White House Sponsored DataJam Promotes Open Data Initiatives

There is a lot of machine-readable data coming from the federal government, as a result of the Obama Administration’s open-data initiatives. Open data was a platform initiative of the President’s first presidential campaign and, in his second term, he has reinvigorated this policy with a new spate of policy initiatives, executive orders and community outreach.

The result of the outreach program was on display at a recent Datajam event I attended at the White House Conference Center (near, not at, the White House). Sponsored by the White House Office of Science and Technology and CENDI, the event invited technologists, researchers, publishers and data owners to weigh up ways of using the data and content rapidly being made accessible by almost every federal agency. As a group, we were challenged by White House Chief Technology Officer Todd Park to engage our inner entrepreneurial spirits and think up new and innovative uses for government data. In a lively opening speech, Park promised the datajam audience member who came up with a viable idea or product within 60 days that he would “make [him or her] famous.” He pointed to several examples of health data related products which had come out of similar meetings recently, and was enthusiastic about this group’s ability to produce some interesting ideas.

Government information and data is a by-product of the taxes we pay to maintain the federal agencies, and, Park confirmed “the administration is looking to maximize tax payer return of government produced data by opening it up to so many people can access and use it.” Citing as a guiding principle ‘Joy’s law’--that the smartest people in the world will always be working for someone else and that collaboration is an imperative if real progress needs to be made--Park suggested that bringing people together in groups like ours is important for both promotion of open data and for actually devising worthwhile uses for it. Furthermore, he made the point that “open data by itself is useless and only useful if it gets applied to something and produces value.” He encouraged us to “use ‘our data’ to produce awesomeness - where stuff can actually happen.”

Earlier this year, President Obama signed an executive order requiring all federal agencies to open access to all government-sponsored published content by the end of 2013. This has produced a frenzy of activity at some agencies to determine what they have and how to make the materials accessible. Some agencies are more mature in this respect than others but, CTO Park confirmed, the President is passionate about open data and has made specific commitments to fulfilling this policy.

In a speech in Austin, TX, in May, the President cited several examples of start-up companies working with open data: “StormPulse uses government-produced weather data to help businesses anticipate disruptions in service. Another company based in Virginia called OPower uses government trend data to save consumers $200m on their energy bills.” Obama also mentioned an app called iTriage, founded by a pair of doctors, that uses data from the Department of Health and Human Services to help define symptoms and find appropriate health care for the patient. In the same speech, the President announced that his administration is making even more government data available and he expected that this and his other open-data initiatives would help launch even more start-ups similar to the ones he mentioned. 



The data available would help “more entrepreneurs come up with products and services that we haven’t even imagined yet”.

More recently, in a speech just two weeks ago, President Obama suggested that we are part of a process to build a better, more open-data America. Hyperbole aside, there will be no coming back once these policies are in place and this policy by the executive and agencies of the Federal government is likely to have profound changes on how we, as citizens, interact with the government. Frequent examples of open data initiatives cite the use of satellite imagery and data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) which have produced the now ubiquitous mapping and weather apps; however, given the “fire hose” nature of the data and information on offer, these early examples are likely to represent only isolated examples of the opportunities represented by the government’s open data initiatives.

Commercial publishers of government-funded and/or -produced content and data are spooked by some of these moves by the government. During our meeting it was mentioned that one only needs to search for “aspirin” on Google to see how accessing government-produced content via API can produce content that looks very much like a drug handbook entry from Elsevier, Wolters Kluwer or some other commercial medical publisher. The government often makes reference-like content a requirement of various approval processes, and thus, we may be about to see professional reference content undergo some profound changes. And that is just one small example of what could happen to commercial publishing.

As a direct result of the open-data initiatives both in the US and Europe, the Association of American Publishers and Society of Scholarly Publishers (in collaboration with partner CrossRef) have established an initiative named CHORUS. (The EU is said to be about to press for greater open-data requirements than we have in the US.) Through CHORUS, publishers aim to avoid a PubMed situation and manage the open data and open access content requirements themselves; publishers who publish content which is also available on PubMed see significant decreases in traffic once PubMed opens access to the same content. Publishers believe that, by setting up their own open-access service, they will be able to fulfill the government’s open-access requirement and mitigate the impact(s) on their own business models.

