Zach Beauvais

Talis: We’re Excited

// 1st February, 2010 // Comments // Semantic Web, emergent, interesting, tech

This post was originally published on Nodalities Blog.
The Talis offices, for the past few weeks, have been awash with geeky excitement—that kind of near giddy excitement that comes with eager expectation. We’ve all been waiting for something important.

For some, this was no doubt augmented with the announcement of Steve’s new iPad; but that’s not what’s gotten us all worked up.

For months, we’ve been looking forward to the launch of data.gov.uk; and last week, the wraps finally came off. The official press release put it:

A major new website has been launched to the public which gives anyone who wants to use it unprecedented and free access to government data in one place.

This doesn’t quite capture the coolness of the launch, for me. Yes, it’s a major new website, and it’s point is to publish information. But, the exciting thing is that this information is being published as data: data that can be used, reused, remixed and enriched. Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s perspective was more exciting:

Making public data available for re-use is about increasing accountability and transparency and letting people create new, innovative ways of using it. Government data should be a public resource. By releasing it, we can unlock new ideas for delivering public services, help communities and society work better, and let talented entrepreneurs and engineers create new businesses and services.

The point is that this public resource is finally getting a home on the web, and an infrastructure to make it not just available, but useful.

The exceptional team behind data.gov.uk have striven to adhere to web standards in its production: including Linked Data as a priority, as Professor Nigel Shadbolt explained:

We are also going to increase the use of ‘Linked Data’ standards, which allows people to provide data in a way that is as flexible and easy-to-use as possible.

Back in November, Leigh Dodds wrote a post explaining how we’ve been involved, and there’s an official Talis Platform press release too. Basically, we’ve been working with the data.gov.uk team to help with the Linked Data part of the site—hosting the SPARQL endpoints and providing consultancy and training, for example.

I can confidently say that we’re very proud of data.gov.uk, the team behind it, and our involvement with it. We’re excited by the prospect of this data being used as raw material for clever people to make interesting, useful, even world-changing things with it. We’ve seen the beginnings and proof-of-concept projects already.

Now comes the really exciting stuff. What are you going to build?

Image: “Yay for happy days!” by le vent le cri via flickr (CC: By)

Opening Up: A quick note from Matt McAlister

// 25th November, 2009 // Comments // perspective

Matt McAlister, over at the Guardian, wrote a fantastic piece earlier today about the way the Semantic Web has panned out; and you should definitely read it (http://www.mattmcalister.com/blog/2009/11/25/508/socially-linked-data/). I just wanted to snip out a simple quote from his post:

“Openness makes you more relevant. It creates opportunity. It’s a way into people’s hearts and minds. It’s empowering. It’s not hard to do. And once it starts happening it becomes apparent that it mustn’t and often can’t stop happening.”

What do you think?

Posted via email from beauvais’s posterous

How long ago were the ’90s?

// 4th November, 2009 // Comments // perspective

I’m sat downstairs in my house in Shropshire, sipping Rioja and listening to Green Day and trying to imagine music which more resonates with the decade in which we of Orwell’s blight came of age. This is the last year of the ’90s being only last decade. Everyone born in the ’70s will soon be at least 30, and everyone in the 80’s will be in their 20’s; and a generation of kids is already asking: “Pearl Jam?” Another turning point, another fork stuck in the road…

So, was the decade before last good riddance? Was it worth all the while? I need to change the song, hang on…

I did most of my conscious growing up in the decade between shoulder-pads and Thundercats and the WWW. But has much changed? Am I too young to be talking nostalgically about 1990, or are you (if you thought that) getting older than you’d care to admit?

