Data curious but don’t know where to start? This June 8 event is for you.

Whether you’re a data novice or a data expert, a staff-led event on Wednesday, June 8, aims to help people at Pitt get started using the bounty of information available at a large university and introduce them to Pitt’s data community.

“It’s about helping people realize there are faster ways to do some of the things you want to do — and we can help you with that,” said Pitt Information Technology Senior Data Scientist Nalyn Siripong, an event organizer.

Data@Pitt, part of the Year of Data and Society, will feature a day of talks and workshops to help people get started using data, including tools like Tableau and Amazon Web Services.

Keynote speaker Amelia Parnell, vice president for research and policy at the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators, will discuss her book “You Are a Data Person,” which aims to help university employees incorporate data into their work.

Event organizer Robin Leaf, director of academic and department operations for the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, came up with the idea for the event when looking through other Year of Data and Society proposals. She saw a need for something aimed at a more general audience: employees who are interested in making better use of data but don’t have much experience.

“I think data scares some people,” Leaf said. “We wanted to open this up for people who are curious and wanted to learn where to start.”

The event was organized by a group including representatives from Pitt IT’s analytics group, the School of Computing and Information and the Office of the Senior Vice Chancellor for Research.

Organizers hope attendees will come out of the event not only having a better sense of where they can find information across the University and how to make the best use of it — from creating informative dashboards to streamlining their annual reporting — but also with new connections to others in the data community at Pitt they can learn more from.

Attendees can join remotely via Zoom or in-person in the Pitt Public Health Building, with lunches provided.

RSVP by Thursday, June 2 for the Data@Pitt event.

— Patrick Monahan