Data Literacy

Open Data, Open City

Wed, 22 Sep 2010 07:57:21 UTC

I met with Jaclyn and Kim from the Martin Prosperity Institute (think Richard Florida) to discuss my vision for open data in government and in the world in general. I relayed several stories that hopefully clearly indicate that Data Literacy is an obvious way to make the world better.

They were composing a series of not-position-statements that identified issues which should be considered important going into Toronto’s [terrifying] upcoming mayoral election. One of those issues was open data, which is near and dear to my heart.

You can read the article here, or go ahead and download the PDF of the discussion document here.

Kudos to my fellow source David Eaves, a man far more eloquent in these matters than I could hope to be.

Audio: Pete keynotes FOSSLC

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 23:14:35 UTC

This is a longer version of the talk I gave at TWG, with slides.

Video: Pete speaking at The Working Group

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 07:29:10 UTC

The darkness in the video is cleared up at the 3:50 marker.

Upcoming speaking engagements

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 23:33:01 UTC

Progress on the book is slow but steady — which is exactly how it should be. I have been interviewing smart people in several countries while assembling a voluminous corpus of articles, stories and supporting information.

In the meantime, I have been speaking regularly about Open Data and Data Literacy. There are two upcoming opportunities to see what I have to say:

July 23, 2010: good people drinking wine and talking to each other in Toronto, ON

Pete believes that Open Data isn’t just for geeks and economists anymore, and that Data Literacy for all would change the world. He’s writing a future Oprah’s Book Club title about how to get rich, expose corruption and win the Order of Canada using just Excel, some rope and a stick of gum.

August 14, 2010: FOSSLC 2010 in Ottawa, ON

The Open Data movement is picking up steam in a big way. Some government or NGO seems to announce plans for full transparency every week. Then you’ve got a guy like Rob McEwen creating billions of dollars of wealth when he decided to open source his gold mining company’s geological data. Still, data today is like the web was in 1995… all over the place.

We need a data commons: a place for people to discover, consume, contribute, discuss and purchase data. This talk discusses how such an infrastructure could work, and how we must bring tools for working with data to non-technical individuals.

You can sign up to FOSSLC here.

Welcome to Data Literacy

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 19:41:41 UTC

Data Literacy is a new book written by Pete Forde, co-founder of the Canadian Ruby on Rails consultancy Unspace Interactive.

The goal of Data Literacy is to help everyday folks understand and work with data in a variety of different contexts and situations. The book covers real-world applications and includes extensive interviews with professional experts in the field.

More information is coming soon. In the meantime, subscribe to our RSS feed to stay up to date on the latest news and developments.

Data: It’s not just for hackers and economists anymore.