Ural 2.0

About

I’ve been interested in the intersection of data and geography and how it both describes and affects society.  I was told about the First Law of Geography by a  Professor friend of mine:  “Everything is related, but near things are more related” and I’ve been giving it a lot of thought lately in the context of data minining, aggregation and reporting.  Of special interest  is the technical process that occurs in the attempt to turn raw data into relevant, actionable information.  Much of this data and the responsibility for sharing it belongs to various local, state and federal government agencies, yet they struggle with both the policies and technologies involved in requests for data.

Having worked in the area of government data for a few years now, I’ve had a chance to think about the problem sets that our society is facing as technology continues to outpace the innovation capabilities of our government.

Even though, in most cases, unless specifically protected, government data is our data, and even with laws like the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), there are still many barriers to the public obtaining data in ways that allow us to do cool things with it.  Many times it’s available in paper format only, and only as a direct response to a specific request.  Access to raw data for aggregation, data mining, reporting and dissemination purposes is still relatively rare.  Although there’s a growing movement to publish data in standard formats, our governments have limited resources.  The more we can liberate this data, the more we can turn this data into useful, actionable, relevant information, the better off we are as a society.  Jefferson believed that an educated population was required for the “experiment” that he and his friends undertook in 1776.  His views that only a well informed people can be trusted with self-government are still true today.   

Considering that physical proximity is still a big factor in information relevance, I’ve been experimenting a bit with the intersection of public data and geography.  Hyper-local, hyper-relevant.  One of these experiments is a joint-endeavor with my good friend Johnny Diggz.  We’ve prototyped Tweet3po.org, a Crime-Fighting Web 2.0 protocol droid that collects public safety, community event, government announcement and other relevant data, geotags it, dissemenates it on a hyper-local level in neighborhood based social media formats like Twitter and Facebook.  Our next steps for Tweet3po is to begin aggregating and reporting on the data we collect.  Along the way, I’ve come to appreciate other ways that location information can provide context and relevance …

I’ve recently acquired a Ural, an old world styled Russian sidecar motorcycle.  You can ask the Bing Machine about it or you can give Gene at Holopaw Ural a call and make and appointment to test drive one … trust me, they’re a blast!  Since then, we’ve been heading out mostly every weekend, exploring the state in ever increasting geo-centric circles.  The first couple of trips we took, I couldn’t even describe where we went.  We had a map, some intuition and a the whole day to kill, but really just a general idea of where we were at any time.  So I started diving into the world of GPS and Geotagging photos.  Eventually, it led to this blog.  I’m not quite sure what it will turn into, but it should be interesting (for me anyways). 

So have fun out there and don’t forget to look around and enjoy the sights every once in a while.  Remember, where you choose to be says a lot about who you really are.