Agenda:

A schedule of presentations and workshops can be found below:

Monday, July 17th

12:00 PM – 2:00 PM (Virtual)

Baltimore Resource Landscape Analysis Presentation: Recording Here

  • Ashley Edwards – Community Engagement and Communication Specialist, Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance
  • Logan Shertz – Research Analyst, Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance

Tuesday, July 18th

12:00 PM – 2:00 PM (Virtual)

Mapping Open Data for Your Neighborhood: Recording Here

  • Cheryl Knott – Assistant Director, Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance

Wednesday, July 19th

12:00 PM – 2:00 PM (Virtual)

Grant Writing Workshop with Enoch Pratt Library: Recording Here

  • Jennifer Mange – Staff Analyst/ Strategic Planning Coordinator, Enoch Pratt Free Library
  • Paul Chasen- Virtual Reference Services Manager/  Special Collections Librarian, Enoch Pratt Free Library

Thursday, July 20th

12:00 PM – 2:00 PM (Virtual)

Vital Signs 21: State of Baltimore’s Neighborhoods: Recording Here

  • Amanda Phillips de Lucas – Director, Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance – Jacob France Institute

Friday, July 21st

Baltimore Data Day In-Person Event:

8:30 am – 9:15 am (Atrium)

Check-In and Coffee  

9:15 am – 10:15 am (Auditorium)

Introduction to Baltimore Data Day

Welcome – Ralph Mueller, Provost, University of Baltimore 

Data, Community and Trust Amanda Phillips de Lucas, Ph.D., Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance-Jacob France Institute (BNIA-JFI)

Baltimore Social Ecological Collaborative – Building Community Capacity

The Baltimore Social-Environmental Collaborative (BSEC) is a network of researchers, community members, and institutions that aim to provide knowledge that informs equitable solutions to strengthen community-scale resilience. This panel will introduce members of the collaborative, discuss project goals, and detail what climate science informed by community-guided “potential equitable pathways” looks like in practice. Importantly, this panel will discuss how the group is building capacity across institutions, neighborhoods, and communities with different needs and priorities.

Moderator: Amanda Phillips de Lucas, BNIA-JFI

Benjamin Zaitchik, Ph.D., Professor, Johns Hopkins University 
Darryn Waugh, Ph.D., Professor, Johns Hopkins University 
Geenie Smith, MSPH, Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University 
Dr. Terris King, Liberty Grace Church 
Dr. Doris Minor-Terrell, President, New Broadway East Community Association 

10:15 am – 10:30 am (Atrium) Break 

10:30 am – 11:30 am (Classrooms) Concurrent Sessions #1

Securing the Family Home: Developing a Plan for stabilizing heirs’ Properties in the Black Butterfly

Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service and The SOS Fund work together to assist multigenerational families living together in homes across Baltimore city. If the original homeowners pass away without proper estate planning, the next generation may end up living in a house that does not “technically” belong to them. This lack of “clear title” prevents these homeowners from accessing tax credits, home repair programs and reduced utility rates, which are often critical to maintaining homeownership.

Moderator: Claudia Wilson Randall, Community Development Network of Maryland 
John Kern, The SOS Fund 
Arnell Garrett, Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service 
Cheryl Knott, BNIA-JFI

Business, Banking, and Baltimore’s Main Streets

Entrepreneurship, small businesses, and lending institutions are essential to economic prosperity and neighborhood health. This panel will discuss the landscape of these institutions in Baltimore. Topics discussed include Minority Depository Institutions, Main Street commercial revitalization, and trends in small businesses across Baltimore.

Moderator: Austin Merritt, PNC Bank 
Mac McComas, Johns Hopkins 21st Century Cities Initiative 
Dan Khoshkepazi, Pigtown Main Street 
Philip Allen Jr., PNC Bank 

GIS Data in Urban Infrastructure

Moderator: Eli Pousson, Baltimore Department of Planning
Henry Waldron, Baltimore Department of Housing and Community Development 
Nicholas O’Gara, Baltimore Planning Department 
Jordan Brown, Baltimore Tree Trust 

Data and Journalism

Baltimore’s local and regional journalists are at the forefront of robust reporting, pairing community stories with rigorous data analysis. In the panel, Rob Wells and Shreya Vuttaluru will present an app that allows wealth inequality and race in Baltimore census tracts from 2010 to 2020. Ryan Little will give an overview of how The Baltimore Banner uses data in their coverage. He will discuss projects big and small, from our biggest investigations to breaking news and how we deploy strategies to work quickly with complex and incomplete data 

Moderator: Bridget Blount, Baltimore’s Promise

Rob Wells, Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland College Park 
Shreya Vuttaluru, The Tampa Bay Times  
Ryan Little, The Baltimore Banner

11:30 am– 1:00 pm (Atrium) Lunch/Lightning Round (12:30 pm) 

Participants will have 2-5 minutes to quickly share information about a project, dataset, research question, or organization. Sign up at the registration desk.

