UnSummit

[Gerry Tychon-2]

Hello to all ...

As some of you know from a previous email, I was attempting to organize an open data UnSummit event for Saturday, 10th of June. Alas, I have had to abandon this effort due to the lack of a suitable venue (although I was tempted to accept the offer of a 500 seat auditorium -- that wouldn't have worked) and also have enough time to promote.

I had wanted to create an open data event that was:

Open and accessible – no cost to attend and scheduled when most people would be able to attend.

Participant driven – participants drive the agenda, come to share, learn, and ask questions.

Flexible in what can happen – this can include show and tell presentations, happy open data stories, sad open data stories, queries for help, coding tables, open science, and discussion/brain storming sessions.

Encouraging for individuals involved with community groups, small entrepreneurs, students, and academics.


While this event will not happen, I would like to publicly thank the following for their encouragement, endorsement, and support:

The Society of Edmonton Demographers (SED) for their official endorsement and help with organizing (a big shout out to Donna Fong).

Jonathan Schaeffer, Dean of Science, University of Alberta -- a big believer in open data and who also offered support.

Cybera -- who offered financial support and staff for “show and tell” sessions.

Tony Briggs --  Alberta School of Business (University of Alberta) and Co-Founder of eHUB who offered help to market this event and facilitate a more entrepreneurial spirit.

Councillor Ben Henderson -- local Councillor with the City of Edmonton who thought this was a great idea and who is a strong believer in pubic engagement.

And to the many community members and students (I really wanted to get more students involved) who I pitched this idea to and who wanted to participate -- my thanks and also my apologies.

... gerry tychon

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[Gerry Tychon-2]

Hi John ...

I was really hoping for some passion and excitement which I think open data needs right now.

The "unevent" would have been low cost to pull off. The main issue was having a suitable venue and that should have been tackled with more vigor right at the beginning.

Since an open space approach would have been used there really would have been very little risk of "failure". Whatever happens, happens. Traditional conferences have to sell tickets to cover costs and/or put "bums in the seats" so as to not look bad or be embarrassed.

I was also hoping to get some discussion going on what is working and what is not working re open data. I think there is an elephant in the room here.

... gerry

On 2017-06-05 4:32 PM, john whelan wrote:

I seem to recall someone did an unconference in Ottawa, they had a budget of I think $5,000.  I seem to recall more passion than anything else.  It was difficult to work out which session was worth looking at.  Microsoft did one in Ottawa, better organised but one got the feeling the conclusions went nowhere.

Cheerio John

On 5 June 2017 at 16:50, Gerry Tychon <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hello to all ...

As some of you know from a previous email, I was attempting to organize an open data UnSummit event for Saturday, 10th of June. Alas, I have had to abandon this effort due to the lack of a suitable venue (although I was tempted to accept the offer of a 500 seat auditorium -- that wouldn't have worked) and also have enough time to promote.

I had wanted to create an open data event that was:

Open and accessible – no cost to attend and scheduled when most people would be able to attend.

Participant driven – participants drive the agenda, come to share, learn, and ask questions.

Flexible in what can happen – this can include show and tell presentations, happy open data stories, sad open data stories, queries for help, coding tables, open science, and discussion/brain storming sessions.

Encouraging for individuals involved with community groups, small entrepreneurs, students, and academics.


While this event will not happen, I would like to publicly thank the following for their encouragement, endorsement, and support:

The Society of Edmonton Demographers (SED) for their official endorsement and help with organizing (a big shout out to Donna Fong).

Jonathan Schaeffer, Dean of Science, University of Alberta -- a big believer in open data and who also offered support.

Cybera -- who offered financial support and staff for “show and tell” sessions.

Tony Briggs --  Alberta School of Business (University of Alberta) and Co-Founder of eHUB who offered help to market this event and facilitate a more entrepreneurial spirit.

Councillor Ben Henderson -- local Councillor with the City of Edmonton who thought this was a great idea and who is a strong believer in pubic engagement.

And to the many community members and students (I really wanted to get more students involved) who I pitched this idea to and who wanted to participate -- my thanks and also my apologies.

