Introductions

[Bill Bushey]

Hi Everybody,

Following the great conversations that occurred at CityCampMN, we've added over 70 CityCampMN participants to the Open Twin Cities group. Welcome everybody. For new folks, please use this thread to say "hi", introduce yourself, and describe your interest in civic tech, open data, or whatever it is that brought you to Open Twin Cities or CityCampMN. For members who have been around for a while, feel free to do the same as well; it's always good to know who's in the group.

So hi everybody. I'm Bill Bushey, one of the captains of Open Twin Cities, and the Technology Coordinator at E-Democracy.org. What brings me to OTC? Generally a sense that data and online technology exert a stronger and stronger impact on the lives of citizens, what they can do in their daily life, how they live in their communities, and how they interact with their governments. And because of this impact, a democratic society in the 21st century needs someway for citizens to be involved in creating and providing feedback on the technology of their communities and governments.

[Alan Palazzolo]

Hey everyone. Welcome if you are new, and howdy for those folks that
have been here for a minute.

I’m Alan and I am the other, more silent, co-captain of the group. I
am driven by the need to build things that help, excite, and engage
our communities. I wish I had more time to commit.
--
Alan Palazzolo
Code for America
2011 Fellow
al...@codeforamerica.org
+1 770 596 1951

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[Jordan Peacock]

Hello all

I've been lurking on OTC pretty well since its inception. I've had other commitments, so I've kept pretty quiet; I hope to change that come 2014.

I'm south of the Minnesota river, and am terribly interested in seeing both the public and private spheres better understand their approaches to technology and the embarrassment of riches we are subject to.

My background is in server platforms, particularly the iSeries and business software, although some web app development (using Drupal/PHP, Pyramid/Python, Polymer/Dart and HTML5/JavaScript). I study philosophy of technology as a graduate student with European Graduate School. I can't divulge details at present, but come the new year I'm planning to channel this philosophy/software synthesis into several new arenas, one of which involves engagements with local city government and high schools. Fingers crossed.

Thanks to Bill and Alan for coordinating so much and keeping the innumerable plates spinning.

Jordan Peacock
=====================

hewhoc...@gmail.com
jordan....@egs.edu

jor...@nousmachina.net
jor...@peacockclan.net

hewhocutsdown.net

[MaryJo Webster]

Hello,

I'm MaryJo Webster and I am new to this group. I am a journalist at the St. Paul Pioneer Press, where I specialize in analyzing data for news stories and making data more readily available to the public. In addition to writing stories, I oversee our Data Mine page where we have searchable databases or interactive maps/graphics that we built, plus links to other sites that I think would be useful for members of the general public.

Why I'm in this group? I spend a very large part of my work hours hunting down and requesting public data -- mostly at the local and state level. I experience, first hand, WHY we need to push for more open, easy access to data. Nearly every request I make requires some extra effort on my part, or the need to wait for way to long!  There are so many ways that data can be useful in understanding how our government works, so it's imperative that data should be easily accessible for everybody. 

MaryJo Webster

St. Paul Pioneer Press

@mndatamine

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MaryJo Webster

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St. Paul Pioneer Press

651-228-5507

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Twitter: @mndatamine

[Kristina Durivage]

Hello, I'm Kristina. I'm interested in programming data visualizations, and like to participate in the various hackathons/contests being held. I'm a software engineer mostly doing front end stuff now, but in the past have done a ton of database programming, which is nice for data conditioning that I need to for data visualization projects. 

I initially joined to find more projects to do to keep me learning d3.js, although that isn't so much a problem anymore.

[Rosie Hoyem]

Hey Everyone,

I'm jumping on this a bit late, but better late than never.

I have a background in Architecture (UofM) and Planning (Cornell) and have spent most of the last 5 years working on both the private and public policy sides of the energy world. After dabbling for years, I recently decided to take the full leap into web development. This past fall I went through the Flatiron School out in NYC (a Rails bootcamp) and am now back in Minneapolis getting settled and sorting out the details of my new life. I do Ruby on Rails and am working on beefing up my Javascript skills and plan to dive into Python next month.

I'm excited to get involved in some projects (let me know if you are looking for help!) and look forward to meeting many of you at the next Meetups.

Cheers,

Rosie

[Steven Clift]

Welcome Rosie!

Who else is inspired to share a short introduction? It is great to see who is here.

Steven Clift - cl...@e-democracy.org
+1 612 234 7072

[Celine Cumming]

Hi Everyone! I'm Celine! I know this is way late and I'm sure this has been going on for a long time, but I figured that there isn't really a deadline on membership so the sooner the better. I found out about this through a TED talk. I watch one a day and I saw the one about why good hackers make good citizens by Catherine Bracy (I think that was her name...). I'm really passionate about some social and political issues, so I thought I should investigate. When I saw some of the stuff Open Twin Cities was working on, I knew I had to join and see what this is all about! I am very new to computer programming and hacking, but I am participating in the EdX Harvard course CS50, which is a programming course and I'm hoping to be able to soon do something great!

On Monday, December 9, 2013 4:48:33 PM UTC-6, Bill Bushey wrote:

[Greg Beaumont]

Greetings,

I am a Business Intelligence Architect who is looking to expand my career into open data.  My professional experience primarily entails designing and building data warehouses, data cubes, and dashboards.  I prefer to work on the analytics and data visualization side of BI.  My primary skills are data modeling (Kimball style), Microsoft BI (SSAS, SSRS, SSIS, Excel, Power Pivot, MDX, SQL, DAX), and dashboard design.  I think that open data has a bright future to provide value to government, quality of life, business, and more.  I'm joining this group to network and learn more about what's going on locally with open data.  I've been working the last several years in enterprise BI, and working with open data would give me an opportunity to broaden my experience and participate in work that provides value to communities. In order to gain experience in open data I've been building some data mashups, writing a few blog articles to get hands-on experience (opendatabits.com), and exploring different open data platforms and data sets.  I look forward to networking opportunities and learning from the experiences of this group.

Greg Beaumont

Hugo, MN     

[Clint McMahon]

Hey everybody, 

My name is Clint I'm a full time software developer in a c# environment and also own a t-shirt shop on the side. I'm interested in what you guys are doing with all the public data available and would like to contribute by developing some apps/sites. I think there is a lot of potential in the Twin Cities to utilize the data that is publicly available for interesting & helpful apps.

I'm currently working on two apps that don't necessarily fall under the 'civic technology' category but they both touch on open data in a sense. The first is the 89.3 The Current data harvester which scrapes every song played on the Current then posted to their playlist page. The harvester runs in MS Azure and hits the playlist site every minute for new data. I then took the data and implemented it into different views and charts and posted the information online here. The web front end utilizes entity framework and Twitter Bootstrap.

The other is a Twitter retweet service called The Tamale Tracker. This is a community driven Twitter account that retweets tweets that are sent to it that inform followers where the tamale guys are in Chicago. This service can be opened up to a generic Twitter account for news, severe weather warnings, events, updates, etc. 

I'd love to take these two concepts and apply them to Open Twin Cities in whatever way works.

Looking forward to being a part of the group.

- Clint

@minnepixel

On Monday, December 9, 2013 4:48:33 PM UTC-6, Bill Bushey wrote:

[Eddie]

Hello all,

I am new to this group. I attended my first Meetup with you guys last night. It was great!

My name is Eddie Glenn. I graduated from the U of M Law school a few years ago, and moved to Chicago for a job at a non-profit. A year or two ago, I started coding web apps in my spare time, and I quickly fell in love with the creative expression and problem solving of software development. I decided to reorient my career around technology, but that wasn't a big enough change, so I decided to move back to Minneapolis as well!

I also want to maintain a connection with public service and I am looking for opportunities to work on projects that will help me to increase my tech skills (I am learning JavaScript, Node.js, and the related web app frameworks), and maybe allow me to contribute something from my legal experience or any other skills I might have.

I dug around the Open TC website's Projects list and some of them were very interesting to me - the web app supporting People of Color in business presented at Code Capital 2014; and the projects on law enforcement data regarding domestic violence and human trafficking visualization suggested at Hack for MN in 2013. If anyone knows if these projects are still operating, or if you know of any other projects where my skills may be of use, please let me know.

Thank you!

Eddie

[Frank Beissel]

Hello, I have been a passive member for a while.  I hope to be more active soon.

I am a biochemist by training and a strong proponent of local makerspaces.  Open TC continues to suprise me with their (our) willingness to help out and push for a greater understanding of our communities.

It is great to see this group grow.

Frank Beissel

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[Bill Bushey]

Welcome and hello Eddie and Frank.

I know this doesn't directly answer your questions Eddie, but since you've looked through the projects list on the website, you've probably gotten the sense that one project to be worked on is keeping track of projects. If this sounds interesting to you, there is a platform that we're looking to try out called Laddr. One way to really help out Open Twin Cities would be to add a few projects from the current projects list to a stage instance of Laddr that has been setup for us.

As for the specific projects you mentioned, your best bet for finding out how to get involved with those is to contact https://twitter.com/davidedgertonjr for People of Color MN, and https://twitter.com/gelicia and https://twitter.com/matthewmj for the human trafficking visualization idea.

Cheers,

Bill

[Kate Kuehl]

Hello everyone!

My name is Kate Kuehl! I'm a student at the U, a researcher at GroupLens and founder of Mobineo (mobineo.org). For my research at GroupLens, we've been looking catastrophic failures of GPS navigation. I'm interested in looking to see if we can find any court or incident reports for MN and search for any that might be GPS related. Is this information public and how would I go about accessing it?

Thanks!

On Monday, December 9, 2013 at 4:48:33 PM UTC-6, wbushey wrote:

[Frank Beissel]

Kate.  This sounds like a fun project.  I don't have anything yet but will start looking

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[MaryJo Webster]

The Minnesota district court system has a data system called MNCIS. They have an online lookup, but it's limited (you can only find current/active cases if you have the case number -- and you can otherwise only search old cases by name). However, you can get a public extract of civil case filings that would allow you to search by the name of the company or possibly some key words related to the lawsuit. I'm thinking that maybe you'd find a civil lawsuits against GPS device companies.  It might be quite the hunt to find specific cases and those cases may not be filed in Minnesota if the company is based elsewhere.

They will likely charge for the data extract as well. The court system is not subject to the Data Practices Act; they have their own set of rules and costs, etc. 

Here's their info on making a data request:

http://www.mncourts.gov/Help-Topics/Data-Requests.aspx

You'd probably also want to check the federal court system.Those cases are available through PACER: https://www.pacer.gov/

Finding police incident reports of accidents caused by faulty GPS sounds like a need-in-a-haystack effort. I'd start with the lawsuits and then if you find lawsuits, you'll likely find lawyers who perhaps have already done the digging for other cases. 

Hope that helps.

MaryJo

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MaryJo Webster

mjweb...@gmail.com

651-491-6576

@MaryJoWebster

[Cory Y]

Kate,

As a student at the University of Minnesota you have access to Lexis-Nexis and Westlaw. They will allow you to search the case law expeditiously. As for incident reports, you might consider asking the research librarians while you are there. That is their job and they are usually quite good at it.

-Cory

[Josh Pauly]

Hello,

My name is Josh Pauly. I taught AVID and social studies in Minneapolis Public Schools for the past 3 years. I decided to create a public policy nonprofit because I feel like it is very difficult for individuals to have their voice heard in the current political process. Our mission is to increase equitable community engagement in the local political process. A lot of what we do focuses on using technology and open data.

Our website has some more info- http://peoplesourcedpolicy.org/

One way we are trying to engage people is by gamifying policy. For example, we were on TPT's Almanac a couple weeks ago discussing some of our strategies to gamify public policy and make it more accessible to the general population. If anyone is interested in helping us develop some interactive policy games, please contact me: jo...@peoplesourcedpolicy.org

Thanks! 

On Monday, December 9, 2013 at 4:48:33 PM UTC-6, wbushey wrote: