Getting the Digital Goods

By On September 22, 2011 · 1 Comment

Clive Thompson tells me in the April 2011 edition of Wired that government should open its data catalogs in order to foster private-sector investment, businesses, creativity. He tells me a story where BrightScope builds a multi-million dollar business by getting the Department of Labor to “[cough] up the digital goods in bulk.” He then goes [...]

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Data, Data, Everywhere but Nary a Byte to Eat

By On July 22, 2011 · Leave a Comment

In 1985 I started my “data scientist” career as the head of the DataBank at the Center for Urban Economic Development at UIC-Chicago. Ahh yes, these were the days when universities were investing in mainframe computers, Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data were becoming available, and the phrase “data-driven decision making” was entering our lexicon. Heady [...]

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Open Government Data – Measuring Urban America

By On July 5, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Home Depot made national news when it opened its Mills Basin Brooklyn store in 2002. Its urban format partially reflected a new realization that, for city neighborhoods, urban income densities were a better measure of potential retail demand than the over-used measure of median income. The argument for measuring urban areas differently began in the [...]

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