What's doing in Montreal? Re: Montréal Ouvert in the Gazette

[Michael Lenczner-2]

Hi all,

The title of the article actually was "What you don't know _can_ hurt you".

We had our second public meeting on Thursday night.  Over the last
four months we've been working hard.   Often it's the lead of a projet
that gives reports, but in this case I'm probably the one who has
spent the fewest hours on Montreal Ouvert.  The other, much worthier,
members of this group being, of course, Jonathan Brun, Jean-Noé Landry
and Sébastien Pierre.  I'm the one sending an update because it's
important to me that we shared news about our activities with Civic
Access.

Some of the things we've done:

* Participating in a public consultation held by the committee for
city services on improving communication with youth.
Besides verbal comments, Sébastien deposited a written brief.  The
committee ended up recommending that the city investigate open data as
a strategy to better reach out to youth.
http://ville.montreal.qc.ca/portal/page?_pageid=6877,72611606&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL

Our request was retained by the committee in their final report:
http://ville.montreal.qc.ca/pls/portal/docs/PAGE/COMMISSIONS_PERM_V2_FR/MEDIA/DOCUMENTS/RAPPORT_20101111.PDF
"R-3
Que la Ville de Montréal étudie la possibilité de diffuser des «
données ouvertes » dans des
formats standardisés sur son portail Internet ainsi que sur les
portails des arrondissements,
selon les normes en vigueur dans ce domaine, et ce  afin de permettre
leur plus grande
accessibilité."

* We participated in a public consultation on the Municipal Charter of
Rights and Responsibilities.
(www.ville.montreal.qc.ca/chartedesdroits).  Jean-Noé is working to
propose changes to the Charter to have it encourage stronger proactive
disclosure.  The deadline for a written brief is December 15th.
***Montreal is one of the rare cities that actually has a municipal
charter of rights.

We're going to be speaking more with Catherine Roy about how this
issue specifically affects the rights of Montreal-ers with disabilites
and if we could include language about that in the Charter.  We're
wondering whether we can use arguments associated with the growing
"right to communicate" movement.  Please let Jean-Noé know if you are
interested in helping on this. He's also set up some meetings with
legal academics who specialize in constitutional and charter / human
rights issues.

* Jonathan went to London for the recent Open data conference
(http://opengovernmentdata.org/camp2010/).  We received some financial
support for that from the organizers which helped.

* We are chairing a panel at a upcoming conference in Quebec city on
Free Software - http://s2lq.com/table-ronde .  Speakers include Tracey
Lauriault and Diane Mercier from the city of Montreal.  We hope that
this helps extend the open data movement to Québec.

* TechnoMontréal - an organization that looks out for the interests of
IT companies in Montreal - invited us to speak at a workshop they
organized.  50-75 participants from important companies and
associations around the city.

* This weekend Jean-Noé and Jonathan are participating at a youth
policy conference called Génération d'Idées.
(http://www.generationdidees.ca/idees/donnes-ouvertes-pour-montral-et-le-qubec/)

* We've have had official and un-official conversations with several
groups of bureaucrats at the city from different departments.

* 15 articles in the press although we've had difficulty in getting
pickup in the french press.

* With the help of a motivated volunteer (Jérome Youmani) we
translated the Martin Prosperity report into french and circulated it
(stored on the front page of our website).  It's been a good tool to
introduce the concept of open data and give an overview of what's
happening in Canada.

*Local developers have created a website to check out restaurant
sanitation infractions (http://www.resto-net.ca) and another to be
reminded of Trash pickup times (http://www.dechetsmontreal.ca/)

*We're participating in the International hackathon on gov data
(http://montrealouvert.net/2010/11/12/hackathon-donnees-ouvertes-montreal-2010/)


We know that we've gotten the city to look at this issue, and that
they are continuing to ramp up their investigation, but it's too early
to say what's going to happen.  We haven't yet been in direct contact
with elected officials but that's what we'll be working on in the next
few months, as well as finding ways for stakeholders to show their
support for this policy.

Sébastien and Jean-Noé worked on a good powerpoint presentation that
we delivered at Thursday's public meeting which details our activities
of the last few months.  We'll post it here later on.

Overall, this has been a very exciting and innovative exercise in
grassroots citizenship.  It's been very time consuming but I've been
really impressed with our ability to use different public offices and
processes to find an audience for our message.  We've been met with a
lot of interest, open curiousity, and support from all the bureaucrats
we've talked with so far.

That's it for now.

Mike

On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 2:22 PM, David Eaves <[hidden email]> wrote:

> But awesome news for the Montreal ouvert team on getting profile and
> building awareness.  Clearly your going to be on te city's radar...
>
> --
> www.eaves.ca
> @daeaves
> Sent from my iPhone
> On 2010-11-27, at 10:49 AM, "Tracey P. Lauriault" <[hidden email]>
> wrote:
>
> http://www.montrealgazette.com/mobile/iphone/story.html?id=3892738
> What you don't know can't hurt you.
>
> --
> Tracey P. Lauriault
> 613-234-2805
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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
>

[David Eaves]

Ah! That makes way more sense!

