OpenHalton

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

- Margaret Mead

Wednesday night’s open data meet-up hosted by OpenHalton and OpenHamilton in Burlington brought out folks from Cambridge, Hamilton, Oakville, Burlington, Milton, Mississauga, Toronto and as far east as Stouffville, ON.

Why?

To share experiences, projects, ideas & meet with others who are passionate about Open Data and Open Government. We kicked off with my quick overview of what drives open data communities “Your Data. Our Data [on slideshare]”, highlighting some examples of innovative projects across North America. We tried to stick to a 5-minute presentation format, but that really wasn’t enforced enough to call this an Ignite presentation event, with exception of Jury Konga’s talk “Open Gov & Open Data: Reality Check [on slideshare]”.

Joey Coleman’s talk on Open Journalism in the Web 3.0 world set the tone for how Open Data transforms our society, followed by Mark Arteaga’s demo of WardRep.ca: the end result of cross-region open data community collaboration to make Ward Boundary & Representative information easier to access by citizens.

Finally, Leyden M. Fonte spoke about her Research & Innovation Jobs project at TRRA and Steve Czajka from the City of Mississauga blew our minds with his demos of datasets at mississauga.ca/data and plans for MississaugaData.

The main take-away from this meet-up is realization that there is A LOT of open data going on in the region. From activists, hackers, journalists, non-profits, private companies & government organizations – the projects & initiatives are picking up throughout Hamilton, Halton & Peel. Our opportunity is to be better informed and work smarter, together, across our regional community groups.