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Open Data – Why it is so important

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There will be an Open Data Jam (#ODJAM2014) in Hamilton on November 21-23, 2014.  This is an opportunity for community leaders and developers to collaborate on applications that can showcase Hamilton as a beacon of Open Data and software development.

What is open data? Why is it important to the average person? What can we do with this information?

Open Data is part of the Open Government mandate.  Open Government is a multi-country initiative to increase transparency for citizens into the actions of their government.  This includes access to departmental budget and spending information, public policy-making, access to information (statistics) that each government department has obtained, open access to government sponsored research, and, in some countries, access to expenses of elected officials.  Also a part of open government is a movement to increase involvement in the governing process through online tools which provide the electorate direct input to government decisions.

These goals will help restore faith in governments, at federal, provincial,  and city levels.

Open Data gives access to different types of government “owned” information, such as census, traffic, construction, road closures, demographic, realty tax, parks, transport of government regulated materials, electric power creation and consumption, departmental budgets and spending, elected official attendance and voting records.  All of this information is kept at all levels of government in Canada.  Currently part of this information is available, more will be made available over the next few years, according to the Open Government 2.0 mandate.

This means that Canadians have the opportunity to scrutinize the information that the governments have been collecting, maintaining and using for public policy.  This can help us understand some of the decisions being made at various levels of government.  This sets a level of accountability for our elected officials and civil servants that is important for them to regain our trust.

An economic opportunity is also available.  Mobile applications, web sites, and data analytics are potential uses of the data available.  In Hamilton, the HSR transit feed is live, allowing developers to create mobile applications and websites that assist commuters to take transit.  Other data, such as water park location and capacity, could be used in conjunction with HSR information to help people find water parks in the summer.  Transit feeds across multiple cities could help commuters who have multi-city travels ensure that they are arriving on time for actual departure times (not scheduled times).  Co-ordination of traffic data, construction and closure data could be used to help drivers avoid high congestion areas to reduce idling engines.  The possibilities are limitless.

The Federal Government’s Open Data catalogue is here: Government of Canada

The Government of Ontario’s Open Data catalogue is here: Government of Ontario

The City of Hamilton’s Open Data catalogue is here: City of Hamilton

The political implications of Open Data are staggering to a populace who is weary of perceived political abuse and corruption.  The accountability of politicians, lobbyists and civil servants will help ensure Canadians are being served in the public’s best interests.  The economic implications are just as staggering – allowing start-up companies to use the data to create sustainable jobs, to create a reputation and to develop their skills.  These skills can start local – with Hamilton’s open data events, but can scale to provincial, national, and even international scales with the right amount of ingenuity and marketing foresight.

signup for #ODJAM2104 here: ODJAM2014

Hamilton – The Ambitious City

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The city ofphotoOver Hamilton has an opportunity to become the nation’s leader in life sciences.  The Chamber of Commerce has done terrific work to identify needs as per this article.  This is one of the many fields  burgeoning with talent within Hamilton.

There is a strong grassroots movement to revitalize Hamilton, in arts and in technology.  The popularity of the monthly art crawls, and bi-monthly democamps are two examples of growing interest in these movements.  Hamilton is also considered a hotbed for computer and video gaming in Canada.  Local web and graphic designers are garnering rave reviews from all over Southern Ontario. Attendance at every software and startup event over the past two years has grown steadily.  The mix ranges from very experienced to inexperienced, all sharing their knowledge, attitudes and ideas.  The amount of enthusiasm and energy is amazing.  We celebrate our ideas and discuss how we can succeed.

Indeed, there have been a number of local success stories, such as Peregrine Labs, Weever Apps, and TripCentral.ca.

There is more we can be doing to achieve further prosperity.  Many of the needs outlined in the life science cluster article represent issues across the entire tech field.  Seed money, engaged leadership, publicity, and marketing!

Great that we recognise this, it is one of the first steps in a plan to succeed.

Success breeds success.  We need to talk about Hamilton’s successful entrepreneurs.  Make sure people in all of Southern Ontario hear about them and how they happened.  They need to hear about the supportive community that is part of the accomplishment.

