This last Saturday was International Open Data Day with hackathons taking place in cities around the world. How many you ask? We can’t know for certain, but organizers around the world posted events to the wiki in over 50 cities around the world. Given the number of tweets with the
Continue readingAuthor: David Eaves
eaves.ca: StatsCan’s free data costs $2M – a rant
So the other day a reader sent me an email pointing me to a story in iPolitics titled “StatsCan anticipates $2M loss from move to open data” and asked me what I thought. Frustrated, was my response. $2M is not a lot of money. Not in a federal budget of
Continue readingeaves.ca: Using Open Data to Map Vancouver’s Trees
This week, in preparation for the International Open Data Hackathon on Saturday, the Vancouver Parks Board shared one neighborhood of its tree inventory database (that I’ve uploaded to Buzzdata) so that we could at least see how it might be leveraged by citizens. What’s interesting is how valuable this data
Continue readingeaves.ca: Canada’s Foreign Aid Agency signs on to IATI: Aid Data get more transparent
Last night, while speaking at the High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan Korea, Minister of International Cooperation Bev Oda announced that Canada would be signing on to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI). So what is IATI and why does this matter? IATI has developed a common, open
Continue readingeaves.ca: International Open Data Hackathon, Dec 3rd. It’s coming together.
So a number of things have started to really come together for this Saturday Dec 3rd. I’ve noticed a number of new cities being tweeted about (hello Kuala Lumpur & Oakland!) and others adding themselves to the wiki. Indeed, we seem to be above 40 cities. It is hard to
Continue readingeaves.ca: Statistics Canada Data to become OpenData – Background, Winners and Next Steps
As some of you learned last night, Embassy Magazine broke the story that all of Statistics Canada’s online data will not only be made free, but released under the Government of Canada’s Open Data License Agreement (updated and reviewed earlier this week) that allows for commercial re-use. This decision has
Continue readingeaves.ca: The Canadian Government’s New Web 2.0 Guidelines: the Good, the Bad & the Ugly
Yesterday, the government of Canada released its new Guidelines for external use of Web 2.0. For the 99.99% of you unfamiliar with what this is, it’s the guidelines (rules) that govern how, and when, public servants may use web 2.0 tools such as twitter and facebook. You, of course, likely
Continue readingeaves.ca: The New Government of Canada Open Data License: The OGL by another name
Last week the Minister Clement issued a press release announcing some of the progress the government has made on its Open Government Initiatives. Three things caught my eye. First, it appears the government continues to revise its open data license with things continuing to trend in the right direction. As
Continue readingeaves.ca: If you are in Vancouver Vote Open Data, Vote Vision
If you are a Vancouver resident tomorrow is election day. I’m hoping if you are a resident and a reader of this blog, you’ll consider voting for Vision Vancouver. As many of you know just over two years ago the city launched Vancouver’s Open Data portal – the first of
Continue readingeaves.ca: International Open Data Hackathon Updates and Apps
With the International Open Data Hackathon getting closer, I’m getting excited. There’s been a real expansion on the wiki of the number of cities where people are sometimes humbly, sometimes grandly, putting together events. I’m seeing Nairobi, Dublin, Sydney, Warsaw and Madrid as some of the cities with newly added information. Exciting! I’ve been thinking […]
Continue readingeaves.ca: How Architecture Made SFU Vancouver’s University
For those unfamiliar with Vancouver, it is a city that enjoys a healthy one way rivalry between two university: the University of British Columbia (UBC) and Simon Fraser University (SFU). Growing up here I didn’t think much of Simon Fraser. I don’t mean that in a disparaging way, I mean it literally. SFU was simply […]
Continue readingeaves.ca: Open Data Day – a project I’d like to be doing
As some readers and International Open Data Hackathon participants know, I’m really keen on developers reusing each others code. All too often, in hackathons, we like to build something from scratch (which can be fun) but I’ve always liked the idea of hackathons either spurring genuine projects that others can reuse, or using a hackathon […]
Continue readingeaves.ca: Weaving Foreign Ministries into the Digital Era: Three ideas
Last week I was in Ottawa giving a talk at the Department of Foreign Affairs talking about how technology, new media and open innovation will impact the department’s it work internally, across Ottawa and around the world. While there is lots to share, here are three ideas I’ve been stewing on: Keep more citizens safe […]
Continue readingeaves.ca: Gov 2.0: Network Analysis for Income Inequality?
I’ve been thinking a lot about these two types of graphs at the moment. This first is a single chart that shows income growth for various segements of the US population broken down by wealth. This second is a group of graphs that talk about pageviews and visits to various websites on the internet. What […]
Continue readingeaves.ca: Using Open Data to drive good policy outcomes – Vancouver’s Rental Database
One of the best signs for open data is when governments are starting to grasp its potential to achieve policy objectives. Rather than just being about compliance, it is seen as a tool that can support the growth and management of a jurisdiction. This why I was excited to see Vision Vancouver (in which I’m […]
Continue readingeaves.ca: And Now… Another Message on Open Innovation for Realtors
Over the past few months I’ve given a number of talks on open data and open innovation to groups of realtors around the country. During these talks I have cautioned that the more the real estate industry tries to protect (e.g. not share) it’s data, the more it risks making access to data (control) be […]
Continue readingeaves.ca: As Canada Searches for its Open Government Partnership Commitments: A Proposal
Just before its launch in New York on September 20th, the Canadian Government agreed to be a signatory of the Open Government Partnership (OGP). Composed of over 40 countries the OGP signatories are required to create a list of commitments they promise to implement. Because Canada signed on just before the deadline it has not […]
Continue readingeaves.ca: The State of Open Data 2011
What is the state of the open data movement? Yesterday, during my opening keynote at the Open Government Data Camp (held this year in Warsaw, Poland) I sought to follow up on my talk from last year’s conference. Here’s my take of where we are today (I’ll post/link to a video of the talk as […]
Continue readingeaves.ca: Calling all Mozilla Contributors Past & Present
As some friends know, I’ve been working with Mozilla, helping them design an engagement audit, something to enable them assess how effective they are at engaging and empowering the community. This work has a number of aspects, much of which builds on ideas I’ve blogged about here and spoken about in the last year or […]
Continue readingeaves.ca: Brain Candy – Great Quotes from Yesterday
I’m in San Francisco to co-chair the Code for America Summit this week, so lots going on, and some deep blog posts in the works. But first. Fun! Here are some of my favourite quotes I stumbled upon or heard in the last 24 hours. “The 4-Hour Body” reads as if The New England Journal […]
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