Bringing together developers, designers, statisticians, G.I.S. specialists, policy-wonks, videographers and ideas people, to look at current projects in Calgary and opportunities for working together to advance open data and democracy tools.

As our governments move toward opening up the information they have for public access through Open Data measures, there are many opportunities to develop new tools to use that information for the benefit of our communities.

If you have an existing project (website, mobile application, mapping system, etc.) that you would like to talk about at the workshop, we’ll be starting off with a few 5-10 minute presentations. Please contact Grant at open@calgarydemocracy.ca to book.

Presenters so far:

• Brian Pincott, one of the two councillors who brought the Open Data policy to city council.
• Grant Neufeld, coordinator of the Calgary Democracy project, on data models for information about governments, elections and community issues.
• Chris Harper, recent city council candidate.
• Tony Grimes, on data and filtering for meaning.

After the presentations, we’ll be discussing project possibilities, gauging interest, and figuring out what people want to work on (either as a big group, or as smaller projects, or both).

The goals of the workshop are:

• Introduce and connect people working on open data and democracy tools in Calgary.
• Increase awareness of existing projects.
• Share ideas for new projects, or additions to existing projects.
• Get people signed up to contribute to projects (either existing or new ones started at the workshop).