Regardless of the risks to current publishers and their business models, it appears that the government produces a lot more content and data than is currently being commercialized by publishers. The sheer amount of data is overwhelming and, as long as the President continues to promote open data, we’ll see hundreds of new products and services develop in the short term as entrepreneurs take CTO Park up on his promise to make them famous.

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My Big Book of Posts & Predictions

I have compiled all my annual predictions posts and a selection of more thoughtful posts that have appeared here since 2006 when I started PND. Here is the slideshare link to the book.

If you would like a pdf file of the book directly from me just send me a note.  Here is a link to all the other presentations I have placed on slideshare.net which have been viewed 35,000 times!

 
Personanondata Predications and Posts: 2006 - 2012 from Michael Cairns

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MediaWeek (V7, N30): Colbert Mocks MOOCs, Private Eye, Barnes & Noble + More

Steven Colbert interviewed Anant Agarwal the President of edX, who explains the reason for offering free university courses online. Steven proclaimed ignorance of the free MOOC model and compared the model to a shoe store.



And at the Chronicle of Higher Education a more serious opinion piece about who's driving the MOOC locomotive:

I understand that politicians have a duty to be good stewards of public money, as do college administrators; and I certainly don't have any objection to cutting costs where we can. But when our primary objective becomes making degrees as cheap as possible, rather than providing the best education possible, we're missing the mark as educators and doing no good for the future of our students or our nation.

That's why it's so important for us as faculty members to realize who's driving the online locomotive. It's not students, only about a third of whom take any online classes. It's not our colleagues, the vast majority of whom still aren't fully on board with online learning in general, much less with MOOCs. And it's certainly not employers, who over all seem to prefer that students take most of their coursework in traditional classrooms. It's the administrators and the politicians, whose priorities—let's be honest—are not the same as ours.

I sometimes wonder if the train is so big, and moving so fast, that it's just going to derail itself due to basic physics. But unless that happens, and until it does, the only way to slow it down is for enough of us to refuse to get on board and instead line the tracks, signaling "proceed with caution" with all our might.

From BusinessWeek; Barnes & Noble, the obituary.

Barnes & Noble is a $6.8 billion company with 675 carefully selected locations in every state in the country. It also operates 686 college bookstores, which with the e-reader operations make up the company’s Nook Media unit. Sales at its regular stores declined almost 6 percent in the company’s 2013 fiscal year, to $4.6 billion. But because their margins are getting higher and their expenses lower, the bookstores still make money: Ninety-five percent are profitable. Lynch may not have been reading real books, but Barnes & Noble’s customers still do.

The company hasn’t announced its plans yet, but it will probably sell the e-reader business or shut it down. Barnes & Noble’s Nook misadventure may look like one of those inexplicable unforced errors businesses make from time to time, like New Coke or the Edsel. But it’s hard to blame Lynch for trying to transform the company. The digital revolution is changing the dynamics of the business. The company had to respond, and it still does. The problem was that Lynch tried to transform the wrong thing.

Barnes & Noble has a history of ill-timed technological decisions. In the 1990s it was focused on beating Borders and didn’t set up its website until 1997, a full two years after Amazon.com went live. It introduced a primitive e-reader too early, in 2001 (on Sept. 11, to make things worse). After Amazon introduced the Kindle in 2007, Barnes & Noble needed someone to take control of its destiny and hired Lynch to do just that.

Eye Full: Ian Hislop explains why Private Eye’s blend of humor and investigative journalism wouldn’t work in the US (CJR)

Britain’s bestselling current-affairs magazine, Private Eye, has been producing its biweekly and decidedly English mix of satire, industry gossip, cartoons, and investigative journalism since 1961. Despite its print-focused operation (there is no digital version, and its website offers just tidbits of what’s available in the print edition), the magazine’s 200,000-plus circulation is the highest it’s been in recent years, buoyed by its recent 50th-anniversary issue and various government and media scandals. Much of the success is due to editor Ian Hislop, 52, who’s been at the helm since 1986. A self-professed workaholic, Hislop also writes for and appears on television, most famously as a panelist on the BBC’s long-running comedic news panel show, Have I Got News For You. As his profile has risen over the years, Hislop has become a regular on various power and influence lists, from The Guardian to GQ, and has been called “the king of British satire” and even a “national treasure.” CJR’s Sara Morrison spoke to Hislop about mixing satire and seriousness, and why American publications and TV shows either don’t or can’t.