1:00 pm – 2:00 pm (Classrooms) Concurrent Sessions 2 

Housing Policy Recommendations for Supporting Baltimore’s Communities

Released earlier this year, ReBUILD Metro’s “Whole Blocks, Whole City” report details solutions for addressing residential vacancy in Baltimore, through intentional site prioritization, community leadership, and investments. In this session, attendees will learn more about these solutions and strategies for supporting neighborhoods. The Maryland Center for Economic Policy will provide an overview of their recently released findings which describe the impacts of concentrated housing choice voucher utilization in the Baltimore metropolitan area. They will share recommendations for adopting Small Area Fair Market Rents (SAFMRs) to alleviate rising housing costs in predominantly Black neighborhoods.

Moderator: Sarah Ficenec, Schaefer Center for Public Policy, University of Baltimore
Sean Closkey, ReBUILD Metro 
Musaab Ibrahim, Maryland Center for Economic Policy 
Cheryl Knott, BNIA-JFI

Enhancing public safety data analysis and visualization utilizing Business Intelligence tools

Business Intelligence tools (Power BI, Tableau, Qlik) are being used across various disciplines to translate complex data into easily understood data dashboards, interactive reports, and embedded visuals.  This panel consists of public safety professionals utilizing Microsoft Power BI to build interactive data dashboards to enhance policy decisions and promote data transparency. The panel will also be available to discuss tips and tricks for building effective dashboards.

Moderator: Amanda Phillips de Lucas, Ph.D., BNIA-JFI
Angelina Guarino, Department of Public Safety & Correctional Services 
Joseph Muhlhausen, Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement 
Kyle Chandler, Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement 
Jeffrey Zuback, Greater Baltimore Committee 

Project VITAL (Vacant lot Improvement to Transform Adolescent Lives)

While Baltimore City currently has over 18,000 vacant lots and 17,000 abandoned buildings, the City has developed a plan to ‘clean and green’ vacant lots in neighborhoods with large concentrations of vacancy. This provides us with a timely opportunity to explore the impact of vacant lot restoration on the health of adolescents living in disadvantaged neighborhoods, with findings that can be used to develop long-term strategies for improving adolescent health equity. 

Moderator: Molly Finch, University of Maryland Baltimore County
Kristin
Mmari, Johns Hopkins University, Bloomberg School of Public Healt
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Dexter Locke, U.S. Forest Service 
Katie Lautar, Baltimore Green Space 

Voting in Baltimore: Democracy Dashboard Hack-a-thon and Beyond

This panel will discuss the Democracy Hack-a-thon organized last year. In this hack-a-thon, graduate students from local schools built dashboards and tools to examine issues that drive voter turnout and registration. This will include a discussion of our experiences working with students, voter data and wider efforts to increase voter registration and turnout in Baltimore.

Moderator: Gretchen LeGrand, Code in the Schools 
Phong Le, Vote Forward 
Sam Novey, Students Learn, Students Vote Coalition 
Dr. Bille Spann, League of Women Voters of Baltimore City 
Nancy Lawler, League of Women Voters of Baltimore City 

The State of the Baltimore Nonprofit Sector

The State of the Baltimore Nonprofit Sector report was produced in 2022 by the T. Rowe Price organizational health assessments, funding audits, 990 analysis, and survey data. Key contributors of the report will talk through the findings and discuss actionable steps that the nonprofit sector (including funders) might take to make progress.

Sabrina Thornton, T. Rowe Price Foundation 

2:00 pm – 3:00 pm Break

2:15 pm – 3:15 pm (Classrooms) Concurrent Sessions 3

Impacts of COVID on Homeownership in Baltimore

In 2019, authors Sally Scott, University of Maryland Baltimore County, and Seema Iyer, Jacob France Institute at the University of Baltimore analyzed homeownership trends in Baltimore by neighborhood and race to identify barriers and review incentives for homeownership. Now we are taking a new look at data to see what took place during the Covid-19 pandemicWe look forward to discussing homeownership with participants. We will discuss interventions that could sustain and increase the homeownership rate in Baltimore City. 

Moderator: Claudia Wilson Randall, Community Development Network of Maryland 
Cheryl Knott, BNIA-JFI

Sally Scott, University of Maryland Baltimore County

Laurie Benner, National Fair Housing Alliance 

Aliyah Stewart, Neighborhood Housing Services

Learning from Transit and Transportation Data

Researchers, practitioners, and informed citizens use publicly available to understand trends in transit and transportation data that impact their communities and region. Panelists will discuss research that puts these trends in context: the legacy of redlining on contemporary gaps in traffic safety, new tools and dashboards available through the Maryland Department of Transportation and the Maryland Department of State Police , and how the Central Maryland Transporation Alliance’s Transportation 101 program is training graduates to use data.

