Entries from August 2011

Upcoming talks, events and other activities

So despite the fact that I only left Vancouver once(!) in August, things have been quite busy. Lots of work. September and onwards is going to be a bear however. Lots of travel so I thought I would lay everything out in case their is overlap with readers, friends and/or clients who might be interested [...]

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Smarter Ways to Have School Boards Update Parents

Earlier this month the Vancouver School Board (VSB) released an iPhone app that – helpfully – will use push notifications to inform parents about school holidays, parent interviews, and scheduling disruptions such as snow days. The app is okay, it’s a little clunky to use, and a lot of the data – such as professional [...]

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Open Data and New Public Management

This morning I got an email thread pointing to an article by Justin Longo on #Opendata: Digital-Era Governance Thoroughbred or New Public Management Trojan Horse? I’m still digesting it all but wanted to share some initial thoughts. The article begins with discussion about the benefits of open data but its real goal is to argue [...]

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DataBC Hackathon this Saturday – inviting the public.

This Saturday, August 27, 2011 the Province of British Columbia is partnering with the Mozilla Foundation and OpenDataBC to host a open data hackathon. The hackathon will be taking place at Mozilla Labs Vancouver. Their address is: 163 West Hastings Street, suite-200 Vancouver, BC V6B 1H5 (in the very beautiful Flack Building) So three things: [...]

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Design Matters: Looking at a Re-themed Bugzilla

I’ll be honest. There was a time when I thought design didn’t matter. To my credit, it was a long time ago… but I used to think, if the tool was good enough, the design won’t matter, people will use it cause it is helpful. (This may or may not have influenced some fashion choices [...]

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