Richard Pietro's 2014 Open Government Tour

August 11th is the Winnipeg stop of Richard Pietro’s Open Government Tour.

This summer Richard is driving his motorcycle across the country promoting democratic engagement by way of technology, transparency and accountability. The intent of his tour (as described in this article) is to “introduce Open Gov/Data to Canadians, hopefully acting as a spark that will help push the movements over the tipping point and change the perspective that this kind of stuff isn’t only relegated to the uber-civically engaged, politico, or super-techie.”

Register to attend!

“Open Data refers to the default release of all the information the government collects about us. All the studies, all the reports, all the numbers all available online.”

“Open Government is the idea that governments make this information available by default, without having to go through Freedom of Information requests or court battles. Open government means a government that works with the people, not above the people.”

More Open Government Tour (OGT14) details can be found at opengovtour.org.

Winnipeg Event - 6pm to 9pm on August 11th

Open Democracy Manitoba is hosting the event along with sponsors the Community News Commons and the Winnipeg Public Library.

We have confirmed the following guests for the evening:

Mary Agnes Welch of the Winnipeg Free Press. Mary Agnes has written a number of data-driven stories for the Winnipeg Free Press. She also works with journalism students at Red River College on FIPPA / Data research projects.

Colin Craig of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. Colin’s interest in open government is due to his experience with FIPPA requests and his organization’s focus on accountability.

A representative from the City of Winnipeg’s new Open Data Portal data.winnipeg.ca.

Charles Thrift of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD). The IISD and the United Way built Peg (mypeg.ca) a data-driven community well-being portal.

Dennis Lewycky of the Social Planning Council of Winnipeg is an advocate of more accessible government data for research on social equity issues. The SPCW led a coalition of organizations in buying more detailed neighbourhood-level cross-tabulation Census data from Statistics Canada.

We’re currently in talks with the following folks to secure more participants:

• The Province of Manitoba
• The Winnipeg Art Council

The event will follow a “late night talk-show” format. The evening will be broken down into two groups of guests, with a theme topic for each group. The Toronto event was organized into three sections:

• Intro; relationship with Make Web Not War; What is Open Source?
• The culture of Open Government. What does it look like? What are the obstacles? Where are the low hanging fruits?
• Open Data / Technology conversation. What are the tools and processes that can help make Open Government a reality?

The Winnipeg event is confirmed and we’ve booked the Carol Shields Auditorium at the Millennium Library (Downtown Graham at Donald) from 6 until 9:30pm on August 11th. Register to Attend.

Richard reports back that the first four events on the tour in Toronto, Kingston, Montreal and Halifax were very successful.

What I Need From You

Start following and retweeting the #OGT14 hashtag, share the Event Brite Event and the Facebook Event.

The event will be dedicated to introducing Open Gov/Data to people who are new to the space. If you’re well-informed in this area, please reach out to your family/friends and bring someone less open-savvy along.

Do you have anyone you can suggest as a local guest? We’re looking for open-data, open-source, or open-gov practitioners. Feel free to think beyond the tech world. How about a local educator, artist or activist working in this space? We are hoping to have all guests confirmed by July 22nd, next Tuesday.

I could also use some suggestions for pulling in a more diverse audience.

This is What Open Source Looks Like

To model the Open Source process, ODM co-founder Ken Harasym created an Open Source Poster for the 2014 Open Government Tour. A poster kit including editable DOC and PDF versions can be downloaded here, there is also an editable version on Canva.

OGT14 City champions across Canada can now customize is poster for their local event, print and promote.