It may be lazy thinking, but I seem to picture the 1990’s as a decade of lasts. It was the last decade in which one could smoke in restaurants, and I am of the last generation which will remember hazy rooms filled with acrid plumes. I’ve lived my whole life thinking of the 1960’s as being the last decade of innocence—as the countless documentaries have explored—but I’m not convinced. Partly, I suppose, because everyone who can remember anything of significance from that period is middle-aged, and it’s difficult to imagine anyone over 45 being all that innocent. But I think something has changed since the 90’s. The ever-shrinking world of the 20th century seems to have expanded once again. Surely, the fallen towers in New York have become a gateway to a time before the Patriot Act and general fear and doubt; but I feel I’ve watched the country of my birth becoming less and less sure of itself and more terrified and confused since the end of the 90’s. Ah, maybe that’s it?

I left only a year after Y2K and the Millennium Bug ruined civilisation, and have been observing the US with the eyes of the 1990’s. My world has been getting bigger, and possibly less scary in comparison. The more people I meet and the more I hear their stories, the more I feel the world isn’t as scary nor as closed-off. Different has become less frightening to me.

What has this got to do with the 1990’s? I’m not sure, really. It was the last decade in which I called myself an American without having to think twice. It was the decade before I started to watch the US turn in on itself from outside its—increasingly armed—borders.

I wonder whether out parents would think of the 90’s as a decade of lasts? Would it be a decade of middles?

A bad year for hearts…

// 25th September, 2009 // Comments // perspective

I’ve always found it difficult to blog about truly emotive things. I might get worked up over a technological failing or annoyed about a political situation, but these things are abstractions: I can hold them out and have a look at them. Something held close to my chest, though? Well, it’s too close for comfort—too close to see very well myself—and I feel a bit like I’ve let people down by not writing about them.

I also use this blog for a combination of personal publishing and work-scribbling. It’s been a place where I publish thoughts which aren’t quite right for a work post or for a mainstream article, but help me on my way toward either. This leaves me slightly divided as to what I’d include here. But, this is my place, and I feel like it should contain some of my recent thoughts. Besides, a wise friend once told me that life’s not really easily divided into groups, so why split up your own thoughts?

Back in February, I received a short message from my brother: “Call me, Grandpa’s not well.” What followed were dozens of difficult phone conversations with family over in Colorado as I patched together exactly what was going on. From what I worked out Grandpa had been helping a neighbour split wood for their fire when he collapsed and was taken to hospital. For a couple days, I was awake at odd hours working out what time I could phone without waking family in the middle of the night to find out more. The outlook wasn’t good, and a sort of pathetic play-by-play followed as the doctors’ diagnoses, plans, and prospects were relayed through three or four people before reaching me. Late one evening, I heard he hadn’t made it. He seemed to have had a good morning, for a Grandpa. He’d already had a breakfast party with his closest friends, driven out to his beloved house in the hills to wade through his collection of tools and his last conscious act on earth was helping his elderly neighbour.

As the patriarch of our huge family, the loss was stunning. Life has a Grandpa in it, and he lives in an amazing cabin in the hills. He cooks barbecues, and he threatens to cut your hair if you don’t behave. His bear-hugs are both welcome and terrifying, but he protects you from the real bears and I still can’t quite imagine a life without a Grandpa.

Last week, I received a short message: “Call me, it’s important.”

What followed was another surreal conversation, from which I learned that a good friend of mine would no longer be sharing banter about code and beer. A year ago, I’d met Leu when I sent out a call to any geeks and techies in Shropshire. Together we began the Shropshire Geek Society, which has been a monthly gathering at pubs to celebrate all things geeky. Many times, when stuck with a problem, Leu would have a solution or work-round for me before I’d even framed the question. He was a brilliant coder, and always good for an anecdote at geeky get-togethers. But more than that, Leu seemed to really get people. His concern was staggering, and I have rarely met a kinder person. After dropping him at his house after a particularly late geek night, he said: “Make sure you let me know when you get home [an hour away], I’ll be awake.”

It’s been a week since the phone call, and at least three times I’ve gone to share a story with Leu and stopped at the send button.

The thing Leu and my Grandpa had in common was a special heart.

Grandpa was always there, looking after me and my many cousins: compassionate and stern. Solid.

Leu was a fast and fierce friend, who—though I’d only known him for a year or so—felt like someone I’d grown up with.

