Cypher Philly, a project born from a meetup, wants to unlock the power of open data

https://technical.ly/philly/2018/11/15/cypher-philly-a-project-born-from-a-meetup-wants-to-unlock-the-power-of-open-data-jess-mason/
“It’s an open source web application project designed to empower citizens, journalists, data scientists, coders and creatives with the ability to harness open data for civic good,” Mason reads from a doc on his phone. “Our goal is to simplify the process of telling data-driven stories using open public data to bring about actionable change, while also informing citizens and governments alike.”
Cypher Philly, a project born from the Philly GraphDB meetup organized by Mason and Cox, was also a project of Code for Philly’s Civic Engagement Launchpad. Over the past year or so, the volunteer effort has been geared at getting a viable prototype up and running. Some 500 development hours have gone into its creation.
The hope is that media outlets, data scientists and organizations can leverage the application, which uses graph database management system Neo4j, to understand the data and find ways to make it actionable.
“The whole point of the project is making a difference for the city and the people who live here,” said Mason. “We want to find ways to improve the interaction between city data and its citizens.”