Open Data presentation at DemoCamp
This evening I will be presenting on Open Data and the City of Calgary’s efforts in this field at DemoCamp Calgary 16. It might be a bit of an odd presentation as I don’t have anything to demo, I’m not a programmer, and I don’t work for the City of Calgary. But I have been very involved on the political front with bringing this initiative to Calgary and I do have examples to share.
My goal for the presentation is to get the creative juices flowing for the coders and programmers and entrepreneurs in attendance. Basically I want them to start thinking about what amazing things they might be able to create once the City of Calgary opens up it’s data. Without them, this entire project is all but pointless. They will create the apps and tools citizens and academics can use to interact in a more meaningful way with Calgary.
Below is a list of all the sites we will visit during the presentation:
http://eaves.ca/2009/09/30/three-law-of-open-government-data/
http://resource.org/8_principles.html
http://djkelly.ca/2009/07/open-government-coming-to-calgary/
http://www.nanaimo.ca/datafeeds/
http://www.railbandit.com/mobile-train-schedule.htm
http://sanfrancisco.crimespotting.org/
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/58190
http://www.appsfordemocracy.org/
http://yegdata.uservoice.com/forums/32787-general
http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2010/01/13/open-data-comes-to-edmonton/
I especially want to share this video from Apps for Democracy, which I think highlights a lot of the reasons why Open Data can be so important.
Apps For Democracy Community Edition from Peter Corbett on Vimeo.
Whether you just want a cool app to make your life easier, or you have higher ideals of a more open and transparent government, I think open data is a great place to focus our attention. Luckily the City of Calgary has been doing just that. We can expect the Administrtion report on Ald. Pincott and Ceci’s notice of motion in February.
Hopefully we’ll have some local developers ready to get their feet wet in the data soon after.
PS – Big thanks to Sarah Blue and everyone who helped organize tonight’s event for letting me participate and share a little about open data.
Who to vote for in the 2009 Canadian Blog Awards
I didn’t even know they were accepting nominations yet, but apparently the nominations for the Canadian Blog Awards are out now. And the djkelly.ca Blog has been nominated for Best Political Blog! Very cool. Thank you to whomever nominated these ramblings. That was very nice of you.
I suppose the least I could do is go vote for myself after someone so kindly nominated me. I would also be honoured if you are so inclined to do the same. Just click here if you’d like to see us make it into the top 5 for the final ballot.
And while you’re there, I suggest also voting for some other blogosphere citizens I recommend.
Best Political Blog (aside from me)
Daveberta, Eaves.ca, Ken Chapman, Calgary Rants
Daveberta for his work covering (re-covering?) the Danielle Smith years on the Calgary School Board.
Best Science & Technology Blog
How not to administer a vaccine program
Filed under: Alberta, Marketing, Politics, Uncategorized
Markham Hislop has a great op-ed piece on his South East Calgary News site right now. He presents his case for why the Alberta Government does not deserve the criticism they are being shellacked with right now over their handling of the H1N1 vaccination program.
If there is one thing I hate it is people being blamed for things they do not deserve blame for. If there is a second thing I hate it is unwarranted hysteria. But in this case I’m going to have to disagree with Markham. The reason Albertans feel like they are embroiled in a Ron Leipert created mess is because we are.
Here’s why:
The reason the Alberta Government is taking so much flak right now isn’t because lineups were long or because we are running out of vaccine or because the public is in a state of hysteria. It is because the Government had a plan to begin with (vaccinate only high-risk cases) and then didn’t stick to the plan (vaccinate everyone). That’s on them and no one else.
Not following their own plan ended up creating confusion. First, beginning in the Legislature. The premier was saying one thing (that their vaccinating everyone) and the health minister was saying another thing (vaccinating only high risk). Then the health minister said the opposite of what he first said. Then he went back to his original story. The only place to determine what is going on is too look at what is actually going on. This everyone agrees on: everyone who was showing up to a clinic was getting a shot. No one was being turned away.
In order to only be vaccinating the high-risk cases, you can’t be vaccinating everyone. That should be obvious.
Around this point it became clear the media has no idea what is going on either and slowly – or quickly if you think a couple days is quick – the public began to feel like the clinics were a free-for-all. This feeling was then compounded by announcements of shortages and it really did become an ‘every man, woman and child for themselves’ rush of humanity to the clinics to ‘get while the getting was good’.
Alberta Health Services continued to oblige by giving everyone who showed up a shot – whether they were high-risk or not.
Then there is the added layer of the long lines created by only having a handful of clinics. Please remember, a handful of clinics was all that was needed to only vaccinate high-risk cases. This was part the plan. When they started accepting anyone and everyone the lineups became long and AHS did not have the capacity to manage those lineups, thereby exacerbating the free-for-all hysteria.