A heart is something we don’t consider often, unless we’re reminded. From the top of the Shropshire hills, my own heart often reminds me it’s there. This year, it’s percussive reminder has taken on a special meaning.

British Heart Foundation

Trends and Barriers

// 14th August, 2009 // Comments // Semantic Web, perspective

|This article first appeared in Nodalities Magazine, CC By + SA

For anyone following the Nodalities blog, you may have read some of my recent posts discussing the trends boiling up around Web 3.0 (other buzzwords are available). The Mobile Web and upgraded connectivity in general; the rise of ubiquitous computing from chips in every product imaginable; Linked Data and the “Semantic Web” as an organising platform for this rising tide of data—these are three very broad trends seeing a lot of media attention presently. From where I’m standing, I tend to see the next great turning point of the Web as a convergence of some of these trends, and see it as a rise in the importance of and reliance upon data itself and data tools generally.

The mobile web is bringing new sorts of information to people, and they can make use of this info wherever they happen to be because of advances in devices ad connectivity. As phones and web-enabled devices get better, so to do the chips we seem to have embedded all over the place, and we can now begin to have a more clear picture of what we do through the information we gather from our heaters, cars, and pedometers. Also, as more objects become connected, the grunt-work of number-crunching and storage is becoming commoditised into big, efficient, utility-like cloud services, which host and work with our collected information much more effectively than the gadget in your hand could ever hope to do. Others, like us here at Talis, talk about the Semantic Web, which allows for an evolution from a bunch of connected documents to the explicit connections between bits of information.

Also fermenting in this mix is a strengthening trend of political transparency and a public, shared ownership of social data. Barack Obama’s new administration has clearly made this a priority with the launch and work around data.gov; and in the UK, Sir Tim Berners-Lee himself has been appointed to an Parliamentary advisory role. There is growing pressure to be able to have access to public data, and to see it as belonging to the nation’s people rather than allowed to be legitimately filed away in the great, locked bureau of the capitols.

So, picking up two fairly obvious trends here: Social, Public Data and Linked Data; it would seem to follow that people would begin to have access to previously unavailable information in usable, linked forms. And it’s certainly beginning, as articles elsewhere in this magazine have illustrated. But, what about other chunks of public data? What about when data comes from universities, institutions, scientific foundations and NGO’s? What about charities monitoring crime, CO2 emissions and family histories? Wouldn’t these make a useful piece in the web of social data? What resources have the governments themselves got, if they want to make their public-owned data available in a useful format?

These questions form a major part of the thinking behind Talis’ Connected Commons initiative (talis.com/cc). Basically, Talis has made its Semantic Web platform (including data hosting and access tools) available free of charge for any datasets made available to the public. In doing so, we’re hoping to remove the barrier of cost entirely to publishing interesting data in a Linked Data way. One major reason for this is to promote reuse and mashups of this interesting data, and for people to be able to “follow their noses” to the data that completes their projects. But, from a publishers’ perspective, this is important, because it’s removing a major reason not to bother with making data useful, if not only public. So, with this, data can be made public and useable and the developers and users get the benefit of public SPARQL endpoints and API access to interesting data.

To keep the data open and public, datasets need to make use of either the Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL) or Creative Commons’ CC0 license. Ian Davis, in his article in this magazine, explains more about waivers and the Connected Commons, and there is a lot more about this particular initiative over on the Talis site (talis.com/platform/cc/faqs/).

In a recent interview with the BBC, Sir Tim said: “This is our data. This is our taxpayers’ money which has created this data, so I would like to be able to see it, please.” I wonder if initiatives such as Connected Commons will begin to remove excuses, hindrances, and obstacles? As public awareness of the importance of access gets hotter, this might become a political issue, as well as a pragmatic one. I hope that in the rush to publish data, and in the ensuing discussion and debate that follows, that the users, hackers and developers don’t get sidelined. I think the world is ready for its data back.

