These past couple of weeks have been a whirlwind of events, all swirling around the idea of open data, technology and government transparency.  I happen to be in Virginia conducting a class on social media for emergency managers for the National Disaster Preparedness Training Center. While planning my trip I found out Transparency Camp 2012 (TCamp12), organized by the Sunlight Foundation, was happening the weekend I was up there at George Mason University in Arlington, VA. It was a fortuitous set of circumstances.

Like the unconference format we are all so familiar with, TCamp12 was participant driven, where sessions are determined and attended by people like you and me. The difference being everyone was in some way involved, interested, worked on open government and transparency initiatives. Taking place in the Washington D.C. area gave this unconference not only a national representation but an international one.

Laurenellen McCann,  National Policy Manager at the Sunlight Foundation, did an excellent summary of the event, along with conference testimonial video. I was able to attend several session including: Open Gov ROI, Data –> Action, Open Data for Kids, Open 311 and Meta Transparency Camp. I even called a few of my own sessions including Sustainability Models for Open Data and Open Data for K-12 Education.

As most conferences “un” or otherwise go, there’s a great amount of knowledge sharing and people connections being made. Transparency Camp 2012 was that and more. Ideas were flowing and the call to action was top of mind. Attendees felt empowered to take what they learned and apply it in their respective regions. It didn’t hurt that Todd Park, CTO for the United States gave a rousing speech about open data and innovation. Here is a clip of Todd’s speech at Transparency Camp 2012.

Back home in Hawaii, we held our first Sunlight Foundation meetup to see how we can continue to move the bar on open government, open data and transparency here at home. As I found out, the interest is very high not only at a national level like Transparency Camp but right here in our own neighborhoods. As I am known to tell people, the technology and the Internet have lowered the barrier to entry and has allowed us to all have the ability to make a difference. This movement is small but growing. If you are interested in finding out more about open data and government transparency, feel free to join our Meetup group.

When DaBus officially launched on the iTunes App Store in March, it was a chance to showcase all three apps and to build awareness of the open data ecosystem, ie. data, applications and community. There was also a third goal, to demonstrate the use of social media to the City who historically used traditional media to communicate  to the pubic.

The idea behind Geeks on DaBus came as a result of a meeting with Sheba Najmi from Code for America, Tara Coomans from Social Media Club of Hawaii and Jim Fulton of Mayor Carlisle’s media team. The game plan was to engage the public, using any of the apps, to ride the Bus from where ever they choose and meetup at the Greenhouse Innovation Hub for lunch. Along the way you could tweet, photograph, shoot video, etc. As an added bonus, Mayor Carlisle jumped on a Bus near Honolulu Hale to make the rendezvous.

The estimated number of participants when originally planning this event was 20. We maxed out our Eventbrite cap of 40, but recognized that 50% of that number were City employees. According to the Archivist the hashtag #DaBusHNL represented nearly 500 tweets. Another telling stat were the number of downloads for the DaBus app:

Date     Downloads
4/11 – 162
4/12 – 220
4/13 – 226
4/14 – 154

In addition to the tweet stats and app downloads, there were the blog posts and articles by Jerome Koehler, Sheba Najmi (Code for America), Tara Coomans (Social Media Club of Hawaii), Ryan Ozawa (Hawaii Star) and Civil Beat. This all helped to maintain the dialog between the community and government. It also helped tremendously to document this process from various points of view.

Another interesting outcome was the mashup of digital content, social media and the web. This Wordle word cloud captured the key words and people behind the tweets. John Garcia and Derek Gabriel created a spashpage for DaBusApp. Brian Dote created Tweetmapr, a map of tweets based on geolocation. These new ways of presentation and visualization help to stimulate ideas and insights into the data.

Open data in combination with app development, social media and visualization tools not only create transparency and civic engagement but also stimulate new ways of understanding the data. With advancements in sentiment and word analysis, this opens up entirely new vistas of knowledge discovery.

Acknowledgement: Diana Tran for DaBus graphics

The inaugural STEM Week Awards were given out last week, celebrating the achievements of 14 high and middle schools in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). For the first time, diverse fields like VEX Robotics, FIRST Robotics, Science Olympiad, the Hawai‘i State Science & Engineering Fair, and CyberPatriot were recognized in a single awards ceremony.

On hand was Hawaii’s senior Senator, Daniel K. Inouye. In his keynote address, Senator Inouye recognized the importance of STEM and its contribution to the competitiveness of Hawaii’s students. He reflected on his humble public school upbringing and how, only in America, he could fight the stereotype of a Japanese-American during WWII to achieve his current position as the President pro tempore of the Senate.

