Civic Geekery, Digital Barnraising and YOU!
Margaret Rosas
Over the weekend I wrote up my thoughts on the "state" of digital
presence in Santa Cruz. It's a lengthy read, but it will give you
some perspective of the space from my view. Here it is:
http://mrosas.com/content/digital-barnraising
Basically, there are opportunities for us to collectively apply the
skills of our larger Santa Cruz geek crowd to bring visibility and
perspective to important issues that impact our community. And
ultimately improve our lives here in this beautiful place we are lucky
to call home.
I'd like to put forth the date of November 14 for a general planning
and strategy session to see how we can organize ourselves to
collectively tackle some local geek initiatives. Exact time and place
to be determined.
In the interim I've added the UserVoice widget to the geeks site (or
access it here: http://santacruzgeeks.uservoice.com/). Have a passion
project? A cool idea? Submit it, promote it and have folks vote it up.
There's a lot of ground to cover and we want to be super selective and
keep in mind feasibility and scope.
Another date/opportunity to keep in view is the Great American
Hackathon (http://www.sunlightlabs.com/hackathon09/) happening in
December. I think we could fold in that date into a series of local
hackathon events.
Cheers, Margaret
p.s. The Take Back Santa Cruz group (on Facebook here:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=189308553419&ref=nf)
is looking for web help (seems they may need something more immediate
than we can tackle? unless YOU have some bandwidth?)
--
Margaret Rosas
Founder & Chief Strategist
Quiddities - A Creative Web Solutions Agency
chris arkenberg
In the Information Economy, the most valuable core asset is data. Whereas power increasingly accretes around controlling access to data, innovation & resiliency increasingly builds around opening access to data. Collect good data, structure it and normalize it into RDF/XML, slap an API around it and open it to 3rd party devs.
And FWIW, I *did* read the 208pg General Plan 2030 and there is effectively zero awareness of the city's data shadow communicated in the document. While I applaud the efforts of the Plan's authors in meeting the established challenges of our community, I implore them to extend their awareness of local resources to include the realm of internet- and device-mediated transactions that have become so critical to our functioning.
chris arkenberg | http://twitter.com/chris23 | http://urbeingrecorded.com/news
Tara Sawyer
for a new Library System. I would be very interested in working with
someone to put together a proposal with an open source solution, and
open-source data access to what amounts to MARC records.
I'll try to keep Nov. 14th open. peacetara is my twitter username.
With Love,
Tara
chris arkenberg
Quick overview: Mix embedded devices & sensor networks (many are already present in streets, lights, city vehicles, farms, phones, cctv, etc), ubiquitous computing & mobile saturation, data standards & rich dynamic data viz, API-mediated service ecologies, augmented reality and locative markups, open wi-fi and mobile mesh networks, <rant>a decent City of SC homepage that wasn't made 10yrs ago... Honestly, why hasn't the City cut a deal with Cruzio to develop & co-host the portal? If you want the brand to attract professionals, then make it look professional.</rant>, etc...
Dig:
San Francisco's data portal with links to apps sprouting off it's data ecosystem: http://datasf.org/
Harvard investigations into the senseable city: http://www.citysense.net/
Washington DC's run-time data platform: http://data.octo.dc.gov/Main_DataCatalog.aspx
A great visualization of crime in Oakland: http://oakland.crimespotting.org/
The most complete local data aggregation platform: http://www.everyblock.com/
NOAA's data feeds: http://www.nws.noaa.gov/xml/current_obs/
MIT's research in capturing an visualizing social & mobile data: http://senseable.mit.edu/
Best practices for open government data: http://ifap-is-observatory.ittk.hu/node/78
The US Gov official site for revealing the operational data shadow of governance: http://www.data.gov/
Paper on civic hacking, the semantic web, and data visualizations: http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:-7wTACBhdtoJ:razor.occams.info/pubdocs/2009-03-02_TCamp_Civic_Semantic_Web.pdf+civic+data+visualization&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a
2 great articles from PICNIC09 on the city as interaction platform:
http://www.themobilecity.nl/2009/10/02/picnic-09-report-1-augmented-reality/
http://www.themobilecity.nl/2009/10/09/593/
Chris,Are there specific data collection guidelines that other communities have implemented that we can recommend to local government? How about some specific examples of practical applications that can grow out of data collection?I think guidelines, case studies, and success stories could go a long way towards illustrating the utility of the idea, and would also help to provide a counterpoint to the kind of privacy related anxiousness I can anticipate from some elements of our community.Jason
chris arkenberg
Let us talk soon, eh?
chris arkenberg
Jason Wehmhoener
Margaret Rosas
I think this is the place I've been stuck for months now. My inner
geek (right, like I'm not an outer geek too .. I digress) can see how
we can create amazing data visualizations. However, beyond geekery and
art they have to ultimately yield measurable results. Here are some
potential use cases:
1) help me (a citizen) make choices based on data
example here: http://outsideindc.com/stumblesafely
2) help me (city council member) get a true read on community pulse
(listening outside the meetings)
3) help me (citizen) evaluate my elected officials behavior (voting
patterns, etc) based on easy viewable, digestible data
4) help me (business owner) respond to opportunity in the marketplace
A huge factor is going to be ease of use and access. Tying into
location aware devices to create what Vanderwal calls the "Come to me
Web" (see here:
http://www.personalinfocloud.com/2006/01/the_come_to_me_.html) ... not
the Google me web :)
That's where I would start ...
chris arkenberg
The easiest and cheapest baby step for Santa Cruz is to standardize the data that is already being regularly captured & published (eg SCPD, SCFD, SCMU, licensing, home prices, interest rates, etc...), then aggregate it and make it publicly available. This is a minor chunk of IT budget that will invite local geeks & entrepreneurs to engage with the SC datasets and show us what is possible. This moves the burden of time & money out of the city budget and into alignment with the passions, skills, & innovations of the community. But it will only happen if City gov makes it a priority by understanding that open, normalized data will actually make Civic operations more fluid simply by making it easier for offices to share info and for auditors to roll up operational reports.
UK Guardian on DataSF: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/oct/14/san-francisco-open-city-data
"Two months after it launched, the project is already reaping rewards from San Francisco's huge community of programmers. Applications using the data include Routesy, which offers directions based on real-time city transport feeds; and EcoFinder, which points you to the nearest recycling site for a given item... One company, SpatialKey, has created a visualisation tool that lets residents check for drug offences taking place near schools. The local data service EveryBlock, meanwhile, is helping residents track calls to 311, the number used for requests to fix broken streetlights, potholes, blocked drains and the like."
Whatever the impediments to progress, [SF Mayor Newsom's deputy communications director, Brian] Purchia points out that the most important barrier was not really expense. Most of the data exists already, he says – just not in a format that developers can use. "The cost is there, but most of it is just man hours."
So civic costs are minimal and a tangible, already-known benefit is the stimulation of innovation and entrepreneurialism around open data. From this perspective, normalizing & opening city datasets contributes to local economic development.
Chris
I was recently involved with a Google Earth data visualization project and was blown away by the potential of it to engage, communicate with, and inform otherwise tech-averse groups. Most people don’t want to deal with datasets (though the datasets need to be accessible if not editable); they want clear images and animations of situations and trends. GE does this very well, though the technology still has a few rough edges. Might be worth some time reviewing what can be done with it and the best way to show it.
- Chris
Chris Yonge
Principal
Studio Cruz
Design, Technical
Animation, 3D Visualization
ch...@studiocruz.com
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