I have been involved in open data for a while now from a personal interest as a developer and a business interest via RedBit. I’ve participated in various hackathons, events, done presentation, open sourced some code and even help run an open data group called Open Halton where we try to work with cities and municipalities to open up their data.
Over the years I’ve seen many cities open up their data and even seen a Canadian National Open Data policy come into place via Data.gc.ca. It was also exciting seeing Open Data being tabled as part of the G8 summit where it is guided by the following principles
- Open Data by Default
- Quality and Quantity
- Useable by All
- Releasing Data for Improved Governance
- Releasing Data for Innovation
Now the City (or Town rather) I live in (Oakville) is ready to open up the town data and is holding the first community meetup. I will be participating representing the developer community here in the region and how RedBit as a business has leveraged Open Data to generate revenue and most importantly create jobs.
If you are free Feb 5 2014 be sure to join as. You can register at EventBrite and we are holding two sessions to try and accommodate everyone.
Have you done anything with open data? Share what you have done in the comments below or via twitter @MarkArteaga
