Sustaining open data innovations
- 1. Sustaining Open Data Innovation Luke Closs Founder & CTO, OpenWest Systems @lukec - http://openwe.st
- 2. Speaker Background Based in Vancouver, BC Telecomm, Anti-spam, Collaboration Long walks, HTTP, Open Web Co-founder of Vancouver Hack Space VanTrash, Budget visualization, gut, Parliament scrapers, Corporate registry tools, Election 鍖nance tools, Recollect, Open Data catalogues, Marine AIS Tra鍖c, CKAN, datadotgc.ca, sidewalk chalk dataviz, hackathons, Open Data Day,
- 3. Goals of this Talk Inspire Visualize Realistic Tools
- 7. A few months 鉛温岳艶姻
- 9. There is something here!
- 10. How can we bring this to more people?
- 11. Problem: Cities dont embrace hacks.
- 12. Ideas & Projects Products Services Infrastructure Hacks
- 13. Ideas & Projects Products Services Infrastructure Hacks Many of these ideas will fail. Thats okay.
- 14. Ideas & Projects Products Services Infrastructure Hacks The good innovations typically move to the right.
- 15. Ideas & Projects Products Services Infrastructure Hacks Citizens Established Vendors
- 16. Realization: Cities are missing out.
- 17. Ideas & Projects Products Services Infrastructure Hacks Cities miss out, these solutions are too cheap!
- 19. Nobody will use this! City wont use it. City wont link to it. City would need a SLA. No business to provide a SLA. Cost would be too low. Project will probably die out.
- 20. Why is that bad? The city cant do cheap things The city cant collaborate with citizens This limits opportunity for new vendors to provide greatly cheaper services.
- 21. Realization: Only way to achieve goals: Charge $$$
- 23. Tangent: Org Hacks Co-operatives For-pro鍖t Non-pro鍖t Use the right type(s)!
- 24. So you want to build a business!
- 26. Use it to: Describe / Discuss / Create / Invent / Improve your business model
- 27. Cost Value
- 28. My BM Gen Process Brainstorm every possible idea / detail Stare at it & Discuss Split into distinct business models Compare / Contrast Will it blend!? Try, learn, iterate!
- 30. Citizen Funded
- 31. Citizen Funded Requires marketing strength Doesnt require a sales team Hard to market to target customers (Non-techie citizens) Few barriers to get started
- 32. City Funded
- 33. City Funded Sell to municipal decision makers Requires sales team Typically looooong sloooow sale City handles marketing Administration features, cost reduction Cant be too cheap, or too expensive!
- 35. Infrastructure Service Market to developers, no sales team. Make it easy for hackers to use in their town. Create new innovations on the service Too niche?
- 36. Public Open Source Service (POSS)
- 37. POSS Idea by @Progrium - bit.ly/VJU1Mg Citizens collectively pitch in to cover costs Donations => Bank account => Hosting fees $$ / burn rate = months of service. No pro鍖t incentive to expand, enhance Good for small, very cheap services
- 39. Step 1: Re-design Re-brand Re-architect Re-build
- 40. Initial thought: Cities are too much work! Lets sell to citizens!
- 41. Pivot #1
- 42. Customer Development Get out of the building Learn current pains Talk in their language Understand the buyers & their process Experiment with pricing
- 43. Funding? Finding money for civic startups is hard VCs dont like selling to governments! Cool, but whats your plan B? We said no (so far!): Cant get o鍖 the treadmill No masters
- 44. So... dont quit your day job!
- 45. Building a open data company is hard work.
- 46. It helps to have a solid background & experience.
- 47. Dont call yourself a startup!
- 48. Its not about open data!
- 49. Scraping data doesnt always make friends!
- 50. When your hobby becomes your business, priorities change!
- 52. Product that is truly unique in the market.
- 53. Truly amazing collaboration with City of Ottawa
- 54. (~60% of Ottawa households have used Recollect!)
- 55. > 100,000 Garbage day reminders sent! (Already!)
- 56. ~40,000 Calendars printed at home.
- 57. Growing our customer base, across North America
- 60. In Summary Open data + Ideas + Hacks Innovation Innovations + Time + E鍖ort Products Building a open data company is: fucking hard fucking stressful fucking awesome