Lansdowne Park RFQ

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Nganyi Indigenous Knowledge Adaptation Project

The Saturday Light Brigade, one of the oldest public radio shows in the United States.

> Broadband stimulus cash going quickly-who's making a grab?
>
> [excerpt]
>
> http://arstechnica.com/telecom/news/2009/11/broadband-stimulus-cash-going-qu
> icklywhos-making-a-grab.ars
>
> Perhaps some of the most interesting ideas, however, can be found in > the
> sustainable broadband category. These include a request from the The
> Saturday Light Brigade, one of the oldest public radio shows in the > United
> States. SLB is famous for its family emphasis: participatory puzzles > and
> games, call-ins from kids, that sort of thing. The show broadcasts on
> Saturday mornings, live from the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh, PA.
>
> SLB's Original Urban Radio (OURadio) initiative has asked for a > $275,000
> grant to build a network of broadband powered community radio > stations for
> the public housing systems in that city. The project would work with
> Pittsburgh's public housing agency. As OUB explains, it will:
>
> "use broadband services to create localized radio stations in > existing
> youth centers at Bedford Dwellings (on Pittsburgh's North Side) and
> Northview Heights (in Pittsburgh's Hill District). Broadcasts will > propagate
> through broadband Internet, and be heard on computers, telephones > and-most
> importantly-Internet radios. Each station will broadcast poetry, > music,
> essays, reflections, interviews, public affairs and other similar > content
> created by and for youth and others who live in the community."
>
> - - - - - - -
>
> The Saturday Light Brigade is a radio program featurbing acoustic > music and
> family fun. Broadcast since 1978, it is one of the longest-running > public
> radio programs in the United. States. Quality music, on-air > telephone calls
> from kids and adults, innovative participatory puzzles and games, and
> interesting guests have made The Saturday Light Brigade a family radio
> tradition for tens of thousands of people. Kids listen with adults, > adults
> listen with kids, and everyone has fun listening to the radio > together!
>
> The Saturday Light Brigade is broadcast live from 6:00 a.m. to 12:00 > noon
> (Eastern) on Saturday mornings and originates live from Children's > Museum of
> Pittsburgh and broadcasts can be heard here at www.slbradio.org, > WRCT (88.3
> FM Pittsburgh), WIUP (90.1 FM Indiana), WMCO (90.7 FM Muskingom) > WSAJ (91.1
> FM Grove City), WNJR (91.7 FM Washington), WCUC (91.7 FM Clarion).
>
> http://slbradio.org/about.shtml

Ottawa Escarpment Area District Plan

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Portland Becomes an Open City

The Open Resolution

Mobilize and expand the regional technology community of software, hardware and service professionals by promoting open and transparent government, open data, and partnership opportunities between the public, private and non-profit sectors, academia and labor

WHEREAS, the City of Portland is committed to engaging the community by working with citizens, soliciting their ideas, input, and creative energy; and

WHEREAS, the City of Portland is committed to using technology to foster open, transparent, and accessible government; and

WHEREAS, by sharing data freely, the City of Portland seeks to develop opportunities for economic development, commerce, increased investment, and civic engagement for Citizens of the Portland region; and

WHEREAS, publishing structured standardized data in machine readable formats creates new opportunities for information from different sources to be combined and visualized in new and unexpected ways, for niche markets to be identified and developed, and for Citizens to browse, interpret and draw attention to trends or issues with greater efficiency; and

WHEREAS the adoption of open standards improves transparency, access to public information, and improved coordination and efficiencies among bureaus and partner organizations across the public, non-profit and private sectors; and

WHEREAS, the City of Portland seeks to encourage the local software community to develop software applications and tools to collect, organize, and share public data in new and innovative ways; and

WHEREAS, Software applications and tools that enable Citizens to access, visualize, and analyze public information will promote greater civic engagement and encourage Citizens to provide feedback on local issues; and

WHEREAS, the Portland region is a global leader of the Open Source Software industry, with leading foundations, businesses, and professionals located in and around Portland; and

WHEREAS, supporting and encouraging the development of Open Source Software curricula in Portland area educational institutions will result in a “Culture of Openness” that will enable Portland to increase the momentum behind its efforts for the foreseeable future; and

WHEREAS, Open Source Software can enable the City of Portland to use, copy, customize and redistribute software it deploys for government services; and

WHEREAS, the City of Portland will consider Open Source Software as a potential alternative to existing commercial software solutions in its purchasing and contracting decisions; and

WHEREAS, the City will promote the creation and continued evolution of innovative Open Source Software solutions to meet civic needs;