We have to remind people in Hamilton about what is happening.  Show them that great things are happening in their own community.  We need to celebrate our achievements! We have many to share, and our community should be proud of them!  Hamilton was known as the Ambitious City! We still are, no one knows it though!

Once we get the message out that Hamilton is open for business, looking to match up our hi-tech skills with problems to be solved, we can begin to draw in seed and venture money.  Seed money will help companies get started.  Venture will help them grow.  With the seed and venture funds, more talent will come to the community.

This is part of strategy for growth, investment, re-investment, marketing, intellectual property protection, promotion, and civic support.  The strategy needs to be bottom-up, coming from us, the grass-roots initiators of the movement.  It must address issues discussed above, and includes developing new talent, matching talent to needs, encouragement of outside the box thinking to cross-fertilize.

To make all this happen we need leaders.  Leaders to create and socialize the strategy.  Leaders to grow the grassroots movements.  Leaders to mentor and guide the startups.  Leaders to guide small and medium businesses.  Leaders to bring all of the various groups together behind the common strategy.

We need a spokesperson for the community.  The spokesperson must have technical and marketing credibility, charisma, and tell a compelling story about Hamilton.  To be the face of a revitalized Hamilton.

Innovation driven by Passion

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Passion drives us all; this is one of the unifying and defining aspects of mankind.  Our passions can lead us anywhere we let them take us.  Whether it is sky diving from space, creating new symphonies, inventing new ways to communicate, or making the best “Labels for the stuff kids lose!”™ , passion leads to innovation.

The passion for innovation in technology comes from a desire to improve, to simplify, and to give a customer what they really want, whether they know they want it or not.  Steve Jobs was the best modern example of someone who understood this combination.  With the iPod and iTunes Apple created beautiful technology that was simple to use (iPod) and iTunes gave a user simple technology to manage playlists, music, podcasts from their computer onto the iPod, simplifying the whole music on the go industry, giving people what they really wanted.

How did he do this? He watched people.  He asked questions.  He listened to the answers, not just the words more importantly, the emotions behind the answers.  He was passionate about solving the emotional problems people had with products.

He was right.

Take the time to look around.  See what people are doing.  See what they avoid doing.  Why do they hate doing that so much?  Walk a mile in their shoes.  Intimate knowledge and empathy with your customers and you connect with them.  Then you have a passionate reason to make changes, to innovate a process, to create a new product, because you feel the pain.

At Mabel’s Labels, a few members of our IT team watched our production floor at the busiest time of the year.  Sheets of labels all around our facility.  Someone was packing an order for Jane; she said “Who has sticky labels for Jane?” It was like the New York Stock Exchange floor! Three hands shot up in the air each waving labels for Jane! We gazed at each other totally astonished.  But how…? Turns out that there were reprints done because the quality was not good enough, and there was more than one person named Jane buying labels that day!  Everyone then got together to figure out which was the right set to be shipped.  Again and again we saw this happen during a number of days.  One of the IT team was helping in production and was part of the “figure out which is the right one” process.  Painful!

He proposed a simple tracking system using wireless bar code scanners transmitting data to an internal web service which then stored the data into a table in our database.  These scanners have an O/S with simple web browsing capabilities built-in.  The information scanned contains order number, item number, state and location.  Another web app reads the database tables and can tell us what is where, and its status.  When we discussed this solution with the production team, some said that tracking was not really a problem.  But their body language and facial expression told a different story.  We suggested the ability to handle reprints better; a perceived bigger problem, both solutions tied together, and this gave us buy-in for the change to the entire system. This simple innovation allows us to track each order at each stage of production.  The result?  On our busiest days, the production floor was calm, organized and ran smoothly! An added bonus – our customer service team received almost no calls about incorrect orders!

Simple yet effective innovation – generated by passion to simplify a process.  Proposed, designed, and executed by empathizing with IT’s customer.  The benefit was internal to our production team; the company’s customer was the beneficiary.

Many companies talk about creating a “culture of innovation”.  The belief is that if you put a bunch of creative people together and let them think, that innovation will flow.  In any brainstorming session, new ideas will be generated.  Some will get major buy-in, some will even reach the project planning stage.  To really drive the innovative ideas though, a leader has to emerge who will champion the project, with a real passion for the idea.  Passion is the key.    Create a culture based on passion and the innovation will flow.