Edmonton2014

The Edmonton Public Library and City of Edmonton are collaborating to host Edmonton's first Open Data Day events. In the EPL Makerspace we'll be hosting a Hackathon from 9 to 5, and in the Heritage Room of City Hall between 1:30 and 2:30 we're running an Introduction to Open Data for interested beginners. There is something for everyone!

Have a project idea? A problem you'd like solved? Some data you'd like help getting your hands on? Share it below, so on the day of the Hackathon we can get right to it!

Existing Datasets That Registered Hackers Have Expressed Interest in:1
 * Census data
 * Neighbourhood data
 * spatial
 * facilities
 * demographics
 * assessment lots


 * Bus stops
 * Traffic flow
 * Collisions
 * Trees

Lots of people requested crime data. The Police Department maintains their own statistics site, which isn't quite open data, here: http://crimemapping.edmontonpolice.ca/ Maybe something cool can come out of it? Is the dataset you are interested in not on the list? During the Hackathon you'll have an opportunity to chat with representatives from city departments, including the Open Data Team, who oversee the whole project. Why not ask about it?

Some ideas people have expressed interest in include:2
 * resources for dog owners
 * cyberterrorism awareness/security
 * building citizen participation environments
 * generating sound from data
 * Analyzing City electricity procurement deals
 * More?

Note: everything on this page is paraphrased, everyone is free to fill in any details they want here. There will also be opportunities during the Hackathon to share your ideas with others.

1. List includes datasets identified by people who registered before Thursday Feb 6, 2014.

2. This list includes ideas attached to datasets that are not yet available.

Project Ideas:

Possible Project: Mashup of Google Maps, The City of Edmonton Tree Database, and Wikipedia!

The idea: I'd like to build an application to:
 * help me identify the trees I see in Edmonton's parks and green spaces from my smartphone or tablet
 * help me find trees I'd like to see
 * provide a link to the wikipedia page for the tree I'm looking at so I can learn more about the tree while I'm looking at it

This project has two distinct parts:

1. Server-side: data persistence in a database with search, filtering, and retrieval of the information for display

2. Client-side: Building the javascript and interface to query the server, process the results, and display them on a google map.

I'm very capable on the server side of this project but I've never used the Google Maps API. I'm looking for collaborator(s) for the client-side of the project.

If you're interested in working with me on this project please contact me at: bosepchuk@gmail.com.

Thanks for reading about my project.

Possible Project: Open Data Portal Visualization

Coming up with an intuitive way to visualize the datasets on Edmonton's Open Data site seems worthwhile. I'm thinking something along the lines of what this site does for NYC's Open Data: https://data.cityofnewyork.us/viz

I only started learning to code recently, so I would love to collaborate with any programmers who find this idea interesting.

Feel free to contact me at: chris.gusen@gmail.com