Re: Use Case: BetaNYC 3/5

Hi Steve,

I think this is an excellent way.

Best,
Ig


2014-03-07 12:19 GMT-03:00 Steven Adler <adler1@us.ibm.com>:

> Excellent idea.  But maybe another way forward is to get DBpedia to use
> the vocabs and build a use case on that?
>
>
> Best Regards,
>
> Steve
>
> Motto: "Do First, Think, Do it Again"
>
>
>  From: Ig Ibert Bittencourt <ig.ibert@gmail.com> To: Steven
> Adler/Somers/IBM@IBMUS Cc: Public DWBP WG <public-dwbp-wg@w3.org> Date: 03/07/2014
> 05:19 AM Subject: Re: Use Case: BetaNYC 3/5
> ------------------------------
>
>
>
> Hi Steve,
>
> Thank you for sharing with us about these hackathons.
>
> With regards the DBpedia data, although WayCount went one step further
> than Palo Alto about open data, I think the problem is the same. Perhaps
> they don't know about the vocabs and how to use them.
>
> Don't you think we should create some use cases focused on the usage of
> PROV-O, QB, DCAT, ORG... ?
>
> Best,
> Ig
>
>
> 2014-03-06 12:51 GMT-03:00 Steven Adler <*adler1@us.ibm.com*<adler1@us.ibm.com>
> >:
> Last night, I attended another BetaNYC Hackathon in Brooklyn, where I met
> another group of passionate citizens developing, and learning to develop,
> fascinating apps for Smarter Cities.  This week we were about 15 people in
> the room, and we started with a lightning round of "what are you working
> on" descriptions from project leads.  There were only three people in the
> room who had participated in the hackathon the week prior, and this is
> pretty normal.  BetaNYC has 1600 developers registered in their network and
> every week coders rotate in and out of meetups and projects in an endless
> and unplanned cycle that continuously inspires creativity and motivation by
> showcasing new projects.
>
>
>
> The first project we heard about came from a local nonprofit called *Tomorrow
> Lab* <http://tomorrow-lab.com/>, who have designed hardware that measures
> how many bikes travel on streets they measure.  It uses simple hardware and
> open source software that connects two sensors with a pneumatic tube that
> measures impressions for weight and axel distance that differentiates
> between bikes and cars.  Its called WayCount.  The text below is from their
> website.  In the room we discussed how WayCount data could be combined with
> NYPD crash reports to more accurately identify the spots in NYC where bike
> accidents per bike numbers occur and identify ways to remediate.
>
> WayCount is a platform for crowd-sourcing massive amounts of near
> real-time automobile and bicycle traffic data from a nodal network of
> inexpensive hardware devices.   For the first time ever, you can gather
> accurate volume, rate, and speed measurements of automobiles and bicycles,
> then easily upload and map the information to a central online database.
>  The WayCount device works like other traffic counters, but has two key
> differences: lower cost and open data. At 1/5th price of the least
> expensive comparible product, WayCount is affordable. The WayCount Data
> Uploader allows you to seamlessly upload and map your latest traffic count
> data, making it instantly available to anyone online.
> Collectively, the WayCount user community has the potential to build a
> rich repository of traffic count data for bike paths, city alley ways,
> neighborhood streets, and busy boulevards from around the world. With a
> better understanding of automobile and bicycle ridership patterns, we can
> inform the design of better cities and towns.
>
> The WayCount platform is an important addition to the process of measuring
> the impact of transportation design, and creating livable streets by adding
> bicycle lanes, public spaces, and developing smart transportation
> management systems. By creating open-data, we can increase governmental
> transparency, and provide constituencies with the essential data they need
> to advocate for rational and necessary improvements to the design,
> maintenance, and policy of transportation systems.
>
> The hardware and software of the WayCount device and website were designed
> and engineered by Tomorrow Lab.
>
> WayCount devices are currently for sale on the website, *WayCount.com*<http://waycount.com/>
>
>
>
>
>
> We also discussed some ideas to provide policy makers with better sources
> of Open Data to guide policy discussions, and then broke up into four
> groups focusing on different projects.  One group discussed how to save the
> New York Library on 42nd Street from the imminent transformation of its
> main reading room and function as a lending library.  Another group scraped
> web pages for NYPD crash data for an app comparing accident rates across
> the 5 boroughs.  Some people just spent time talking about who they are and
> what they want to work on, what they want to learn, and how to get more
> involved.
>
> I spent an hour with a young programmer who had worked on the NYC Property
> Tax Map I shared with you last week.  He showed me a Chrome Plugin he is
> working on that provides data about leading politicians whenever their
> names are mentioned on a webpage.  It is called Data Explorer for US
> Politics and it provides some nifty data on things like campaign
> contributions compared to committee assignments.
>
>
>
> I asked him where he got his data and he showed me *DBpedia*<http://dbpedia.org/About>,
> which "is a crowd-sourced community effort to extract structured
> information from *Wikipedia* <http://wikipedia.org/> and make this
> information available on the Web. DBpedia allows you to ask sophisticated
> queries against Wikipedia, and to link the different data sets on the
> Web to Wikipedia data. We hope that this work will make it easier for the
> huge amount of information in Wikipedia to be used in some new interesting
> ways. Furthermore, it might inspire new mechanisms for navigating, linking,
> and improving the encyclopedia itself. "
>
> Then I asked him how he knows that DBpedia data is accurate and reliable
> and he just looked at me.  "It's on the internet..."  Yeah, and so where
> weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.  But they were only on the internet
> and never in Iraq.  And herein lies a huge problem about Open Data on the
> Web; there is no corroboration of fact, no metadata describing where it
> came from, how it was derived, calculated, presented.  No one attests to
> its veracity, yet we all use it on faith which just ain't good enough.
>
> This is why we have the *W3C Data on the Web Best Practices Working Group*<https://www.w3.org/2013/dwbp/wiki/Main_Page>- to create new vocabulary and metadata standards that attach citations and
> lineage, attestations and data quality metrics to Open Data so that
> everyone can understand where it came from, how much to trust it, and even
> how to improve it.
>
> At the end of the evening, we also discussed IBM Smarter Cities, the
> Portland System Dynamics Demo, and the possibility of hosting a BetaNYC
> meetup at IBM on 590 Madison Avenue.  It was a fascinating evening and I
> encourage all to check out the links provided in this writeup and get out
> and join a meetup near you.
>
> Talk to you tomorrow.
>
> Best Regards,
>
> Steve
>
> Motto: "Do First, Think, Do it Again"
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Ig Ibert Bittencourt
> Professor Adjunto III - Universidade Federal de Alagoas (UFAL)
> Vice-Coordenador da Comissão Especial de Informática na Educação
> Líder do Centro de Excelência em Tecnologias Sociais
> Co-fundador da Startup MeuTutor Soluções Educacionais LTDA.
>
>


-- 

Ig Ibert Bittencourt
Professor Adjunto III - Universidade Federal de Alagoas (UFAL)
Vice-Coordenador da Comissão Especial de Informática na Educação
Líder do Centro de Excelência em Tecnologias Sociais
Co-fundador da Startup MeuTutor Soluções Educacionais LTDA.