--
www.eaves.ca
@daeaves
Sent from my iPhone

On 2010-11-27, at 5:37 PM, Michael Lenczner <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> The title of the article actually was "What you don't know _can_ hurt you".
>
> We had our second public meeting on Thursday night.  Over the last
> four months we've been working hard.   Often it's the lead of a projet
> that gives reports, but in this case I'm probably the one who has
> spent the fewest hours on Montreal Ouvert.  The other, much worthier,
> members of this group being, of course, Jonathan Brun, Jean-Noé Landry
> and Sébastien Pierre.  I'm the one sending an update because it's
> important to me that we shared news about our activities with Civic
> Access.
>
> Some of the things we've done:
>
> * Participating in a public consultation held by the committee for
> city services on improving communication with youth.
> Besides verbal comments, Sébastien deposited a written brief.  The
> committee ended up recommending that the city investigate open data as
> a strategy to better reach out to youth.
> http://ville.montreal.qc.ca/portal/page?_pageid=6877,72611606&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL
>
> Our request was retained by the committee in their final report:
> http://ville.montreal.qc.ca/pls/portal/docs/PAGE/COMMISSIONS_PERM_V2_FR/MEDIA/DOCUMENTS/RAPPORT_20101111.PDF
> "R-3
> Que la Ville de Montréal étudie la possibilité de diffuser des «
> données ouvertes » dans des
> formats standardisés sur son portail Internet ainsi que sur les
> portails des arrondissements,
> selon les normes en vigueur dans ce domaine, et ce  afin de permettre
> leur plus grande
> accessibilité."
>
> * We participated in a public consultation on the Municipal Charter of
> Rights and Responsibilities.
> (www.ville.montreal.qc.ca/chartedesdroits).  Jean-Noé is working to
> propose changes to the Charter to have it encourage stronger proactive
> disclosure.  The deadline for a written brief is December 15th.
> ***Montreal is one of the rare cities that actually has a municipal
> charter of rights.
>
> We're going to be speaking more with Catherine Roy about how this
> issue specifically affects the rights of Montreal-ers with disabilites
> and if we could include language about that in the Charter.  We're
> wondering whether we can use arguments associated with the growing
> "right to communicate" movement.  Please let Jean-Noé know if you are
> interested in helping on this. He's also set up some meetings with
> legal academics who specialize in constitutional and charter / human
> rights issues.
>
> * Jonathan went to London for the recent Open data conference
> (http://opengovernmentdata.org/camp2010/).  We received some financial
> support for that from the organizers which helped.
>
> * We are chairing a panel at a upcoming conference in Quebec city on
> Free Software - http://s2lq.com/table-ronde .  Speakers include Tracey
> Lauriault and Diane Mercier from the city of Montreal.  We hope that
> this helps extend the open data movement to Québec.
>
> * TechnoMontréal - an organization that looks out for the interests of
> IT companies in Montreal - invited us to speak at a workshop they
> organized.  50-75 participants from important companies and
> associations around the city.
>
> * This weekend Jean-Noé and Jonathan are participating at a youth
> policy conference called Génération d'Idées.
> (http://www.generationdidees.ca/idees/donnes-ouvertes-pour-montral-et-le-qubec/)
>
> * We've have had official and un-official conversations with several
> groups of bureaucrats at the city from different departments.
>
> * 15 articles in the press although we've had difficulty in getting
> pickup in the french press.
>
> * With the help of a motivated volunteer (Jérome Youmani) we
> translated the Martin Prosperity report into french and circulated it
> (stored on the front page of our website).  It's been a good tool to
> introduce the concept of open data and give an overview of what's
> happening in Canada.
>
> *Local developers have created a website to check out restaurant
> sanitation infractions (http://www.resto-net.ca) and another to be
> reminded of Trash pickup times (http://www.dechetsmontreal.ca/)
>
> *We're participating in the International hackathon on gov data
> (http://montrealouvert.net/2010/11/12/hackathon-donnees-ouvertes-montreal-2010/)
>
>
> We know that we've gotten the city to look at this issue, and that
> they are continuing to ramp up their investigation, but it's too early
> to say what's going to happen.  We haven't yet been in direct contact
> with elected officials but that's what we'll be working on in the next
> few months, as well as finding ways for stakeholders to show their
> support for this policy.
>
> Sébastien and Jean-Noé worked on a good powerpoint presentation that
> we delivered at Thursday's public meeting which details our activities
> of the last few months.  We'll post it here later on.
>
> Overall, this has been a very exciting and innovative exercise in
> grassroots citizenship.  It's been very time consuming but I've been
> really impressed with our ability to use different public offices and
> processes to find an audience for our message.  We've been met with a
> lot of interest, open curiousity, and support from all the bureaucrats
> we've talked with so far.
>
> That's it for now.
>
> Mike
>
> On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 2:22 PM, David Eaves <[hidden email]> wrote:
>> But awesome news for the Montreal ouvert team on getting profile and
>> building awareness.  Clearly your going to be on te city's radar...
>>
>> --
>> www.eaves.ca
>> @daeaves
>> Sent from my iPhone
>> On 2010-11-27, at 10:49 AM, "Tracey P. Lauriault" <[hidden email]>
>> wrote:
>>
>> http://www.montrealgazette.com/mobile/iphone/story.html?id=3892738
>> What you don't know can't hurt you.
>>
>> --
>> Tracey P. Lauriault
>> 613-234-2805
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> 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
>>
> _______________________________________________
> CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss