[caption id="attachment_29397" align="alignleft" width="1000"] Photo from the 2017 Idea Challenge, an event from last year's Open Data Challenge.[/caption]

The 2018 Open Data Challenge will begin this weekend, kicking off a three month series of workshops and events

This year's challenge is to make Delaware the most accessible state in the country. Both the Department of Transportation and the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control have signed on as partners.

The first workshop will take place Saturday, February 10 at 10:00 a.m. in the Brandywine Hundred Library. Attendees will use Python Pandas library, an open source data tool, to execute basic data analysis. Next they will create data visualizations with Plotly and transfer the final product to Javascript.

Chris A. Williams, a Philadelphia-based data journalist, will lead the workshop.

The next workshop, on March 1, will focus on mapping using tools such as Google Maps API, Mapbox and geocode.earth.

The Open Data Challenge will finish off with a "Data Jam," a month-long hackathon where teams develop prototypes to meet actual needs in the community. More information on upcoming events is available here: http://opendatachallenge.com/index.php/events/