Work on something that matters. You’re bright and hungry to sink your teeth into using new tech all the time. Instead of making yet another X, build something for yourself and for your neighbours & city. Do it with open data: public records now online in an easily hackable form.
You learn about tons of cool technologies at tech talks & conferences, but it’s hard to come up with good ideas to use them with.
People normally resort to making “Hello World” apps that take a weekend to make, and never end up being used again.
What if there were magical wikis that would tell you about apps that you can make: Apps that people WILL want to use.
Oh, and there’s fame in store for you to.
The secret is open data: a true world of possibilities.
Here’s a perfect example of an open data app. It’s buses mapped in REALTIME! OMGWTFBBQSAUCE that’s amazing. You want it? Open data will give it to you.
Here are the the two basic requirements for open data. Machine readable means that developers should be able to use & manipulate it without difficulties. Although“public”, a .pdf calendar is not OPEN DATA. We want the raw stuff; the gewwwwd stuff. Let us worry about how to visualize it.
Toronto data catalog.
Lat/Long coords of water fountains in Vancouver. This is the type of stuff we want.
Then we can put it on a map.
Or on a phone! Woo wooo
Shows bar locations & stabbings in DC. A great way to find out where to avoid when going out drinking.
Find out where local hockey rinks are, and have the ability to advertise ad-hoc games within the community.
Augmented reality tour guide.
There was sweet music being played with this slide. Really sweet ambient music.
If your city doesn’t have open data, you can do what a lot of developers are forced to do: scrape data off websites.
Luckily, Toronto has a great data catalog.
Ottawa’s data catalog is not as great, but we’re getting there.
Where Ottawa lacks in data, we make up for it in the community. We bring people from all walks of life to ours events. Since open data apps are for everyone, then everyone should be there! [it makes for great usability testing too ]
Developers, developers, developers, developers…Toooften events are run where the primary focus is primarily on developers
This just leads to a massive sausage fest. Good for nerdy geek parties, but not for getting the whole community involved in open data.
Moms
Developers.
Designers & Artists
Librarians
Journalists
Councilors
Guy Michaud, CIO of Ottawa.
Scans of idea cue cards.
Speed idea dating: 40 foot long table with people all around it. They had 2 minutes to write down open data ideas before we had them move 2 feet to the left. They would then build off their neighbour’s ideas.
It’s important to have a showcase to show off the apps that were made. This is especially important for the city, since they’ll be wondering where all the apps are.
The showcase & hackfest is what proved to the city that there is demand. It’s what got them started on the apps4ottawa contest. We had around 100 apps, and the biggest open data contest in North America.
Recollect.net offers free email reminders about garbage & recycling schedules, and paid phone & SMS reminders. So you heard about how awesome Twilio or Tropo’s API is, but you don’t have an idea of how to use it? Look to open data, and you have a business right there!
BrightScope makes money by providing subscription-based analytics, benchmarking software and tools to plan sponsors, advisors and providers.
With an underperforming mine in Northern Ontario, Goldcorp released data on the mine publicly on the net. They then held a contest, and a company in Australia (Fractal graphics) did a 3d model of the mine and indicated where gold was likely to be found. Goldcorp struck gold in all these areas. Look here to find out more: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/59/mcewen.html
Gov’t of Canada recently released some data.
Spacial open data. Amazing!
And if you still can’t find what you want….SCRAPE IT! Here’s a great resource to learn more.