Remember Suzi Quatro? (Telegraph):

And she made a pretty big impression on us teenage boys too. I tell her, slightly guiltily, about a rumour that spread around the school that if Devil Gate Drive hit No 1 in 1974, she would strip off on Top of the Pops. She’s laughing so much she can hardly speak. “Rock ’n’ roll! It’s the music of puberty,” she splutters. “I’ve always maintained that you can be sexy with your clothes on. Sexier maybe.” In 2007, Quatro published a candid and entertaining autobiography, Unzipped, in which she told stories about throwing a drunken Iggy Pop offstage, shooting an amorous Alice Cooper with an arrow, and turning down advances from Elvis Presley. Last year, she developed it into a one-woman, multi-media show for a brief run at London’s Hippodrome. This September, she brings a revised version to the Play Misty Club in Hackney for six nights.

From Twitter:
What is a publisher now? New interview with Victor Henning on scholarly PublishingTechnology
Springer Science buyout loan revised to attract investors IFR Asia
Here’s how Amazon self-destructs Salon
Previously unseen Joseph Heller story out this week Guardian 

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Tokyo Skyline 1972

I've never been to Tokyo.  I've not had an interest.  It's never been in my plans.  

In an odd way this is a mesmerizing view of a damp Tokyo skyline taken from high up the Keio Plaza Intercontinental.  The damp surfaces add a lot of depth to the image and the mist confines the view so it feels almost intimate.  It's a shame we have as much of the roof and air conditioning unit in the foreground but if it were tighter then we would miss all the intricate pedestrian walkways in the bottom left.

This is a full page spread in my blurb book and works really well.

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A Funny Thing Happened on the way to History

It is hard not to find the humor in this announcement from the American Historical Association which in a recent policy statement suggests that universities seek up to a six year embargo on publishing digital dissertations.  Windowing hasn't proven effective in trade publishing and it is just as less likely to work here.  The nub of their argument is that digital content can be so widely distributed in contrast to those pesky paper dissertations or UMI versions, that academics risk harming their opportunities for tenure if they can't get their work published.  There is some logic to the policy in that the society wants to protect scholarship by providing a financial incentive for both the author and publisher but for all practical purposes this is wrong headed.  Having a dissertation widely available in advance of a proposed book, it is argued, would torpedo a potential book deal.

The policy runs counter to the growing calls for more open access which often comes from researchers and academics but not publishers.   It would seem that rather than think of a potential solution that looks forward taking full advantage of current media culture and technology the AHA has chosen the historical approach.  In the process, they have attempted to, at a very late date, turn back the clock on scholarly publishing.

That would then lead me to conclude that any young researcher and/or PhD student would view the association as not one which they would want to actively participate in.  Ever.  And that's history for you.

In their announcement they cut straight to the chase:

The American Historical Association strongly encourages graduate programs and university libraries to adopt a policy that allows the embargoing of completed history PhD dissertations in digital form for as many as six years. Because many universities no longer keep hard copies of dissertations deposited in their libraries, more and more institutions are requiring that all successfully defended dissertations be posted online, so that they are free and accessible to anyone who wants to read them. At the same time, however, an increasing number of university presses are reluctant to offer a publishing contract to newly minted PhDs whose dissertations have been freely available via online sources. Presumably, online readers will become familiar with an author’s particular argument, methodology, and archival sources, and will feel no need to buy the book once it is available. As a result, students who must post their dissertations online immediately after they receive their degree can find themselves at a serious disadvantage in their effort to get their first book published; it is not unusual for an early-career historian to spend five or six years revising a dissertation and preparing the manuscript for submission to a press for consideration. During that period, the scholar typically builds on the raw material presented in the dissertation, refines the argument, and improves the presentation itself. Thus, although there is so close a relationship between the dissertation and the book that presses often consider them competitors, the book is the measure of scholarly competence used by tenure committees.

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MediaWeek (V7, N29): MOOCs again, Dr. Who, Fiction in Business, 1970s NYC, Flipping the class.

