Yesterday, at the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada’s (PDAC) Canada Minister of Natural Resource, Joe Oliver, announced with great fanfare a new initiative to compel mining companies to disclose payments of over $100,000′s to foreign and domestic governments. On the surface this looks like a win for transparency, particularly for
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eaves.ca: Great Hacks from the Open Data in Vancouver
Last weekend I helped host an Open Data Day in Vancouver. With the generous support of Domain7, who gave us a place to host talks and hack, over 30 Vancouverites braved the sleet and snow to spend the day sharing ideas and working on projects. We had opening comments from
Continue readingeaves.ca: Open Data Day 2014 – Five Fun Events Around the World
With over 110 Events happening world wide it is impossible to talk about every Open Data Day event. But looking almost every event on the wiki I’ve been deeply moved and inspired by the various efforts, goals and aspirations of the people who have organized these events. In order to
Continue readingeaves.ca: Open Data Day in Vancouver – Registration is live
I’m happy to share that this February 22nd there will be an Open Data Day event in Vancouver. The details are as follows: The event will take place at Domain7 – who have kindly volunteered their space – on Saturday, February 22, from 10:00 AM to 4:30 PM. We have
Continue readingeaves.ca: The dangerous mystique of the “open data” business
I’m frequently asked by people about how they can start an “open data business.” Let me first say that I love that the question gets asked. I love that people are interested in Open Data. I love that people want to learn more, they want to play, they want to
Continue readingeaves.ca: Open Data Day Google+ Hang Out
With just about a month to go until Open Data Day things are going well. There are quite a few cities that have been added to the open data day wiki. This year we thought we would try something new. On January 21st we are going to host a Get Ready For
Continue readingeaves.ca: Open Data for Development Challenge on Jan 27-28
This just came across my email via Michael Roberts who has been doing great work in this space. Open Data for Development Challenge January 27–28, 2014 — Montreal, Canada Do you want to share your creative ideas and cutting-edge expertise, and make a difference in the world? Do you want
Continue readingeaves.ca: Open Data Day 2014 is Coming Feb 22 – Time to Join the Fun!
So, with much help from various community members (who reminded me that we need to get this rolling – looking at you Heather Leson), I pleased to say we are starting to gear up for Open Data Day 2014 on February 22nd, 2014. From its humble beginnings of a conversation between
Continue readingeaves.ca: The Importance of Open Data Critiques – thoughts and context
Over at the Programmable City website Rob Kitchin has a thoughtful blog post on open data critiques. It is very much worth reading and wider discussion. Specifically, there are two competing things worth noting. First, it is important for the open data community – and advocates in particular – to
Continue readingeaves.ca: The Uncertain Future of Open Data in the Government of Canada
It is possible to state that presently, open data is at its high water mark in the Government of Canada. Data.gc.ca has been refreshed, more importantly, the government has signed the Open Data Charter committing it to making data “open” by default, and a rash of new data sets have
Continue readingeaves.ca: Some thoughts on the relaunched data.gc.ca
Yesterday, I talked about what I thought was the real story that got missed in the fanfare surrounding the relaunch of data.gc.ca. Today I’ll talk about the new data.gc.ca itself. Before I begin, there is an important disclaimer to share (to be open!). Earlier this year Treasury Board asked me
Continue readingeaves.ca: The Real News Story about the Relaunch of data.gc.ca
As many of my open data friends know, yesterday the government launched its new open data portal to great fanfare. While there is much to talk about there – something I will dive into tomorrow – that was not the only thing that happened yesterday. Indeed, I did a lot
Continue readingopenalex: écoHackMTL: An excellent launch
We had an excellent turnout for the écoHackMTL launch. A big thank-you to everyone who helped me put it together! If you missed the action you can see a few photos over on our facebook page. With close to 75 people in the room the energy was phenomenal, and we
Continue readingopenalex: écoHackMTL: An excellent launch
We had an excellent turnout for the écoHackMTL launch. A big had for everyone who helped me put it together! If you missed the action you can see a few photos over on our facebook page. With close to 75 people in the room the energy was phenomenal, and we
Continue readingopenalex: écoHackMTL: An excellent launch
We had an excellent turnout for the écoHackMTL launch. A big thank-you to everyone who helped me put it together! If you missed the action you can see a few photos over on our facebook page.
With close to 75 people in the room the energy was phenomenal, and we had a good mix of developers, community activists and NGOs, and representatives from the city. Those were exactly the connections that we were trying to make possible.
Now the questions is how much of that momentum we can translate into concrete projects between now and the hack itself in October.
Stay tuned. And for more info check out www.ecohackmtl.org.
Continue readingeaves.ca: Some Nice Journalistic Data Visualization – Global’s Crude Awakening
Over at Global, David Skok and his team have created a very nice visualization of the over 28,666 crude oil spills that have happened on Alberta pipelines over the last 37 years (that’s about two a day). Indeed, for good measure they’ve also visualized the additional 31,453 spills of “other” substance
Continue readingeaves.ca: The Value of Open Data – Don’t Measure Growth, Measure Destruction
Alexander Howard – who, in my mind, is the best guy covering the Gov 2.0 space – pinged me the other night to ask “What’s the best evidence of open data leading to economic outcomes that you’ve seen?” I’d like to hack the question because – I suspect – for
Continue readingeaves.ca: Canada Post and the War on Open Data, Innovation & Common Sense (continued, sadly)
Almost exactly a year ago I wrote a blog post on Canada Post’s War on the 21st Century, Innovation & Productivity. In it I highlighted how Canada Post launched a lawsuit against a company – Geocoder.ca – that recreates the postal code database via crowdsourcing. Canada Posts case was never
Continue readingeaves.ca: Open Data Day: Lessons for Hacktivists
This piece is cross-posted on TechPresident where I post articles on the intersection of politics, technology and transparency and serve as an editor. Three years ago, after a chance encounter with Daniela Silva and Pedro Markun of Sao Paulo and a meeting with Edward Ocampo-Gooding and Mary Beth Baker in Ottawa,
Continue readingeaves.ca: Open Data Day 2013 in Vancouver
Better late than never, I’m going to do a few posts this week recapping a number of ideas and thoughts from Open Data Day 2013. As is most appropriate, I’m going to start the week with a recap of Vancouver – the Open Data Day event I attended and helped
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