Data – what developers really want

From getting people offline to providing more detail about formatting – the notes below were sent to me and other attendees of the Culture Hack North event today. I thought the points made about what developers want from data sets would be hugely useful to any organisation looking to get started with opening up data.
Thanking Ashley Mann of Opera North for agreeing to post it here and share it more widely – he’s @biglittlethings on twitter and well worth a follow!
Data:
As you have embarked down the road of thinking about what data you might release to the public I thought it might be helpful to share some feedback from the developers about what is/isn’t useful data, what formats are useable etc.

More is more: the more data you can release, the better!

Live: The developers were very keen to point out that the best data is live, it is something that they can access and be certain that it is completely up to date, there are a number of ways of achieving this that I’d be happy to explain if you are interested.

Accessible: I would like to stress that Word documents/pdfs are not useable formats as far as developers are concerned, csv or similar is best. Or simply (as the National Railway Museum have done) stick it into a Google doc spreadsheet - accessible and stored in the cloud so you don’t need to worry about bandwidth/servers/etc. A lot of the developers have said it’d be great if the data you provided for the event could be made available online.

Consistent: quite a few of you provided data that was quite inconsistent, for example dates that either referred to a specific date e.g. 1/1/2001 and/or a date range e.g. 1999-2005 in the same field – this renders this field completely useless to a developer or means that they have to go through and convert everything so that it is consistent (time-consuming and not a lot of fun)

Meaningful: some data was provided with no date or way of relating it to a specific time/place in the real world (i.e. a date), this makes it fairly unuseable. key pieces of information are place and time wherever possible

Semantic: Quite a few of the developers said it would’ve been nice to have more ‘human’ data, opinions, feedback, reviews etc. This would’ve allowed them to think more creatively about the use of the data.

Media: Developers also said that the best data was a mixture of figures, copy and also media e.g. photos and/or video

Engagement:
I think the organisations that probably got the most out of the event were those that managed to come along and be there in person. This not only allowed them to meet the developers but through doing so meant that they could explain their data in more depth and discuss potential ideas with the developers. I’d encourage you all to try and get along to any future events – I think there is a huge amount you could get out of it.

Liveblogging journeys with n0tice shared

Over the years I’ve tried a whole host of different platforms for liveblogging with varying degrees of success, so getting the opportunity to help shape a platform from the start, as I have atm with www.n0tice.com, is a bit like being let loose in the proverbial sweet shop.

One of the big challenges is how to get multiple bloggers involved in collaborating on one blogpost at the same time with whatever devices they happen to have and without any particular pre-planning.

I don’t mean just curating the activities of others going on in the same place such as random tweets on a hashtag – although that’s essential too – but actively collaborating to produce a multimedia report.

This could be fun for events where there’s lots of people attending such as conferences – but imagine what a powerful tool it could be for breaking news events where the journalists and other participants are unknowingly thrown together at a location.

I’ve been experimenting at a couple of events over the past few days and thought it worth sharing the experience for the benefit of others who might like to try it out and also in the hope of hearing from any livebloggers out there who’ve particular issues which could be answered in a new ground-up platform like this.

The first experiment was the the Salford University Innovation through Heritage  event where I found myself in the room with several n0tice users including the prolific Nigel Barlow who has been busy developing a noticeboard for InsidetheM60. Given that, this was an easy test run and we simply updated some basic text commentary between us and posted a picture. Interesting to see that when I logged in earlier today that it’s been updated since by another user – a story that can continue to develop? Existing users can see the test here.

A more substantial test came at the weekend where I offered anyone attending the Culture Hack North event an invite to join me with a live blog. My volunteer, the wonderful Linda Broughton, isn’t a regular blogger but wanted to give a try – and ended up blogging the whole of the second day of the event!

This was rather more adventurous and the final result was a live blog of 29 updates which contained text from us both, curated other people’s tweets, pictures, a video and a link to a presentation. Existing users can give it a look here.

Five things I’ve learned from the experience;

* Updates can be added as frequently as required using the simple update box -  works a bit like my old friend, FriendFeed.
* Adding pictures can be done from a link, not just a file from a camera or desktop, eg. Flickr, Twitpic.
* Video is easy to add from a youTube embed  added to the update box.
* Curating other people tweets into it is simply a case of dropping the link from the timestamp on twitter.
* It’s more fun when someone else joins in!

If you fancy giving it a try – please do sign up for an invite, www.n0tice.com, and let me know how you get on or let me know what must-have feature would get you using it.

Build your own newsroom – software for independent publishers

Open source media organisation Sourcefabric has been in touch tonight with news of a new software called Superdesk which it’s starting work on.

It’s something that could be of interest to independent publishers, as well as larger news organisations, so I’ve posted their release below – I’d like to hear from anyone who tries it out too.

“Superdesk’s aim is to allow news organisations to build flexible, scalable newsrooms and deliver content to any available platform. Superdesk has been nominated as a finalist in the Ashoka Changemakers Citizen Media Innovation award.
The tool’s core principle is “create once, publish everywhere” (COPE). Using APIs and content management, Superdesk allows newsrooms to pull in information from newswires, RSS, tools like InDesign, and social media and then output to web, mobile, radio, TV, and print. Forward planning calendars, source and data management and revenue components allow newsrooms to structure, prioritise and monetise their content.

Superdesk’s central paradigm will be the web, but it will be able to deliver on any platform, any device, anywhere, anytime,” said Sava Tatić, managing director at Sourcefabric. “Flexibility is key. Rather than trying to build a tool made for everyone’s newsroom, we are making a tool that everyone can build their newsroom upon.”

Superdesk’s lead consultant is David Brewer a media strategist who has consulted on newsrooms for Al Jazeera, BBC, CNN and ITV. “It’s a dream come true for me,” he said. “Superdesk could become the publication tool of choice for all who want to deliver content to multiple devices and a massive boost to the establishing of independent media.”

Work on the project has already begun, with prototype features already benefiting newspapers like the new print-online hybrid TagesWoche in Switzerland. TagesWoche is using Print Desk, which brings print and online processes into one workflow, and Feed Ingest, which integrates external newswire feeds into the editorial process. Both features will make it into the first Superdesk release, due in Summer 2012.

For more information visit: http://sourcefabric.org/en/community/blog/800