How to get Open Data into the Hands of Activists
summary
Argues that open data only becomes useful when distilled into actionable facts and shared as frictionless data packages (JSON metadata + CSV payloads, per Open Knowledge Foundation). Demonstrates using Redis set intersections and column‑level indexing to discover correlations, warns ClickView is proprietary, and proposes BitTorrent‑style distribution for location independence. Uses concrete examples: 400,000 residents, ~180 people per flush toilet in an informal settlement versus 55,000 in a middle‑class suburb 25 km away, showing how those figures turn data into mobilizing common knowledge.
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chapters (37)
- 0:00Intro
- 2:05Early activism
- 3:53State of emergency
- 5:24My story
- 6:35Civil war
- 9:31Cape Town
- 13:13Protests
- 15:14Density
- 16:26Data and Activism
- 18:20Where did I find the data
- 19:13What would we do differently
- 20:40Open Data
- 21:48Software Freedoms
- 22:45Data Standards
- 26:05Error margins
- 26:26Strict data format
- 26:59JSON
- 27:54Too Hard Remix
- 28:04frictionless data sets
- 28:34big data
- 30:24Splitting data
- 31:45Finding trends
- 32:45Location independence
- 33:03Peertopeer
- 33:45BitTorrent
- 34:11Digital Activist
- 34:40Social Activist
- 35:01What is Activism
- 35:34Undeveloped Countries
- 35:54New Social Contracts
- 36:23Federated Wiki
- 37:02How to reach people
- 37:58Feedback
- 41:32Ideological Questions
- 42:44Cow Tshirt
- 43:07Cat Stevens of Africa
- 44:30Common Knowledge
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