Two of the attendees of our first public meeting wrote a blog posts about the event. We wanted to share these wonderful articles because the authors are experts in their field. Diane Mercier, is a both a employee at the city as well as a long-time believer in open-data. The second author, Karl Dubost is a renowned web expert. We are happy to have the support of experts like this in our newly launched initiative.
Diane Mercier: The article (in french) can be found here.
Karl Dubost: Billet ici.
The first public meeting of Montréal Ouvert took place last thursday. We are happy to report that it was a great success, with over 50 (60?) Montréalers turning up to make their support known for municipal open-data!
Participants were invited to a public discussion of what open-data would mean for Montréal as well as a deliberation on how we could best collectively proceed towards an open-data policy. The large majority of the participants were well informed about the topic of open-data and were up-to-date on the developments in other cities in Canada and around the world. Some had already worked on open-data projects such as OpenStreetMap Montreal and OpenParliament.ca. It was a surprisingly diverse group, with many representatives from the educational, developer, non-profit, and private sectors, and even some participants from the city who shared an inside view of this issue.
The participants were introduced to the people behind Montréal Ouvert and had the opportunity ask questions about our experience and knowledge of the issues. In addition, participants inquired about Montréal Ouvert’s contact with stakeholders in other cities who have developed and implemented open-data policies. They also asked about our next steps and reported that they were happy with our direction of encouraging and supporting the city towards the goal of passing an open-data policy. Specific issues discussed included privacy, security, cost-benefit, technical questions for implementation, and licences.
We wish to thank all the citizens who came out to manifest their interest and support for this issue and we look forward to working with them to make this goal a reality!
We also want to thank Station-C for their hospitality. Without places like Station-C, un-financed, citizen activities like MontréalOuvert would have a hard time finding places to hold this type of public event.
Interested in Open Data for Montreal?
We are organizing an open meeting for anyone who wants to see Montreal join the growing list of cities that have embraced Open Data. The goal of the event is to have a fruitful discussion about open data for Montreal and for everyone to have the opportunity to meet your fellow citizens, developers, activists and businespeople who care about this issue.
Beer and chips available (donations).
Sign-up at our doodle: http://doodle.com/ec39xdymv267mhgw
We hope to see you there!
6-8 pm
Thursday, August 26th, 2010
Station C
5369 St-Laurent, #430
We are very happy to launch our new civic initiative which aims to promote the city of Montreal to embrace open-data standards. We hope you can join in our effort to make civic data accessible to all Montrealers and please contribute your ideas, suggestions and comments. The goal of Montreal Ouvert is not to distribute data, but to encourage and support an informed dialogue among Montrealers who are passionate about municipal government, transparency and citizen engagement.
As our Mission Statement explains, we hope the city will use open-data to improve the efficiency of the government, stimulate innovation and connect with citizens. Unfortunately, Montreal lags behind other Canadian and North American cities. We hope all of who are interested in this move towards a digital government will join in our effort.
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