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NYC School of Data 2026

Welcome to NYC School of Data — a community conference that demystifies the practices and policies around open data, technology, and service design. Hosted by BetaNYC at CUNY School of Law, this year’s conference concludes NYC’s Open Data Week 2026 and is the TENTH edition of both SoData and Open Data Week!

Register for tickets: < https://ti.to/betanyc/nycsodata26 >

2026 is bigger than ever with 40+ sessions organized by NYC’s civic technology, data, and design community!

Day 1: the classic NYC School of Data conference, with programming across 12 rooms during 4 session blocks.
Day 2: NEW in 2026 – UnSchool of Data! The unconference agenda is created together on the day, with attendee pitches at the top of the day. Select sessions have been pre-seeded by BetaNYC to kick things off.

Our venue is accessible and content is all-ages friendly! If you have accessibility questions or needs, please email us at < [email protected] >.

9:00am EDT

Breakfast: Day 1 2-300 - Cafe Childcare: Day 1 4-203 & 4-204 Worlds We Carry: What Should We Bring to Space? 2-300 - CafeAurelie Barbier

10:00am EDT

Opening Session 2-301 - AuditoriumState Senator Kristen Gonzalez • Council Member Carmen De La Rosa • Tayyab Walker • Noel Hidalgo • Martha Norrick • Naeema Haque

11:00am EDT

Exploring NYC Open Data With AI (Part 1: Civic AI Tools & Open Data MCP) 3-301-A/B CombinedNathan Storey Machine-Viewing Gentrification Through Storefront Imagery in NYC 2-116Alexander McQuilkin Mobility Lightning Talks: Streets in Motion 3-302Patrick Cleary • David Kaplan • James Ryan • Vaibhav Hariani • Kristof Jablonowski • Danny Yang • Michael Forster From Connectivity to Connection, Transforming Digital Equity Into Action 2-301 - AuditoriumNoel Hidalgo • Council Member Jennifer Gutiérrez • Joshua Breitbart • Paolo Balboa A Sense of Place: Quantifying Urban Ambiance in New York through Social Media Data and Machine Learning 1-205Jali Packer Beyond the Thermometer: Mapping Socially Experienced and Empirical Heat in NYC Using 311 Data 2-112Matthew J. Hill, PhD • Christine Mourani • Josefina Nunez Sahr • Kylen Solvik The Past, Present, and Future of Open Data Tools 2-119Andrew Kittredge What Communities Are Asking For: Student Insights from The People's Money Data 1-204Jennifer Griffiths Blind Date with a Dataset 2-109Claudia Berger BLOCK BY BLOCK: Mapping Block Associations in NYC 3-201Delaney Connor Community Data Collection Workshop with the Data Vandals 1-203Jen Ray • Jason Forrest

12:15pm EDT

Exploring NYC Open Data With AI (Part 2: Making charts with DataWrapper MCP) 3-301-A/B CombinedAarushi Sahejpal • Dhrumil Mehta • Ben Welsh The Future of the Unhoused: Equity-Aware Forecasts & Interactive Maps of NYC Homelessness 2-119Rohan Ramnarain • Alice Dong • Kevin Guillermo • Marilyn Echeverria Building the Public Interest Tech Workforce 2-301 - AuditoriumMeisha Porter • Julie Won • Lauri Goldkind • Aankit Patel • Jazzy Smith Data for Whom: Exploring Inclusivity in NYC’s Mobility Datasets 1-203Giulia Ceccarelli • Simone Grasso • Federico Messa Empowering local communities through environmental justice data 2-109Ewan French • Zoe Voss Lee • David Bigio • Celestina Leon • Mario Giampieri From Data to Policy: How the NYC Council Turns City Data Into Action 3-302Taylor Francisco Your Community By the Numbers: Intro to Census Data @ School of Data 1-202Joli Golden Making AI Make Sense Together: Designing a Critical AI Research Commons with NYC Open Data 2-112Kathleen Cumiskey • Anthoni Garcia • Raj Korpan • Brendon Hawkins • Jeff Tobias Revamping the NY Open Government Site to Connect Contributions, Contracts, and Lobbying 1-205Gautam Sisodia FloodNet - Flood Data Playground 1-204Charlie Mydlarz • Mark Bauer • Bea Steers

