Reposting from the IdeaLab. Most of what I write there is either drivel or a comment, and I think I write sharp comments but they’re not really that intriguing out of context. What I didn’t say on the idealab was that I’ve noticed these trends, one being a fascination with aggregation that comes early in a person’s introduction to the vast world of internet resources out there. Aggregation without human intervention. Aggregation like “what if you could subscribe to all the action alerts about polar bears in the whole world instead of engaging with an organization and building a long term strategy to help Americans rethink our relationship to nature.” Except that second clause gets lost in the translation. Also, the people who want to talk about emergent behavior and the wisdom of crowds. And then they show a picture of some bees, and they don’t point out that hives have Queen Bees. And Queen Bees posses intellectual superiority. So do good organizers. Just data, data without analysis, is not superior. It is just data. Smart people, maybe people with communities that make them smarter by challenging them, but smart people are the ones who make things happen. Is what I say, but didn’t say because somehow I don’t know how to say that in a language that is professional enough. This will forever be my challenge, I am guessing.

I spent Tuesday in Washington DC at Websites Without Walls. A nine hour trip for a four hour meeting always makes me nervous, but we’re passionately interested in seeing New York City match Washington DC’s astounding wealth of open public data. Never knew that the District publishes an astounding wealth of usable public information? Me neither. I made the trip to find out more.

While New York City busies itself posting PDFs of city agency documents within 10 days of their publication, the District of Columbia’s Office of the Chief Technical Officer is churning out no less than 261 live data feeds and maps, and has mandated that no city agency may acquire software that cannot publish to the data warehouse.

Two hundred sixty one and growing, while the British Government’s Power of Information Task Force is sponsoring a contest with a $35,000 prize to the best idea on “how to reuse, represent, mashup or combine the information the government holds.” To get folks started they’ve put together a comprehensive list of public data sources in the UK.

The data that Washington DC makes public is the same data that city agencies use internally every day. Unfortunately, it seems to be so obvious to the current administration that this is public information that they don’t have many insights about how other cities might find the political will to follow suite. One interesting observation: that DC has managed to sell the data warehouse as a way that the city can retain control over data. By providing the data as feeds that civic projects can re-purpose, the city has the power to correct data and see those corrections percolate out in a way they never could with figures published in hard copy.

Other tasty morsels from Websites Without Walls? NPR’s API is up and running and mighty robust, Stephanie was the most used word in congress on Monday.

Another challenge: I ran into a thousand people I know and love at the landing of the Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea on Sunday night. Because my old networks have come unraveled, I don’t really see Jenny or Joe Tuba or Ashira or Will or Aresh in any natural or organic way. And so I run into them at things like that and we say “it is so great to see you” and then we go back from whence we came. But in between they ask me what I am doing and I don’t know how to say that I’m obsessed with data driven local media. It doesn’t seem all that interesting with Swoon‘s work towering over us and the Swimming Cities rocking gently on the pier. I don’t know how to reconcile these things.