Hello list
I just realised that I hadn't introduced myself yet I don't think. So
here goes...
I'm Patrick Dinnen and I'm a techie with a social bent. I don't have a
huge amount of experience in the area of civic data (to say the least).
But I've had enough experiences to know that civic information, which
should be the most accessible data, is often the least accessible. I'd
like to do my small part to help change that.
I'm a volunteer with the Wireless Toronto group (free WiFi + community,
offspring of Ile Sans Fil) and earn my living as a freelance web guy.
That's me in a nutshell.
Couple of projects and people that came across my radar recently that
might be of interest:
- Ren Bucholz a policy guy with the Electronic Frontier Foundation based
in Canada. I met him at a Social Tech Brewing event on Digital Copyright
in Toronto last night (organised by Phillip Smith, who's also on this
list). Spoke to Ren briefly about the Civic Access thing and he seemed
interested in what we're trying to do and an all around good guy. More
about Ben here:
http://www.trubble.com/about/ and his blog here:
http://www.trubble.com/-
http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/007979.php is a cool
(U.S.) map of money spent on keeping people in jail by census area. I
guess the lesson here is that there's no end to the cool and informative
ways you can present data, if only you can get access to that data. But
I guess that's why we're all here.
-
http://www.whorunsthistown.to/ is a Toronto-centric municipal election
thing, trying to raise awareness and interest in the issues and
candidates for city council. Perhaps they could use an injection of some
timely local, political data? WRTT is the brand new project of Dave
Meslin who founded Toronto Public Space Committee, a pretty effective
activist group trying to protect public space in Toronto.
All for now, Patrick
Locked