Journalism Needs Data in 21st Century

// 5th August, 2009 // Comments // perspective

|This first appeared as a guest post on ReadWriteWeb, republished with kind permission

Journalism has always been about reporting facts and assertions and making sense of world affairs. No news there. But as we move further into the 21st century, we will have to increasingly rely on “data” to feed our stories, to the point that “data-driven reporting” becomes second nature to journalists.

The shift from facts to data is subtle and makes perfect sense. You could that say data are facts, with the difference that they can be computed, analyzed, and made use of in a more abstract way, especially by a computer.

With this mindset, finding mainstream data-driven stories doesn’t take long at all. A quick scan of the Guardian’s home page tells us that swine flu cases are up by 50%, according to “fresh figures…[that] will be released this afternoon.” The story here is that we’re in danger because swine flu is on the rise. Reporting the current figures available for swine flu alone wouldn’t be all that interesting. The news comes from comparing the current figures to last week’s, which is a very simple form of data analysis. By making use of published data and running one’s own analysis (and building on the analysis of others), we get something very news-worthy indeed. It moves the definition ever so slightly, from “saying and asserting” to “analyzing and publishing.” But it obviously works only for data that is accessible.

There is nothing new about pointing out the importance of public data being made available. Sir Tim Berners-Lee has discussed at length the importance of governments and institutions putting their data online, making it accessible and useful. His TED talk and interviews with ReadWriteWeb and Talis (disclosure: I am a blogger at Talis) all explain his belief that by publishing linked data we can begin to solve many of the problems the world faces. Innovations in medicine, science, and development could all be achieved if only currently hidden data were made available. Data-driven journalism could be the first step in realizing this dream. The best stories would then come from innovators who read about trends reported in news media and are then able to draw new conclusions and solve bigger problems. In his recent discussion with BBC, Berners-Lee said that the next step is to go for low-hanging fruit by just getting the data out there.

Thus far, this has made a lot of sense to me, and I have been tracking the publication of linked data and increasing access to public knowledge as emerging trends over at Talis. But my perspective has shifted a bit in the past few weeks.

First, there was data.gov and President Obama’s call for more access to government data. A sitting head of state (and one of some significance) was clearly calling for public access to government data: this was news! But the idea has been discussed, praised, and debated for a while since then and may have lost some of its luster.

Then about a month ago, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown made it part of his digital strategy to prioritize the publication of government information. He asked Sir Tim personally “to help us drive the opening up of access to Government data in the web over the coming months” and appointed Berners-Lee an official governmental adviser. By now, neither of these stories is news and comparisons between the initiatives have been made.

The Guardian newspaper recently launched its own Data Blog, with the intention of letting readers access, mash up, and reuse much of its information in the form of data, which could in turn drive stories.

What is perhaps not as explicitly recognized is the voracious appetite for data that has been apparent for months. It is less about turning good ideas into stories and more about seeing how data informs our understanding of events happening right now. Each new initiative is another piece of low-hanging fruit picked.

Access to data is important: it drives innovation and even social change. Governments that publish their data have to become more transparent. Humanitarian organizations that make their findings known could spark bigger projects and source innovative solutions from their communities. Scientific findings and raw information could be used to solve bigger problems than the result of a single experiment or trial could ever manage. Even the simple comparison of two or more facts can lead to new insight, and all of these things happen only when the walls around an institution become porous.

2009 could become known as the year of data, the year of open access, or the year of the semantic Web (see links above for how this relates), and it may also be the first year when it becomes news that data wasn’t published in a story when it should have been. That a government body isn’t being transparent or is blocking access by publishing its findings in PDF or other non-linking formats would make a very interesting story indeed. We can expect to see more and more organizations and public bodies remove their own barriers through initiatives and legislation. Examples have been set, and seeing excuses die along with barriers is not far-fetched.

Do you know of other data-driven stories? We’d love to hear about any insights that were made through publicly accessible data or where this data might come from next.

Guest author: Zach Beauvais is a Platform Evangelist for Talis and editor of Nodalities Magazine.

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