Dutch Data Drinks #3 — Open Data Day

If you’ve been following the blog, you must have noticed that we are back from hiatus. There is so much happening in the field of data right now, that we would be amiss not to organize the next (third!) data drinks sooner rather that later.

Luckily we can make it coincide nicely with the Open Data Day that takes place on December 4th. We understand that it probably is Pakjesavond that evening for some, but I have opened up @ouroffice in the Volkskrantgebouw for hacking during the daytime, see the City Events page on the Open Data Day wiki.

So that constitutes a two part event:

1. Hacking — @ouroffice (2nd floor, Wibautstraat 150, ring Alper +31-6-24553306 to get in) will be open from 12:30 to 16:00 for anybody interested to drink our coffee and sit down and hack or discuss technical issues. A heads up as a comment, tweet or text that you will be there would be nice and will help us plan. The office seats around 8 people and has WiFi but that can be expanded.

2. Drinks — We will then adjourn at 16:00 for Saturday afternoon drinks to the nearby Ysbreeker (follow @MonsterSwell for updates on that) which should give everybody enough time to drink a couple of beers and then either enjoy Sinterklaas or go somewhere for dinner.

Feel free to join either: Facebook event page.

Dutch Data Drinks is an informal social event meant to get everybody interested in data together and talking to exchange information and form collaborations. Topics include: open data, transparent government, data visualization, cartography, statistics, data mining, journalism and pretty much anything generating, processing, analyzing or displaying data.

Update: It looks that there’s a bunch of interest from higher up and that during the hacking part some announcements will be made and some datasets revealed etc. More news to follow.

Video of The Rising Tide of Data

Watch Alper give a broad sweeping introduction on the field of data at a recent Mobile Monday Amsterdam:

Next Week’s Public Appearances

Next Wednesday Alper will be presenting about Foursquare in the Netherlands, its past, its present and its future on Social Media Club 030 #8.

Alper will also join a Hack de Overheid team of experts to provide technical support at the Conference for Investigative Journalism in Ghent. We will aid journalists with their data issues and questions and we will also develop an application during the conference based on the demand we see.

Update: the slides of the presentation at SMC have been posted to their Slideshare.

Video for Civic Duty

The previous video for Civic Duty in a Hyper-Connected World was somewhat poorly accessible because it is locked in a HVA courseware environment. The Club of Amsterdam has graciously provided the raw video which we converted and uploaded to Vimeo.

Sound is not completely in sync, but this should serve as a nice narrative accompaniment to the slides posted here before:

Civic Duty in a Hyper-Connected World from Alper Çugun on Vimeo.

Open Data in Amsterdam Center Adopted

A proposal on the topic of Open Data (link to PDF) that Monster Swell advised Thijs Kleinpaste and Stefan de Bruijn on was discussed during a meeting by the commission for general affairs of the sub-municipality Center of Amsterdam.

Alper used the opportunity to take three minutes to address the council before the meeting and posted a call to action for better and more effective digital public services using open data and asked the city to open up more of its data.

When the proposal was finally treated it was adopted near unanimously (tweet) by the entire council with also a positive recommendation by the alderman. The alderman commented that because he used to be an open source developer, an open data project had been on his list of things to do for a while now and he welcomed this proposal. His idea was to spend the allocated €10’000 on projects in the form of bounties to maximize the effectiveness and first grab the low-hanging fruit.

At the same time in San Francisco it seems an open data law was voted into effect (link to legislation). The ordinance is interesting to read and lists:

Findings:

An open data policy will provide benefits to the City, which include:

1. enhanced government transparency and accountability
2. development of new analyses or applications based on the unique data the City provides
3. mobilization of San Francisco’s high-tech workforce to use City data to create useful civic tools at no cost to the city
4. creation of social and economic benefits based on innovation in how residents interact with government stemming from increased accessibility to City data sets

City departments should take further steps to make their data sets available to the public in a more timely and efficient manner.

It would seem that the time is now ripe to push this agenda through local legislative bodies. Given the current trend towards better digital services and transparency a suitably drafted proposal for open data with a realistic goal can scarcely have any opponents.

We’re going to look into passing more proposals towards open data like this following the lead of Amsterdam.

Update: the minutes for the commission meeting have been posted: Dutch PDF

The Rising Tide of Data on Mobile Monday

“The Rising Tide of Data” was a more pared down, less activist, introductory version of “Civicy Duty in a Hyper-Connected World” presented by Alper and it was well received in a solid program by Mobile Monday Amsterdam on Data.

Esther Gons (also pictured below) does visual representations of complicated concepts and she did this sketch of my presentation:

Click for a bigger view and her take on the event.

Annotated slides and video will be available shortly.

Open Innovation Festival for the city of Amsterdam

Alper will be giving a one hour workshop to civil servants of the city of Amsterdam concerning open data on the Open Innovation Festival, on December 3rd from 11:00-12:00. This workshop will treat the benefits of open data for the city and the general public of Amsterdam and is a further push of this agenda within the municipality.

The Rising Tide of Data on Mobile Monday

Alper will be giving a brief data-heavy talk titled “The Rising Tide of Data” at Mobile Monday Amsterdam #18. More to follow.