I'm kicking myself because I've been taking far too narrow an interpretation of "an open source approach". I've been focused on getting people to release data. That's the data analogue of tossing code over the wall, and we know it takes more than a tarball on an FTP server to get the benefits of open source. The same is true of data.

Open source discourages laziness (because everyone can see the corners you've cut), it can get bugs fixed or at least identified much faster (many eyes), it promotes collaboration, and it's a great training ground for skills development. I see no reason why open data shouldn't bring the same opportunities to data projects.

And a lot of data projects need these things.

I've been saying for a while that open data is a sort of new frontier. Open source is relatively wide spread and there is a general low hum of understanding about it in many places. For me, I sum it up by saying to people that they need to understand that their "code is worthless".

The next step is coming to understand about open data, and why we should care. Why we should convince people that their "data is worthless".

[Aaron Seigo, leading KDE developer] latest article is one that is of particular interest to the Drupal community, I believe, because as a large, minimally-structured, Open Source development community we face many of the same challenges that other such projects do, such as KDE. In particular, the challenge of who to listen to.

I’ve been joking for years that I’m going to write an email client and charge $500 for it — an email client that actually meets the needs of developers and professionals who rely on email, folks who type for a living.
…

Nevertheless, we need that email client. The only way to get there is via open source: there might be enough interest and energy in the community to make it happen.

I am speaking at the ACCT Canada 2009 Conference on November 10th. The Alliance for Commercialization of Canadian Technologies is the "national advocate for the value created by academic technology transfer and commercialization". The short form of that mouthful is that they primarily represent the tech transfer offices of universities. In university lingo, this is often done by the University Industry Liason Office (UILO). Yes, acronyms are fun :P

As part of my role at Bootup, I'll be first participating in the "Innovation Clusters, Incubators and Accelerators" panel. We'll be getting on a call to discuss the format and talking points for the panel tomorrow, but I expect I'm going to be the private industry / capitalist viewpoint. This is a free form panel discussion, so it should be interesting to see where it goes.