1:15pm EDT

Lunch - Second Floor 2-300 - Cafe Lunch - Third Floor 3-115 and 3-116 - Commons

2:30pm EDT

Open Data for Program Design and Advocacy: Using Air Quality Data to Make School-based Interventions More Successful 1-204Jordan Sucher • Jessica Cole Civic Tools Lightning Talks: Build, Demo, Deploy 3-301-A/B CombinedNicholas Taub • Devin Neal • Kris Turkal • Iban Sadowski • Tina Zeng Housing Lightning Talks: Where We Live 3-302Raksha Muralidharan • LP • Mel Laskowski • Joel Guerrero AI in Government: Opportunities for the Mamdani Administration 2-301 - AuditoriumGenevieve Gaudet • Alex Foard • Tayyab Walker • Ariel Kennan Bus Automated Camera Enforcement: What It is, How It Works, and Findings from the Data 1-203Aanchal Hingorani • Rahnuma Tarannum • Antony Mai City of Nature, City of Data: How NYC Parks and the City Nature Challenge Document Nature in the City 2-112Kelly O'Donnell • Novem Auyeung • Tina Cuevas Dredging For Data: Where the Dataset Ends, Your Job's Just Beginning! 2-109Josh Sucher Exploring an Independent Perspective on Emergency Response Times 2-119Valerie Gudino Invisible by Design: What NYC Child Welfare Data Reveals and Erases About South Asian Families 3-201Shivani Parikh Project FloodNet x CUNY Macaulay Honors College 1-202Allen Hillery • RICARDO TOLEDO-CROW • Kennedy Betances • Daniel Leyzerzon • Ashna Gibbons • Mary McTarsney • Lizzie Tskhovrebadze • Ivy Liu • Jonathan Iskhakov • Stefanie Brijmohan • Samiha Karim The Case for Low Traffic Neighborhoods in NYC: A Data Informed Panel Discussion 1-205David Scatterday • Pedro Rodriguez • Talya Schwartz • Sara Lind • Catherine Vaughan Making the Invisible Visible: Workshopping a New Open Data Standard for AI Processes 2-116Asher Lipman • Georgia Bullen • Anh Le

3:45pm EDT

How has 10 years of civic engagement through open data changed New York? 2-301 - AuditoriumNoel Hidalgo • Zachary Feder • Adrienne Schmoeker • Lisa Mae Fiedler A Better Billion: The Math, the Map, and the Methods for Expanding Transit and Housing Affordability in New York City 1-203Franklin Tang ACE and the Race to Class: Improving Bus Speeds for CUNY Students 1-204Furkan Ay • Efe Aslanertik • Maida Kucevic Battery Swapping Hub Spatial Analysis 1-205Amy Boncelet Building an AI-Powered Knowledge Base for NYC Community Boards 2-109Sarah Sachs • Tal Roded Does this Building Suck (Energy)? Decoding Building Performance with Open Data 3-301-A/B CombinedVanessa Viola • Clarke Snell • Elijah Williams Level Up Your Design and Data Skills: SVA’s New MPS in Data Visualization & Communication 3-201Jason Forrest • David Rittenhouse • Courtney Treglia Open Data for Quality, Affordable Housing 2-116Sam O'Hana • Lisa Jakubczyk • Tahreem Ashraf Spatial Analysis of NYC Open Data using ArcGIS 2-112Jim Barry • Tim Calabrese The Council-Agency Data Loop: Sharing, Tracking, and Improving City Data 1-202Anne Driscoll • Anastasia Wincorn • James Pollitt • Malcom M. Butehorn Why NYC Needs a Community Data Portal - The Missing Half of NYC's Open Data 3-302Joel Natividad • Steven Saylor What Should We Build Next? Open Data Challenges for NYC’s Future 2-119Stephen Albonesi • Anh Nguyen • Catrina Cuadra • Noelle Francois • Tom Conboy

4:45pm EDT

Refreshments & Toast to 10 Years of Open Data Week & NYC School of Data 2-300 - Cafe

5:00pm EDT

Happy Hour at Origin Cafe + Wine Bar

9:00am EDT

Breakfast: Day 2 2-300 - Cafe Childcare: Day 2 4-203 & 4-204

9:30am EDT

Opening & Session Pitches 2-301 - Auditorium

11:00am EDT

Neighborhood Data Diaries: Storytelling with NYC Open Data 2-112Chloe Anderson Protecting Your Privacy in the Age of Surveillance 1-204Davis Erin Anderson Unconference Session Block 1 All Classrooms Gamified Hacking: Building cool things, powered by Open Data 1-205Mary Siebert • Nate Cooper

12:15pm EDT

Public / Private tech partnerships in a post-DOGE Government 2-112Rebecca Widom Socialist-Coded: Worker-Owned Tech Startups Transforming New York City 1-202Ken Lewis • Erik Forman, PhD • Troy Walcott The Cloud is a Place in Brooklyn: Speculative Design for Community-Owned Data Centers 1-204Zoe Voss Lee • Rose Hsu Unconference Session Block 2 All Classrooms

1:15pm EDT

Break - BYO Lunch TBA

2:15pm EDT

Pre-Existing Condition: Performance and Group Discussion on Healthcare in America 2-116Aidan Feldman Unconference Session Block 3 All Classrooms

4:00pm EDT

Data Through Design Artists Panel at BRIC BRIC House