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David Crow

Connector of dots. Maker of lines. Rider of slopes.

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Web 2.0

GovCamp on June 17, 2010

by davidcrow

GovCamp June 17, 2010
GovCamp, June 17, 2010 @ TRL

Following up after a great event in Ottawa on June 1, 2010, my partners in crime at Microsoft and at ChangeCamp (Omar Rashid, Julia Stowell and Mark Kuznicki) are working to extend the conversation around participatory government, citizenship, open data and other stuff under the umbrella of gov2.0.

Wordle by Suzanne Long
Wordle by Suzanne Long

The event is a conversation. It’s talking about technocracy, Government transformation, public service renewal, open data, the social web and participatory approaches to public engagement. The event is invitation only. Why invitation only? Space is expensive and having a fixed event size makes it easier to manage. But we are actively looking for entrepreneurs and developers and others that are:

  • Municipal, Provincial or Federal public servant or a public sector agency employee with an interest in these topics
  • Thought leader looking to share and connect with this community
  • Member of the community of developers, advocates and practitioners in public engagement, government communications, technology, open data, open government or “Gov 2.0”

This is a great opportunity to connect with officials from local and provincial government and experts in the space. The invite says “special guests” but I’m hoping it’s conversation leaders include:

  • David Eaves, Public Policy Entrepreneur, Open Government Activist and Collaboration Expert
  • Dave Wallace, Chief Information Officer, City of Toronto
  • Steven Green, Director of Marketing & Communications, Cabinet Office, Government of Ontario
  • Peter MacLeod, Principal, MASSLBP
  • Alison Loat, Executive Director, Samara

I’m looking forward to hearing David Eaves response to the role of institutional oversight in auditing and the limits of public participation. 

Propose a Demo

If you’ve built an application designed to improve the lives of citizens using open data you should submit a demo for this event. This is your chance to get your application seen by people in this space. Are you building on the toronto.ca/open/catalogue? Did you build on something else? It doesn’t have to be Toronto. It could be another region or locality. It might be using licensed data sets. This is an opportunity to unlock a market.

Monetizing Gov 2.0 by Tim O’Reilly


Watch live video from Inc. Magazine on Justin.tv

Related Readings

  • A city that thinks like the web
  • Tim O’Reilly on Gov2.0
  • toronto.ca/open
  • datato.org
  • Wikipedia entry: Toronto Open Data
  • iTTC app by Tribal Software
  • Doors Open Toronto mobile
  • LCBO Mobile and LCBO API

Posted on June 9, 2010 Filed Under: Articles, Canada, Open Data Tagged With: citizenship20, gov20, govcamp, opendata

Building a city that thinks like the web

by davidcrow

toronto-open

Today marks an interesting day in Toronto. Today Toronto joins Washington, D.C., Vancouver, San Francisco, New York City, Australia, and the US in opening city data to citizens, companies, and the world to improve the quality of life. It begins a great journey to creating a strong new economy in Toronto around an infrastructure of city data.

It’s the data, stupid

(I feel like I’ve said this before).

“More and more governments state that opening government data is their priority, from the U.S: to the UK, from Australia to Belgium. Application contests (or mashup or idea contests) to engage citizen developers in creating new and valuable applications that leverage government data” – Andrea DiMaio

David Eaves identifies that data is the infrastructure for the next economy. It is the baseline upon which applications, value, and wealth can be built. I’ve talked about the benefit of data collection and the value-added analysis services in relation to personal health care. Data is the backbone, it is the building blocks from which developers can begin to build new applications and new services.

Draft A City That Thinks LIke the Web

View more documents from Mark Surman.

Mark Surman provides a great vision for the role that data plays in the development of a city. Re-reading his post has me thinking about a couple of challenges that need to be overcome to continue to enable the opening of city data.

  1. Costs of open data
  2. Economics of contests

Costs of open data

I think there needs to be an active discussion with citizens, politicians and staff members that open data is not free. There are costs associated with the production, release, maintenance, and up keep of the data sets. Additionally there may be a “build it, and they will come” model of development. Open data is not a replacement for city procurement. The city will still need to purchase software and look for ways to innovate to improve citizens lives. Open data is a building block to enable citizens, companies and communities to create applications the enable under-served (or self-served) parts of the city.

Economics of contests

Many of these cities have elected to host contests to encourage and incent local application developers to build upon the data sets.

  • NYC Big Apps
  • Apps for Democracy
  • Apps for America
  • Mashup Australia

I’m curious at the effectiveness of contests to engage the developer community and create a sustainable ecosystem. There is no question about the initial effectiveness as a tactic to create value. Apps for Democracy has shown a very strong contribution to the citizens, companies and communities of the District of Columbia.

“A $50,000 dollar investment in changing processes and offering prize money has so far yielded $2.3M in value. That’s a 46 times return on investment in one year.” – David Eaves

I’m curious about decay rate for contests. My feeling is that it is similar to the Chatter of the New Cycle. Where the contest and the data sets spike and then flow through the developer sphere just like news flows through blogosphere. 

news-cycle

I could be totally wrong, Sunlight Labs API shows a steady growth of the number of API calls. Apps for America 2 drew 46 submissions versus 44 for Apps for America, only a 5% growth in the number of submissions. (You might value measure of the applications as increasing with the increased API calls). More interestingly there are only 3 repeat submitters: ForumOne Communications; Jeremy Ashkenas; and Todd Fine in an initial pass of submitters. It’s actually highly probable that the number of repeat submitters is higher given submissions are often submitted with the name of the product or project.

Sustainable economies

Next I need to spend some time looking at sustainable digital ecosystems and economies. Looking at Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Twitter, Facebook and Amazon for examples of engaging developers and creating an ecosystem for developers.

Any suggestions for reading would be appreciated.