In both these cases the underlying reason for the problem was the Government’s inability to stick to the plan.
This helps put the Calgary Flames vaccination in a different light. Think about it from the Flames perspective. You’re a team doctor, you see everyone being accepted at the clinics and you don’t want to send your players to wait in 8 hour lineups, for time management and public safety reasons. So you call AHS and explain your rationale. They look at the lineups and agree: it is not a good idea to have Flames players waiting in line too. They see everyone is getting the shot so there is no reason to exclude these ‘everyones’ from getting the shot and schedule a separate session for the players and their families.
Now we see the Alberta Government actually having the gall to be criticizing citizens, saying it was their fault the line-ups were long, that things devolved into irrational hysteria, and that we’re running out of vaccine so quickly. This infuriates me. The only thing the public did was show up to get a vaccine shot they were told everyone eventually should get. If you didn’t want them to get it now and you wanted those folks to wait to get the shot THEN WHY DID YOU GIVE IT TO THEM?!
Any parent will tell you that is just reinforcing bad behaviour. And of course the next person will expect to be treated the same.
You’ll notice no one is criticizing the Alberta Government for this week’s clinics. It’s because they had a well thought out plan and are sticking to it. People who are not children under 5 and pregnant woman are being turned away. I applaud the Government and AHS for this. That’s the way it should have been on day one.
The question does have to be asked though: if our Government is incapable of following it’s own instructions on such a straight-forward program how can we trust them to manage more complicated things?
There is one thing that would fix all this – not the minister’s resignation, that won’t do anything – but an apology from the Health Minister for he and his employees not following their own plan and creating a mess of things. The provinces’ chief medical officer has already done this for his part. And again I applaud for the honesty and wherewithal he’s showing now.
But if Ron Leipert won’t offer a heart felt apology and admit his department made a mistake by screwing up on something so fundamental, he should be fired.
PS – Speaking of being fired… even though I can see where things went array as clear as day, MLA Art Johnson offers this gem of a quote: “The government had a plan and stuck with it, but people stood in line who shouldn’t have.” Umm, no you didn’t. And how dare you.
What the heck is Leadership Calgary?
As those of you that follow me on Twitter have no doubt wondered – or even asked me – over the last couple of months: what the heck is Leadership Calgary and why is DJ talking about it so much?
After attending a luncheon about the program, completing an application process that included writing three essays, and a lengthy interview that asked some of the toughest questions to answer I’ve ever heard, I was accepted into the program. I feel very honoured to have been accepted along with with 30 other Calgarians who make up the class of 2010.
I first heard of the program from a friend of mine, JoAnn Reynolds, in 2006 when she was taking the course. Shortly there after I started having others – such as Dani Deboice and Terry Rock – recommend to me that I should enrol. After doing some research I found that so many of the Calgarians that inspired me were graduates of Leadership Calgary. (Leadership Calgary is a program of Volunteer Calgary.)
The time wasn’t right though as I had too many volunteer projects on the go. Until this year, when I just bit the bullet and made it a priority but cutting back to just two major volunteer jobs. And so began my journey into… whatever it is that Leadership Calgary teaches.
I mention this in a tongue in cheek manner because any alumni of the course will tell you it is complicated to explain what Leadership Calgary is. At the opening three-day retreat this past weekend I asked how we describe the program to others. The answer was: thinking about thinking. A longer explanation might be: exploring the decision making process and learning the patterns that result in people making stupid decisions so we may learn from those failures. (I’m only 3 days in so I certainly don’t know these patterns yet!)
But this explanation doesn’t give much detail. So instead I was pointed to this official video that explains things better, and in more detail.
I think that sums it up well. (Although the voice actress is a little TOO earnest if you know what I mean.)
I’m looking forward to the course over the next 10 months, and learning exactly how little I know about the world around me. 
New blog infrastructure
For those of you who prefer to view this blog live and in its natrual habitat (i.e. via going to http://blog.djkelly.ca) you’re going to notice some differences. For those of you that read this blog via RSS I’m hoping you won’t!
Google is making some changes and eliminating it’s Page Creator software – this is a good thing as it was terrible. However I was using it to host www.djkelly.ca and so because the time had come to get rid of that I decided why not just move everything over to WordPress. I use WordPress for a few other projects and I really like it so it seemed natural.
The biggest change is that www.djkelly.ca, djkelly.ca and blog.djkelly.ca now all go to the same place. Here: djkelly.ca. I’ll have some cleaning up to do to past blog posts to make internal links work the way they should but for the most part the infrastructure is now in place.
Thank you for your patience as I populate the new site with the required data to make it useful.
Subscribe
-
Like Minded
