I’m heading to beautiful Vancouver this evening to attend the Canadian Open data Summit Tomorrow! I’m very excited to be able to give a lighting talk about open data and how we can make it even better!

Disparate Data, Technology Fiefdoms (and 65 pictures of your cat)

Up in the frozen wastes of the North, well beyond the wall (certainly beyond hope) we organized a hackathon based on the ideas of open data and civic applications.

Our hardy hackathoners pulled together a number of excellent ideas but met with a constant and obtrusive barrier: that open data maybe open but with out some level of standardization its not actually very useful.

Now, no one said that data had to be ‘useful’, and perhaps if we want the technology utopia of real open data interoperability we will need to “build it” ourselves, but it is worth noting that talking the same language as our neighbors is generally awesome. Indeed, perhaps rather than swearing fealty to our technology overlords and just pressing the “publish document to open data platform” button, we could think about the commonwealth of data. The value of any data increases wildly with density and open data should be more valuable!

The cats? well you’ll have to tune in for that bit.

You can find out more here: http://opendatasummit.ca. If your going to be there, track me down and say hello!