Session notes

VIDEO: http://bit.ly/DemoData

Session Title: Democratizing, Structuring, and Transforming Data

Discussion Leaders:

• W. David Stephenson (@data4all)
• Dan O’Neil from EveryBlock (juggernautco), www.derivativeworks.com
• Jeff Sonstein (@jeffsonstein)

Notes

• Bringing in the public: where to start.
• Neighborhood getting what they want/need.
• challenge for government: info (context-bound) not just data.
• P/R ramifications of mash-ups using data without appropriate context vs. Just open it up. There are always bad apples out there who will try to manipulate.
• How to deal w/figuring out what "the people want".
• How to figure out what level of granularity is appropriate.
• Build for worst-case
• In seeking access to data, what are the low-hanging fruit? 
• What is the most constructive way to frame questions for government?
• RDFa - A way to describe resources and connections between them. Both humans and machines can reason from the same document.
• • Drupal 7 about to release with RDFa built-in support.
  • • Drupal Meetup first Tuesday of every month in Boston
• Let citizens connect directly from data to a person.
• Data files vs. query APIs
• Data impact statement for anything the government is collecting data for.
• Open Data Kit - Smart forms (via Google Code)
• Offer data that folks will use to build a constituency to support scale
• Engage the local geeks (hold a hackfest) -- there are a lot of coders willing to help out on the weekends 

Repeating Key Words

• Context
• Tagging
• Budgets and barriers
• Meta data
• Standards
• Data constituency 

Resources Mentioned:

• OpenDataKit
• Boston Drupal Meetup
• Cambridge Semantic Web Meetup
• David Siegel, "Pull: The Power of the Semantic Web to Transform Your Business"
• Everyblock
• MetroBoston DataCommon