These last couple of days I've had the pleasure of spending time with the Ontario open data community, as I gave a keynote talk at the GO Open Data 2015 conference in the Niagara region (more specifically the city of St. Catherines, an hour's drive south of Toronto, right next to the Niagara Falls) on May 1, followed by the opportunity to participate in the second-day hackathon (and giving a short "Open Data 101" ignite talk there as well).
My slides are here (for the keynote) and here (for the ignite talk, although I ended up not using them), and there is even a newspaper article from the St. Catherines Standard which highlights some of the points I had included in my presentation. I'm humbled to have my words highlighted in the news among such a talented crowd!
Overall it has been a magnificent couple of days. Not only because of the jam-packed program of relevant and highly competent talks and panels, as well as a highly positive keynote by the province minister for poverty reduction, which throughout the first day of the event provided me and others with lots of new insight about the open data landscape. But also because of the second-day hackathon, which proved a highly inspiring testament to the productivity and action-oriented approach taken by the open data community in the region. I sat in the group working on building an open data strategy for the non-profit sector and learned a whole lot about the field and the activist spirit of citizens who refuse to sit back and not work actively on making their community better and more fair. I'll post a preliminary draft of the document that was built once it's ready for sharing (among other @hslaird will continue to fine tune it over the coming days).
A big thank you to the organizers and hosts who made me feel right at home from the minute I sat foot on Canadian soil. In particular Jury Konga, open data and open government expert consultant and Open Knowledge Canada Ambassador, who made it all happen. Keep up the good (and #GOOD15) work, Ontario change-makers!