Posted on November 3, 2009 Filed Under: Articles, Innovation, Open Data, Toronto Tagged With: opendataTO

Motion Media – Web Developer

by davidcrow

Fort St. John, BC

Motion Media, a growing media production firm based in Fort St. John, BC, is looking for a well-rounded Web Developer to join our team as soon as possible.

You will work closely with clients and the rest of the team to build exciting marketing and communication solutions for our clients. We will rely on your expertise to help select the best technical and creative solutions for each project. You will work closely with our designer and programmer on integrating solutions that work.

What we are looking for:

  • Strong foundation and training in web development, web programming and web application development
  • Confidence in your ability to deliver solutions that work
  • Ability to learn, adapt and change
  • Excellent communication skills, telephone, email, networking
  • Great documentation skills
  • Knowledge of Flash and Actionscript
  • Strong knowledge of HTML, PHP, MySQL, jQuery,
  • The ability to learn new concepts and skills quickly
  • Experience with Joomla and Drupal content management systems
  • Strong sense of usability and design
  • Deadline oriented
  • Ability to branch out, try new ideas and new tasks within the company

You’ll be based out of Fort St. John, BC – Please look at a map before applying 🙂 It may be north, but Fort St. John, the Energetic City, is one of the most exciting places in the country. The growth and energy of the community is unlike anywhere else. We are looking for someone who wants to be a part of this exciting community while working for a very community-minded, young and progressive company.

Please forward your resume and portfolio to [email protected].

Posted on July 7, 2009 Filed Under: BC, Development, Jobs, Web 2.0

Rules for Bootstrapping Web Startups

by davidcrow

Allan & Steve from LessEverything have a great list of rules for web startups. I learned a lot about # 9 at Nakama. It was all about staying just ahead of the growth curve, and near real-time scheduling. The piece that was missing from our efforts was a revenue model (who paid us for what). And I think that # 1 & # 7 are key for most web startups. Figure out who pays you and why. Then build a product that they love, that they will evangelize for you.  

  1. Build something people need and love. People will talk about it.
  2. Release, release and release. Release it before you think it’s ready, you’re wrong, you don’t need that feature.
  3. Your app will probably fail, most of them do.
  4. Be Ballsy, don’t follow the herd, make a courageous moves.
  5. Build something you want to use. Continue to use it, feel the user’s pain.
  6. Google Adwords isn’t a revenue model.
  7. Find the cheapest, fastest way to 500 paid users. People will pay for your app, if it’s good.
  8. Design is an iterative process, not just development. And you won’t get it right the first time, so don’t sweat so much.
  9. Don’t scale until you actually need to. (The front page of Digg does not count as need.)
  10. Don’t spend any money.

Posted on July 7, 2009 Filed Under: Articles, Entrepreneurship, Web 2.0 Tagged With: rules, Startups

TargetVacations – Web Guru

by davidcrow

Toronto, ON

Target Vacations is seeking a one-man (or woman!) web team. Our award-winning company is expanding and it’s time to bring our website in- house so we can react more quickly and have greater control. We are looking for an entrepreneurial travel fanatic who can lead our web efforts, including overseeing any contractors or future team members as we continue to grow.

Required

  • Proven visual design ability with portfolio link (applications without a link to an online portfolio will be rejected)
  • Excellent XHTML/CSS skills, including thorough knowledge of cross-browser/platform issues, semantically-correct code, validation, and accessibility concerns
  • SEO expertise, including knowledge of the latest techniques, and an awareness of marketing vs. technical issues
  • Proven flair for user experience and information architecture design and an understanding that website beauty is much more than skin deep
  • Some ability to produce Adobe Flash pieces (though nothing overly complicated will be done in-house)
  • 3+ years of experience a designer/developer

If you meet these criteria, please forward your resume in confidence
to careers [at] targetvacations [dot] ca.  We thank everyone for their
interest.  Only applicants under consideration will be contacted.

Posted on April 24, 2009 Filed Under: Jobs, Toronto, Web 2.0 Tagged With: Toronto, web+jobs

Trapeze – Web Developer

by davidcrow

Toronto, ON

Trapeze Media (www.trapeze.com) is seeking a talented hands-on individual to  join our team as a Web Developer.

What we do

Trapeze is a full service interactive marketing agency.

As a member of the Web Development (UI) team, you will create sophisticated  Content Management Platforms and web applications for prominent high traffic websites. You will work on a range of challenging projects with clients such as CBS, Reebok, Canadian Tire, Disney, Pizza Hut, MTV, Cineplex and Globe & Mail. You will be involved in all stages of development of the project, including ideation, technical specifications and prototypes, application architecture and data models, testing, coding, releases management and deployment.

What we use

  • Standards-based XHTML, CSS, Javascript & AJAX
  • Flash (ActionScript 2.0 and ActionScript 3.0)
  • XML and JSON
  • jQuery
  • Photoshop and Illustrator
  • Ubuntu Linux and OS X
  • Python, Django and PHP
  • subversion and git

We want to hear from you if…

  • you have excellent XHTML, CSS, Javascript skills
  • you have some experience with popular javascript libraries such as JQuery and/or Prototype
  • you build accessible, standard compliant friendly websites
  • you are a creative thinker, committed to scalability, extensibility and reusability of your code
  • you are passionate about the web and you have the ability to quickly learn new technologies
  • you have experience with cross-browsers coding
  • you have some experience working with server-side code. Python and PHP are
    preferable.
  • To Apply

      Email your current resume to [email protected] with the words “Web Developer” in the subject line. No calls, drop-ins or faxes, please.

Posted on March 30, 2009 Filed Under: Development, Jobs, Toronto, Web 2.0 Tagged With: css, dev+jobs, flash+developer, front-end, jQuery, Toronto, web+standards

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