Data Day, hosted by Data You Can Use, provides an opportunity for leaders, from neighborhoods to universities, to better understand what data are available, the implications of data on community revitalization, and how to increase connections between research and practice. ​If you are a neighborhood champion, a data scientist, a government leader, a researcher, a philanthropist, a student, a data visualization specialist, or just an enthusiastic dataphyle, you belong at Data Day! ​Preview our Ignite Sessions! Then join a LIVE breakout room-- or two-- with the presenter of your choice and other interested attendees on Data Day. October 21st, 2020 at 10am

About Data You Can Use: We are a diverse group of local professionals who help people access data and make it useful in improving community conditions. We help connect people who need data to people who have data and assist in accessing, analyzing, translating, interpreting and presenting data. We can help you ask the right questions to get the right data, put it into a local context, present it visually and put it to work in addressing issues important to you. We subscribe to the principles of the Urban Institute’s National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership and work to democratize data by building local capacity, sharing best practices and helping users sort through the data to surface, explain and address issues of concern. We know this takes technical expertise, knowledge of local context, the ability to convene and collaborate with multiple stakeholders and trust.

From education to activism, Liz Dozier has spent her career working tirelessly to disrupt the culture of inequity that is often pervasive in urban neighborhoods.  After serving as a teacher and principal in Chicago Public Schools, Dozier launched Chicago Beyond  in 2016. An “impact investor”, Chicago Beyond has invested more than $30 million in local nonprofit organizations and community leaders to remove barriers to equity for youth, investing in everything from education, to youth safety, to health and wellness, and beyond.  In 2019, Chicago Beyond published ” Why Am I Always Being Researched? “, a guidebook for funders, researchers, and community organizations on how to deconstruct harmful power dynamics when researching communities. Chicago Beyond also started a speaker series on antiracism that has been joined by more than 100,000 individuals globally and has provided entry points for people with the desire to learn what it means to be antiracist.

Every year, Data You Can Use offers services to the winners of the Data Dream, a competition which helps groups move beyond limitations created by a lack of information or the capacity to interpret data already collected. The 2020 Data Dream finalists were announced prior to Data Day and the six winners were announced live at the event!