Day one of the Open Data Cooking workshop Helsinki is almost over, and it has been full of laughter, thoughts, sketches and impressions. We also learned a good deal about Finland and Finnish food!
The day kicked off with an introduction by Susanne Jaschko, introducing the basic theme and idea of the workshop. Miska Knapek established a brief overview of open data, especially the Finnish scene (pdf of the presentation). Moritz Stefaner followed with a presentation of the data visualization aspects, introducing "culinary variables" and a few tricks (pdf). Our culinary expert Antti Nurkka closed the opening presentations round with his perspective on how to combine and create flavors (pdf).
Every participant brought an ingredient of personal relevance, which we used for the introduction round. So we had a full table with lentils, rice, polenta, black olives, olive oil, ceps, bananas, papaya, mango, limes, blueberries, thyme, oregano, cumin, avocado, pickled cucumbers, condensed milk, and camomile tea...
After that, we distributed cards with ingredients and possible visualization topics, in order to facilitate quick creation of ideas and to get into the groove of thinking about representing information with food.
Quickly, people started sketching, brainstorming, and discussing ideas. After now everybody has gone shopping for ingredients, we are much looking forward to see what will be cooked tomorrow, when we all go to the big kitchen!
