One of the biggest barriers to the growth of the open data movement in my opinion is that nearly every open data related meeting/event is still comprised primarily of data geeks and app developers. The language that is used by this community (e.g. machine readable data, open access, genomes, geo-spatial, etc…) confuses the typical non-geek beyond hope. If you don’t capture the minds of the non-geeks out there to stimulate demand, how on earth are open data initiatives (e.g. data.gov and data.gc.ca) going to stay alive?
Tips, insights, and occasional rants on the modern digital landscape, disruptive technology, behaviour change, and marketing for social good.
The whole time I was watching the riots after the game in Vancouver from my Regina hotel room, I couldn’t help but think of how easy it will be for Seth Myers on SNL to do his