GO Open Data Conference and revisiting the Geocoder case

This Week

  • David Eaves (an Open North board member) revisited the Canada Post/Geocoder.ca case, which recently escalated, on his blog. In this post, David explores the financial challenges Canada Post’s policies put on the nonprofit sector, referring to the costs Open North would incur (up to $50,000) if we elected to use their data products for our Represent service. David concludes by noting, again, that we may be the only country with this kind of closed postal service!
  • Open North is pleased to join the jury panel of the 2013 Dazzling Notice Awards. The awards, which were founded last year by Dave Meslin, recognize achievement in government outreach. Last year’s winner, the Village of Pemberton, B.C, redesigned their public notice template making it easier to read and more appealing to citizens.
  • Our executive director, James McKinney, is the featured speaker at next weekend’s GO Open Data Conference in Waterloo, Ontario. The one-day conference aims to help build the Ontario open data community by connecting citizens, municipal staff, and developers.
  • Also, we’re thrilled to be joined this summer by Alexi Garrow, an undergraduate computer science student at McGill University. Alexi will be helping us as a junior web developer on our MaMairie.ca and MyCityHall.ca projects. We look forward to working with him!