I am excited about open data because it’s the backbone of so many civic-minded applications. For example, Adopt-a-Hydrant only works because it’s easy to map hydrants in a city. The first step creating, supporting or even suggesting a lot of mobile apps is understanding the nature, format and platform of government data. With that in mind, I wanted to share information on two upcoming meetings on data. One is online; one is in the Twin Cities. And while I suspect they will be fairly technical in nature, I think the target audience could/should go beyond techies to include civic-minded folks and government employees who might have an interest in supporting or suggesting apps to be developed.

White House Safety Datapalooza – Tue Jan 14

On Tuesday, the White House, the U.S. Department of Transportation, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture will host a “Safety Datapalooza,” featuring innovators from the private, nonprofit, and academic sectors  who have utilized freely available government data to build products, services, and apps to advance public safety in creative and powerful ways. The event will feature safety data resources in areas ranging from transportation to food to consumer product safety, as well as tools to improve disaster preparedness and emergency response and to help empower Americans with information to make smarter, safer choices.

Over the past few years, this Administration has launched a series of Open Data Initiatives, which have released troves of valuable data that were previously hard to access in areas such as health, energy, education, public safety, and global development. These data are being used by innovators, businesses, researchers, and the public to create new services and applications that benefit Americans.

DATE:  Tuesday, January 14, 2013
TIME:  9:00 a.m. ET until approximately 12:00 p.m. ET

KEYSPEAKERS:
·         The Honorable Krysta Harden, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Agriculture
·         The Honorable Seth D. Harris, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Labor
·         Todd Park, Assistant to the President, U.S. Chief Technology Officer
·         The Honorable Rich Serino, Deputy Administrator  of the Federal Emergency Management Agency
·         The Honorable Robert Adler, Acting Chairman of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission
·         The Honorable Gregory Winfree, Administrator of the Research and Innovative Technology Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation
·         The Honorable Janice Jacobs, Assistant Secretary for Consular Affairs, U.S. Department of State
·         The Honorable Patricia Hoffman, Assistant Secretary for the Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, U.S. Department of Energy
·         The Honorable Dr. Nicole Lurie, Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

The event will also feature demonstrations of safety tools, apps, and resources by a range of developers, startups, businesses, researchers, and innovators.

REGISTRATION:  To attend in-person, media must RSVP to Yewande.Addie@oc.usda.gov with the name, media outlet, phone, and email for each person planning to cover the event by Monday, January 13 at 4:00PM ET, with the subject line “Safety Datapalooza”.  On the day of the event, media must enter Wing 5 of the United States Department of Agriculture South Building on Independence Avenue, SW.

WEBCAST: This event will be webcast live at http://www.Wh.gov/safetydatapalooza
For more information, visit  http://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp

After the session, E-Democracy is hosting an online hangout to extend the conversation. Unfortunately I’ll be training at that time but I love the diea. Here’s more info…

After the three hour webcast, those at the in-person event will be connecting via small group brainstorms.

Why not the rest of us too?

Time for a virtual video “hangout” to go in-depth beyond the pithy #safetydata hashtag.

E-Democracy.org is working with folks at the MIT Media Lab, the Smart Chicago Collaborative, and a bunch of volunteer facilitators to host …

*** Unofficial White House Safety Datapalooza Live Video Hangout ***

We are using a network of Google Hangouts combined with MIT’s experimental Unhangout tool.

RSVP for limited slots now:

http://e-democracy.org/civictechhangout

This unofficial hangout will center on a 45 minute brainstorming dialogue being fed into short discussion summaries that will be forwarded to interested White House and government staff we have engaged directly in recent weeks.

There are a mix of general and thematic break-outs based on interest.

Our video “lobby” will open at 12Noon and officially start our program at 12:30 p.m. Eastern (for those in the UK, that’s 7:30 p.m.)

As official government links emerge we are also linking them here (webcast, Twitter, and more):

http://e-democracy.org/civictechhangout – To tune into to two-way exchange during the event outside of video, see:

1. Twitter #safetydata – http://bit.ly/safetydatatwitter
2. Safety Data LinkedIN Group – http://bit.ly/safetydatalinkedin  (experiment)
3. Safety Data Facebook Group – http://bit.ly/safetydatafacebook (experiment)

Also check out Smart Chicago’s Datapalooza Resources blog post: http://bit.ly/smartchicagosafetydata

Open Twin Cities: Discuss Open Data Policy with Minneapolis’ CIO

Monday, January 27, 2014
6:00 PM

Minneapolis IT
310 4th Avenue South – Suite 400
Minneapolis, mn

Otto Doll, the Chief Information Officer of Minneapolis, has been charged with developing an open data policy for the City. To help develop this policy, Otto is inviting the civic tech community to his office to have a discussion about what that policy should look like. If you have experience with requesting data from Minneapolis or thoughts on how the city should implement open data, please come and help shape this important policy of transparency and innovation.