Blog - Development Seed

Week in DC Tech: May 21

Development Seed — 2012-05-21T00:00:00-07:00

Want to take a look at the data on access to financial resources in Kenya and other countries, get the scoop on how to best leverage networks in startups, or learn how to grow your own food? There are meetups on these topics and others happening this week in Washington, DC. Below is our roundup of the technology events happening in town.

Monday, May 21

6:30 pm

Urban Farming Workshop: This workshop will teach DCers how to grow their own food in the city, take advantage of community gardens and farmers markets, and eat local. Come out for tips or to learn more about urban farming.

Tuesday, May 22

3:30 - 5:00 pm

Tracking Progress Toward Financial Access: This event, hosted by the New America Foundation, will look at the data on financial inclusion in Kenya, covering everything from traditional banks to microfinance institutions to mobile money’s impact on access. Our partners MIX Market will be there to talk about the latest microfinance data, including data visualizations like this one of South Africa.

6:00 pm

HackEDU Happy Hour: Do you work in education, or are you interested in bringing smarter technology to the space? Come out to this social event to meet other people working to improve education through better use of technology.

Wednesday, May 23

6:00 - 8:00 pm

Women Who Tech Cocktail Party: Come out for drinks and conversation with other ladies working in technology. This network spans across many technology fields and is a great resource for making new friends and connections between women working in technology.

6:30 pm

MongoDC Meetup: This month’s meetup will feature presentations on running MongoDB and on Variety, a schema analyzer for MongoDB. There will also be an open Q&A on anything topical.

Thursday, May 24

6:30 - 9:00 pm

Tech Cocktail’s Speaker Series: This event, the first in a series of presentations from entrepreneurs, will discuss how to best build and leverage a network to grow your startup.

NodeDC Meetup Tonight at 7 pm

Development Seed — 2012-05-16T00:00:00-07:00

The monthly NodeDC meetup is tonight (Wednesday, May 16) at 7:00 pm at Stetson’s Bar and Grill, near the intersection of 16th and U streets NW here in Washington, DC. This is a great opportunity to meet local node.js developers and hear what they’re working on, and in general to learn more about the popular platform for building fast, scalable applications.

There will be a round of introductions starting at 7:30 pm, followed by two lightning talks:

John Kelvie and Michael Myers of Atomizer Software will present the technical design of a game they are building with node.js, and request feedback.
David Rees will talk about Derby.js, a MVC framework for writing realtime, collaborative applications that run in Node.js and browsers, and compare it to Meteor.

After the talks, plan to stick around for more conversations over drinks.

NodeDC meets monthly, usually on the third Wednesday of the month. For updates, watch node.github.com on github, follow @nodedc on Twitter, and join the meetup group. See you tonight!

Week in DC Tech: May 14

Development Seed — 2012-05-14T00:00:00-07:00

Interested in connecting with developers about node.js, HTML5, or R? How about learning about the history of mapping Washington, DC, or seeing examples of women using technology to change the world? These are just some of the technology events happening this week in Washington, DC, with more of our picks listed in the roundup below.

Tuesday, May 15

7:00 pm

NetSquared Meetup: Cloud Reality Check: Want to know why the cloud is so talked about? Come out to this meetup for a run down on what the cloud is, what its benefits are, and how it can help you and your organization.

Wednesday, May 16

5:00 pm

DC HTML5 Meetup: This meetup will bring together developers using HTML5 to connect and hear presentations by other developers on what they’re working on and tricks they’ve learned along the way.

6:30 pm

Interesting Visualizations with R: The R users group is meeting this month to talk about different visualization techniques in R, including one talk from the Census on making choropleth maps in R.

7:00 - 9:00 pm

NodeDC Meetup: Looking for a fast, flexible, and scalable base for your next project? Node.js could be a good option. This meetup brings together local node.js developers to connect, talk shop, and learn through several short lightning talks.