Moderator: Amanda Phillips de Lucas, BNIA-JFI 
Glendedora Dolce, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health 
Douglas Mowbray, Maryland Department of Transportation 
Eric Norton, Central Maryland Transportation Alliance 

Citizen Science and Participatory Action Research for Environmental Justice in Curtis Bay

Dr. Fabricant and her team of student researchers continue to conduct a Participatory Action Research (PAR) project that is presently investigating structural injustices in Curtis Bay, South Baltimore. Much of the data collection and analytic work is being conducted by Benjamin Franklin high-school youth alongside Towson University students. Why do communities experience environmental problems and hazards unevenly? Towson University students have assembled small research collectives and worked collaboratively with youth to document the multiple layers of industrial toxicity, and the cumulative effects upon residents’ health and well-being. The PAR project with undergraduates and high-school students feeds directly into her broader research agenda, as we are creatively mapping how environmental hazards lead to political action or inaction during specific historic moments.

Moderator: Logan Shertz, BNIA-JFI
Nicole Fabricant, Towson University 
Matty Aubourg, Johns Hopkins Public Health Citizen Science Team 
Shashawnda Campbell, South Baltimore Community Land Trust 

Building Collective Community Capacity: A Collaborative Approach to Data

While Baltimore is a City of over 250 neighborhoods, many of the challenges are the same. In this session, facilitators will lead attendees through a visioning exercise to reveal community challenges, gaps in resources, and opportunities to build solutions as a part of a collective, rather than a singular association. Attendees will learn about ongoing community capacity building efforts across the City, their outcomes, and how to access those opportunities. This session requires a device that can capture a QR code for participation.

Moderator: Ashley Edwards, BNIA-JFI  
Kristina Williams, Charles Village Benefits District; Colmena Consulting  
Marcus Pollock, Research Collaborative for the Prevention and Intervention of Violence, Inc. 

Baltimore Data Week offers the opportunity to participate both virtually and in person.  

Hands-On Workshops take place virtually from July 17-20, 2023. 

Hands-On Workshops will be broadcast, recorded, and archived in our learning library. 

The in-person event, consisting of ignite presentations and panel discussions, takes place Friday, July 21, 2023, at the University of Baltimore (Midtown Baltimore).  

We will not broadcast or record sessions at the in-person event. 

Sponsorship Opportunities 

Sponsorship opportunities are available to organizations or individuals who would like to support Baltimore Data Week. Event sponsorship supports the mission of BNIA‐JFI, guarantees the conference remains free and open to the public and ensures that requests by community development corporations and other community‐based organizations will continue to be serviced free of charge. Visit our Donation page or email us at [email protected] for more information about sponsoring this event.  

All sessions are recorded and archived on BNIA’s YouTube Channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/bniajfi).

This Year’s Presentations | Archive of Past Data Day Presentations  | Speaker Bios (2022)

 

 

Media Coverage

‘Everything matters to neighborhoods:’ Baltimore Data Week returns for city’s communities
Technical.ly Baltimore
Jul. 14, 2022 – This yearly data conference began as a single day of programming, known as Data Day, in 2010 before expanding to a full week in 2020. This year’s event is hybrid…

The Baltimore Community Change Project combs data to figure out why the city is shrinking and how to reverse the trend

On The Record, WYPR
July 14, 2022 – What is driving Baltimore’s shrinkage? UB research professor Seema Iyer scrubbed the data. Some blame crime, but she says crime is a symptom of deeper failures…

Watch: The Scott administration talked open data and digital equity at Baltimore Data Week 2021
Technical.ly Baltimore
July 26, 2021 – “It is now an expectation that data is apart of every conversation and every decision that we’re making in Baltimore City,” Mayor Brandon Scott said…

What is Data Day?

Baltimore Data Day is an annual workshop to help communities expand their capacity to use technology and data to advance their goals. At the 14th Annual Baltimore Data Week, community leaders, nonprofit organizations, governmental entities, and civic-minded “hackers” came together to see the latest trends in community-based data, technology, and tools and learn how other groups are using data to support and advance constructive change. Baltimore Data Day is structured around a series of “how-to” interactive workshops in which people who work with data will explain what data is available, how to access data, and why data can be actionable for communities.

For more information about Data Day please email [email protected]. For details on how to support BNIA-JFI, visit our Donation page.

 


 

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Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance
The Jacob France Institute
1420 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21201
410-837-4377 | [email protected]