... gerry tychon

_______________________________________________
CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss

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CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss

[john whelan]

In my experience Open Data takes patience and time.  Simple things like bringing in the bus stop locations from City of Ottawa took five years.  However things are beginning to fall into place. Stats Canada is using OpenStreetMap to collect data on buildings in Ottawa and young Tracey was instrumental in the process.  Licensing was an issue but following the Treasury Board licensing guidelines meant the City of Ottawa Open Data can now be used.

TB has announced a tool kit for municipalities and with them hoping to gain a better understanding of their buildings I'm hopeful that their Open Data license will become more useful.  More bus stops for a start.  Most transport systems make their data available in GTFS format but getting the Open Data license right as well can be a problem.  So a major step here has been getting OSM to accept Open Data.  The hope is we can get more in over time.

For GIS data there is something called R.  R.org  The NGOs that are involved in HOT (Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team) www.hotosm.org are pulling data out of OpenStreetMap and combining it with other data using R.  It's taking time but my hope is we can come up with a series of applications that assist urban and rural planning in Africa where they don't have the cash for the more conventional planning tools. My understanding is a number of economists in Montreal are very excited about the building data in Ottawa because the cost of working with building data and combining it with other data has been a major problem for researchers.

Since this is essentially software there is a nice research project for someone to document the process and list the advantages of planning for various levels of government.  In one area of Zambia using people who worked for the city in GIS areas they mapped all the buildings in one section of the city and working backwards realised that there were three times as many buildings as they had thought which in turn meant roughly three times their population estimate.  How many vaccine shots do you need?

Since the format of OSM is the same world over the same techniques can be applied anywhere in the world.

Unfortunately the cost of getting Robert out of Zambia to talk about his use of open data is a little expensive.  However HOT is organising a world wide summit in Ottawa September 14th and 15th 2017.  Could you build on that?

Cheerio John

On 6 June 2017 at 13:04, Gerry Tychon <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi John ...

I was really hoping for some passion and excitement which I think open data needs right now.

The "unevent" would have been low cost to pull off. The main issue was having a suitable venue and that should have been tackled with more vigor right at the beginning.

Since an open space approach would have been used there really would have been very little risk of "failure". Whatever happens, happens. Traditional conferences have to sell tickets to cover costs and/or put "bums in the seats" so as to not look bad or be embarrassed.

I was also hoping to get some discussion going on what is working and what is not working re open data. I think there is an elephant in the room here.

... gerry

On 2017-06-05 4:32 PM, john whelan wrote:

I seem to recall someone did an unconference in Ottawa, they had a budget of I think $5,000.  I seem to recall more passion than anything else.  It was difficult to work out which session was worth looking at.  Microsoft did one in Ottawa, better organised but one got the feeling the conclusions went nowhere.

Cheerio John

On 5 June 2017 at 16:50, Gerry Tychon <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hello to all ...

As some of you know from a previous email, I was attempting to organize an open data UnSummit event for Saturday, 10th of June. Alas, I have had to abandon this effort due to the lack of a suitable venue (although I was tempted to accept the offer of a 500 seat auditorium -- that wouldn't have worked) and also have enough time to promote.

I had wanted to create an open data event that was:

Open and accessible – no cost to attend and scheduled when most people would be able to attend.

Participant driven – participants drive the agenda, come to share, learn, and ask questions.

Flexible in what can happen – this can include show and tell presentations, happy open data stories, sad open data stories, queries for help, coding tables, open science, and discussion/brain storming sessions.

Encouraging for individuals involved with community groups, small entrepreneurs, students, and academics.


While this event will not happen, I would like to publicly thank the following for their encouragement, endorsement, and support:

The Society of Edmonton Demographers (SED) for their official endorsement and help with organizing (a big shout out to Donna Fong).

Jonathan Schaeffer, Dean of Science, University of Alberta -- a big believer in open data and who also offered support.

Cybera -- who offered financial support and staff for “show and tell” sessions.

Tony Briggs --  Alberta School of Business (University of Alberta) and Co-Founder of eHUB who offered help to market this event and facilitate a more entrepreneurial spirit.

Councillor Ben Henderson -- local Councillor with the City of Edmonton who thought this was a great idea and who is a strong believer in pubic engagement.

And to the many community members and students (I really wanted to get more students involved) who I pitched this idea to and who wanted to participate -- my thanks and also my apologies.

... gerry tychon

_______________________________________________
CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss

_______________________________________________
CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss