Jim Craner

I presented my work on the Santa Cruz Open Data Portal at the Code for America 2012 Summit in San Francisco on October 2nd.  You can see the video below.

An article I wrote for Shareable.net covers the rise of open data policies and publication by cities in the US after years of cost recovery schemes.

From the article:

I wrote a blog post for Code for America outlining several key strategies for populating a new municipal open data catalog

I wrote a post for Shareable.net about my experiences instituting a technology skill sharing program within a city technology department.

From the article:

There are a lot of ways to actually provide opportunities for this teaching to take place: job shadowing, co-working on a relevant project, informal lunchtime training sessions, or occasional semi-formal classes led by colleagues. One of the most important steps, however, is to communicate your skills inventory to the team so everyone knows what their colleagues’ strengths are. Even a spreadsheet or simple list can help here—“OK, when I have a question about PHP components I ask Phillip, but when I have a question about Ruby on Rails, I should ask Rachel first.”

I analyzed hundreds of civic entrepreneur grant applications and wrote a blog post about some of the common themes in the new wave of civic application startups.

From the article:

Advocates of open government practices call for increased participation and collaboration as we reshape our institutions — and the importance of these concepts is visibly illustrated in this second iteration of the word cloud. “Social,” “public,” “citizens,” “communities” — all of these words represent this drive for giving a voice — a louder and more insistent voice — to the citizens. It’s not enough to listen to The People on election days and during the occasional public commentary meeting; these tools and services are about bringing in the wisdom of the crowds to help inform and perform in real-time. When we see “citizens” and the “public” and “communities” have equal standing with “government,” we’re on our way to open government success.

I wrote an article for the CfA blog about the online response to the White House's new digital government strategy.

I wrote an article about the AXSMaps accessibility information crowdsourcing platform after observing a community mapping exercise in San Francisco.

New CfA blog post I wrote about moving city governments from the "Build vs. Buy" mentality to accept and seek out open source and Free Software solutions during software and system procurement.

I wrote a blog post examining the state of open government data in Canada and the UK, referencing work by David Eaves.  Originally published on both the Code for America blog as well as Shareable.net.

From the article:

New CfA blog post about getting to know a new city via data vs. conversing with citizens, written shortly after my Fellowship Residency in Santa Cruz, CA.