NOW, THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the Council of the City of Portland:

1. Directs the Bureau of Technology Services to:
   
   1. Enter into agreements with our regional partners to publish and maintain public datasets that are open and freely available while respecting privacy and security concerns as identified by the City Attorney;
   2. Develop a strategy to adopt prevailing open standards for data, documents, maps, and other formats of media;
   3. Organize a regional contest to encourage the development of software applications to collect, organize, and share public data;
   4. Establish best practices for analysis of business requirements in software review and selection processes, identify existing commercial software systems with licenses that are scheduled to expire in the near future, and encourage the consideration of Open Source Software in the review, replacement and continual improvement of business solutions;
   5. Work with Travel Portland and regional partners to promote Portland as a host city for leading Open Source Software conferences and related technology events, such as LinuxCon, Innotech, etc;

2. Directs the City’s Purchasing Agent to notify and distribute all formal technology related purchasing and contract opportunities for publication and distribution by the Software Association of Oregon, Oregon Entrepreneurs Network and the open source community in addition to those public notice requirements required under Portland City Code 5.33.300.

SWIFT - Crowdsourced Situational Awareness

Swift is a Free and Open Source toolset for crowdsourced situational awareness.

Swift builds on Twitter Vote Report, a platform for crowd-sourced election monitoring.  Twitter Vote Report made it possible for US voters to report voting irregularities in real-time using a standard set of tags for monitoring wait time at polling places.

Swift hopes to expand this approach into a general purpose toolkit for crowdsouring the semantic structuring of data so that it can be reused in other applications and visualizations. The developers of Swift are particularly interested in crisis reporting (Ushahidi) and international media criticism (Meedan), but by providing a general purpose crowdsourcing tool we hope to create a tool reusable in many contexts.

Swift engages self-interested teams of “citizen editors” who curate publicly available information about a crisis or any event or region as it happens.

The goal of Swift is to provide an API (for programmers) and data set (for researchers) about an arbitrary set of RSS feeds. Swift is a database and a user interface; we are currently focusing on utilizing the open source freebase.com repository as a central store of our curated data.

+++

Summary from Erik Hersman:

• Swift ... is an initiative that seeks to do two very important things, both of which are crucial for not just Ushahidi, but for many emergency response activities in the future. First, it gathers as many possible streams of data about a particular crisis event as possible. Second, using a two-part filter, that stream of data is filtered through both machine based algorithms and humans to better understand the veracity and level of importance of any piece of information. - Erik

http://swiftapp.org/

Newt & Company on EDU

Santa Cruz, all the way

Crisis with Social Media

Cyber Space Policy Review & Senate Bill Excerpt

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SODA?

Last week the federal government finally provided details on the new Southern Ontario Development Agency.  SODA was announced last January as part of the Conservative Government’s Action Plan for Canada.  Over the last several months, rumours and speculation passed through economic development circles across Ontario. 

We at Creative Communities questioned what this ‘new’ agency would mean for Eastern Ontario.  Although that answer yet remains unclear, some information on FedDev Ontario, the official name of SODA, has emerged (this information was obtained from the Federal Action Plan website):

• The Southern Ontario Development Program will be a core program under the new agency, and will deliver close to $100 million in funding in 2009-10 to promote economic development, economic diversification and job creation;
• The Community Adjustment Fund (CAF), a short-term economic stimulus for communities impacted by the global recession, will contribute $350M throughout Ontario;
• Southern Ontario’s Community Futures Development Corporations (CFDC), which provide important services to businesses, entrepreneurs and social enterprises, will receive $30M from the Community Adjustment Fund in 2009-2010;
• The Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) will invest a total of $50M in Southern Ontario through venture capital firms and the BDC’s own programs;
• The National Research Council’s Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC-IRAP), which stimulates wealth creation through technological innovation, had a $67.3M grants and contributions envelope for Ontario in 2009-2010. It will receive an additional $27.5M to foster innovation among Southern Ontario’s small and medium-sized enterprises, and supporting organizations.

The agency will be based in Kitchener, which is located in one of Ontario’s fastest growing regions (see Ontario in the Creative Age).  This location is definitely not my first choice for an agency that historically was designed to assist economically disadvantaged regions.  According to sources, the government wanted a central location other than the GTA (see CBC, August 13th); however, it doesn’t take a geographer to see that Kitchener is far from central for Eastern Ontario.

Taken from: http://www.easternontarioknowledge.ca/index.php/community-blogs/50-general/472-feddev-ontario-soda-is-finally-out-of-the-bottle.html