Inouye said in a statement: “I arrived home to Hawai‘i last night and was pleased that my first event was to participate in the STEM Week Awards Lunch. It warmed my heart to see bright young students and their committed teachers and principals. Hawai‘i has much to be proud of and to be hopeful about. We should not sell ourselves short. Our future is in good hands.”

The inaugural STEM Week Awards also featured the first Daniel K. Inouye Award for Commitment to STEM Education, which went to Hawaiian Electric Company. The award is given to an individual or organization that demonstrated leadership in Hawaii’s STEM educational initiatives by ensuring continued access to STEM programs statewide.

As a bonus feature Doug Matsuoka caught me at the entrance to the STEM Week Luncheon and reversed the roles on me by asking me a few questions about this event.

Andy Yip and Jane Zeng, creators of the iPhone app DaBus were featured on Yasmin Dar‘s Social Wire segment on KITV’s morning show. Both Andy and Jane were part of CityCamp Honolulu and the CityCampHNL Hackathon. In fact they won top honors at the Hackathon. Since the Hackathon, they came up with a name for the app, polished it up and got it added to Apples iTunes App Store.

 The DaBus app takes the guess work out of catching the bus on the island of Oahu. It uses the near real-time GPS arrival information, courtesy of the Oahu Transit Services, to provide the best estimated time on when the next bus will arrive. This app also tracks the current location of the bus you are interested using the GPS device installed on many of the buses. In addition, it also provides options to explore different bus routes and take a virtual ride to better understand its route.

DaBus app ver 1.1 is available in the iTunes App Store. Jerome Koehler, tech blogger at Non-Stop Honolulu also did a video review of DaBus and its application. Congratulations go out to Andy and Jane for the successful launch of DaBus.

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• Northrop Grumman Foundation Congratulates CyberPatriot IV Finalists – MarketWatch – Northrop Grumman Foundation, the presenting sponsor for CyberPatriot IV, congratulates the 24 teams from across the country that have successfully battled three rounds of virtual competition to advance to the national finals showdown, to be held in Washington, D.C., on March 23.
• Mānoa: Student-built satellite selected for NASA launch | University of Hawaii News – The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced today that a nanosatellite designed by a team of University of Hawai`i at Mānoa electrical and mechanical engineering students is one of 33 selected to fly as auxiliary cargo on NASA missions planned during 2013 and 2014.
• SHARK TREK TO HAWAII IS BOON TO RESEARCH | UTSanDiego.com – An electronic ID tag from a rare shark spotted off the county’s coast in June has popped to the surface near Hawaii, providing local marine researchers with an unprecedented look into the long-distance movements of the second-largest known fish.
• International Group Tests RFID for Food Safety to Hawaii – RFID Journal – The project is using radio frequency identification and GPS technologies to track the temperature and location of produce as it is shipped from Taiwan and California to Armstrong Produce, a food company in Honolulu.
• Molokai Science Projects Wow Judges | Molokai Dispatch – Molokai students have proved themselves to be some of state’s brightest minds. Seventeen Molokai High School students and 15 Molokai Middle students represented the island at this year’s Maui Schools’ Science and Engineering Fair on Maui.
• Hula Girls Revive Quake-Hit Fukushima Town at Hawaii Theme Park – Businessweek – A Hawaiian theme park that propped up the economy of a rural Japanese town in Fukushima prefecture for 45 years was forced to close after the March 11 earthquake. Almost a year later, the hula girls have returned.
• Abercrombie, Korea in smart grid development deal | Hawaii 24/7 – Government officials and private sector leaders on Friday joined Gov. Neil Abercrombie and Choi Kyu-Chong, Director of the Electricity Market and Smart Grid Division at the Republic of Korea Ministry of Knowledge Economy (MKE), at the Hawaii State Capitol as the two leaders signed a letter of intent to pursue mutual interests in smart grid development in the Hawaiian Islands.
• High-tech models help guide restoration efforts to save threatened plants – A team of scientists from the USDA Forest Service’s Pacific Southwest Research Station (PSW) and two universities will begin research using sophisticated topographic models to identify areas within dry forests that have the most potential for ecological restoration.
• NASA Study Solves Case of Earth’s ‘Missing Energy’ – Two years ago, scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, CO, released a study claiming that inconsistencies between satellite observations of Earth’s heat and measurements of ocean heating amounted to evidence of “missing energy” in the planet’s system.

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C&C Honolulu and Code for America. Mayor Peter Carlisle introduced the 2012 Code for America fellows assigned to the City & County of Honolulu. The three CfA fellows, Diana Tran, Sheba Najmi a…

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