Column: Open City Edmonton

In lieu of a column this week I would just like to encourage you to check out some of the amazing work being done by the City of Edmonton:

The City of Edmonton is hosting the Open City Workshop on Saturday March 6, 2010. This event will bring together community leaders, academics, students, technology enthusiasts and public sector employees to explore and advance the role of Open Information in Alberta's capital region. We will discuss current and planned activities in Edmonton and other Canadian and international jurisdictions as well as possibilities for government, community, academic and private organizations.

On November 21, 2009 the City of Edmonton hosted an Open Data Workshop, primarily targeted at the technology community. The consultation and feedback from the workshop influenced the design of our open data catalogue and set the stage for this event. This time, it's all about collaboration and community. Specifically, we will be working together to develop and establish our local context for an Open City built on access to Open Information. We will work to define the next steps for open data and an application catalogue and explore additional Gov 2.0 concepts such as Social Media, Open Systems, 3D Virtual Communities, and more.

Special Guests David Eaves, Mark Kuznicki and Nicholas Charney will participate and take part in a panel discussion on the topic of Government as a Platform.

I am proud to have been invited to participate and would encourage you to register if you live in the area, the event should be absolutely amazing. If you aren't in the area or can't attend in person, my friends at Fused Logic are providing a realtime stream of the event which I have embedded for your viewing pleasure below, if you want to stream the feed live on your site you can grab the code here.