The Economist on MOOC's

The industry has similar network economics to Amazon, eBay and Google, says Ms Koller, in that “content producers go to where most consumers are, and consumers go to where the most content is.” Simon Nelson, the chief executive of FutureLearn, disagrees. “Anyone who thinks the rules of engagement have already been written by the existing players is massively underestimating the potential of the technology,” he says.
Certainly, there is plenty of experimentation with business models taking place. The MOOCs themselves may be free, but those behind them think there will be plenty of revenue opportunities. Coursera has started charging to provide certificates for those who complete its courses and want proof, perhaps for a future employer. It is also starting to license course materials to universities that want to beef up their existing offering. However, it has abandoned for now attempts to help firms recruit employees from among Coursera’s students, because catering to the different needs of each employer was “not a scalable model”, says Ms Koller.

That big MOOC initiative announced by San Jose State six months ago is on-hold (IHeD)

San Jose State Provost Ellen Junn said disappointing student performance will prompt the university to stop offering online classes with Udacity this fall as part of a "short breather."  Junn wants to spend the fall going over the results and talking with faculty members about the university’s online experimentation, which extends beyond the Udacity partnership and has proved somewhat controversial. She said the plan is to start working with Udacity again in spring 2014.  “I think the commitment is to look at the data carefully and make adjustments,” Junn said in a telephone interview Wednesday.  Preliminary findings from the spring semester suggest students in the online Udacity courses, which were developed jointly with San Jose State faculty, do not fare as well as students who attended normal classes -- though Junn cautioned against reading too much into the comparison, given the significant differences in the student populations.

The Daleks and Dr. Who make a show at Comic-Com (Guardian)

The big news outside the Comic-Con panel was confirmation that the Daleks are coming back for the 50th anniversary. Said Moffat: "The Doctor once said that you can judge a man by the quality of his enemies, so it's fitting that for this very special episode, he should be facing the greatest enemies of all." (A biscuit for anyone who got that reference to Remembrance of the Daleks.) But from the publicity stills we've already seen, the Daleks in question are the ones from the Russell T Davies era.

Photos of 1970s NYC (Atlantic)

And so closes Maxwells in Hoboken (New York)

“Maxwell’s felt like a Portkey in Harry Potter,” says ex–Hoboken resident Chris Stamey, one of the many musicians  mourning the great venue’s passing. In the pantheon of important New York City rock clubs—Max’s Kansas City, CBGB, the Bottom Line—Maxwell’s ranks as high as any, even though its legal address is New Jersey. Hoboken was still known mostly as Frank Sinatra’s birthplace when Steve Fallon began booking unknown bands in his tiny, plain bar 35 years ago. On July 31, after countless nights of weird music from acts that went on to fame (Nirvana, R.E.M.) or didn’t (the New Marines drew only one paying customer), the first couple of bands to perform at Maxwell’s—the Bongos and a—will play a final show, and the club will close.

Flipping the class room for ancient Rome (Chronicle)

For me it all started last August, when I naïvely assumed that the students would be delighted to listen to short lectures at their own pace and away from an uncomfortable and noisy auditorium.  The problem, I soon discovered, was that nobody told the students they were supposed to hate lectures. They were genuinely disoriented when I didn't spend class time lecturing. Only about 25 percent of them watched the prerecorded lectures before class. As a result, class discussion of content became an exercise in futility. Their comments at the end of the semester made it clear that about two-thirds of them preferred a typical lecture class.  I'm pretty sure my students would have been no more interested in watching a Superprofessor lecture on Ancient Rome than they were in watching me—it wasn't me or my style (as they clearly said in the surveys); it was the extra work required of them.

Assigning fiction reading in business school (HBR)

My view of what makes literature so valuable in the classroom is that it helps students really get inside individuals who are making decisions. It helps them see things as these people in the stories actually see them. And that's because the inner life of the characters is imagined and described, in many cases, by brilliant writers whose sense of how people really think and how they really work have been tested by time over decades or even centuries.  We have students, as you know, from a wide variety of backgrounds. And many of them take this course because they've got their own sort of personal interests and concerns-- things they're really trying to think through. And what they often really learn is not sort of what the author put in there, but they learn what other students see and understand and are troubled by or like in these stories.  So it's a very complex form of learning, but it's very different from the old instructional model. In many ways, it's like the case method approach to learning.

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Jefferson Memorial

From this morning.  We hold these truths, etc, etc.

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