Classes & Workshops

The Cambridge Open Data Program offers free classes and workshops for residents, students, researchers, and anyone curious about the City's data. Sessions are hands-on and beginner-friendly — no technical background required. Whether you are brand new to our open data portal or looking to deepen your data analysis skills, our classes cover finding relevant datasets, downloading and working with data, building visualizations, and using AI tools for analysis.

Slides, recordings, demo files, and example projects from every class are published on our Open Data Workshops site. Materials stay available after each session, so you can follow along at your own pace or revisit what we covered.

Check the Open Data events calendar for upcoming classes. As our data offerings grow and evolve, we continuously develop new educational materials to support our community of users. We welcome feedback on these resources and suggestions for additional topics that would be helpful for Cambridge's data community. 

Vibe Coding Cambridge Open Data (July 2026)

In this class we explored Cambridge's open data in plain English using AI coding tools — asking questions of real datasets and generating analyses, dashboards, interactive data explorers, and even a game. No coding experience required. The class materials page includes the slides, a live Cambridge 311 dashboard built during the session, the full verbatim transcript of the conversation that produced it, and the Cambridge Data Drop game along with the prompt used to create it.

Introduction to the Open Data Portal (December 2025)

This class provides a comprehensive introduction to Cambridge's open data portal, including how to search, filter, download, and work with datasets. It also covers basic visualization and AI analysis tools. Slides and class materials.

More Classes and Materials

• Open Data Workshop at the Cambridge Public Library (April 2026) — slides, an interactive Cambridge 311 explorer built in class, the prompt used to build it, and a Cambridge crime trends AI analysis.
• Visualizing Cambridge Open Data (February 2026) — data visualization fundamentals, hands-on practice, and mapping options, with a sanitary inspections data explorer.

New classes are added throughout the year, and recordings and materials from each session are posted to the Open Data Workshops site to support ongoing learning and skill development.