Friday, May 18

All day (and Saturday)

Visualizing the Nation’s Capital: Two Centuries of Mapping Washington, D.C.: The Library of Congress is hosting this two day conference on the history of Washington, DC, the planning of the city, and how mapping it has evolved from Washington’s day to today.

All day

Change Your World Conference: This one day event will showcase ways that women are using technology to influence policy, effect government, communicate with citizens, advocate for social issues, and effectively help change the world. Come out to hear some great case studies and meet interesting people.

All day

Drupal Government Day: This all day event will look at how open source software - specifically but not only Drupal - can be implemented in the government to improve online tools, communication, and efficiencies.

Week in DC Tech: May 7

Development Seed — 2012-05-07T00:00:00-07:00

As usual there are a lot of technology events happening in Washington, DC this week, from co-working opportunities, to discussions on node.js and jQuery, to random learning opportunities at Nerd Nite. Here’s our roundup of ones to hit.

Tuesday, May 8

6:30 pm

NovaNode Event: At this meetup, the folks from Doodle or Die - an online drawing game - will present on how and why they used node.js to build their application.

Wednesday, May 9

8:30 pm

DC Nightowls: Here’s your chance to work late with more than just your laptop to keep you company. Come out to work on a project and be ready to introduce yourself and your work to others.

Thursday, May 10

6:30 pm

DC Droids: The monthly Android meetup will feature a presentation by the developer behind CardioTrainer, an app with more than 5 million downloads, on how APIs and other tools can help expand your reach and market share.

7:00 pm

DC jQuery Meetup: Are you a jQuery developer? Come out to this meetup to hear presentations on building HTML5, jQuery Mobile, and PhoneGap apps connected to a cloud-based REST service using Tiggzi, and one on using jQuery with Raphaël to create interactive vector graphics

Saturday, May 12

6:00 pm

Nerd Nite: Don’t miss the last Nerd Nite before it goes on summer vacation. There will be three talks on organic chemistry, photosynthesis, and germs, mixed in with local music and of course drinks.

Financial Inclusion in South Africa

Development Seed — 2012-05-07T00:00:00-07:00

This week the Microfinance Information Exchange (MIX) launched southafrica.mixmarket.org mapping over 40,000 financial points of service all the way down to the sub-place (the equivalent of town), continuing their effort to provide transparency and analysis to subnational financial landscapes in the developing world. This site specifically focuses on South Africa and aims to present the most comprehensive view of financial providers for the country.

Much like previous collaborations for Nigeria and Africa as whole, the site shows not only where these services are available, but also where they are in relation to other relevant socio-economic indicators such as population and poverty. This is a classic example where mapping the data helps show complex comparisons across indicators. Of special interest is the data from Finscope, which includes both the percentage of adults who do not use any formal or informal financial services and the percentage of adults who have never banked.

In MIX’s blog post on the site, Scott Gaul explains:

The Finmark demand surveys can give us more detail about the use of financial services: is there demand for financial services in those regions? Again, perhaps not surprisingly, the regions that are the least well-served are also those with the fewest branches. But we can also segment the data by provider - for instance, Postbank branches are already located in the regions where the most people have never been banked (i.e. there is a positive correlation).

40,000+ locations

Over 40,000 points of service are represented on the map, encompassing all types of credit providers. To obtain this unprecedented amount of financial data for the region MIX employed a web scraper that collected publicly available addresses from several primary sources. Much of the remaining time was then dedicated to preparing them for mapping. The entire dataset is made available on the site in the form of a fusion table and CSV file.

The cumbersome nature of the source data presented us with several issues that only served to highlight the need for this data to be open and in an easily digestible format. There remain roughly 5,000 locations that failed to make it on the map due to poor formatting or missing data. Two estimations - locations per 100,000 adults and locations per 1,000 square kilometer - that were derived from this dataset must be considered incomplete as a result.

How we built it

The site is hosted on GitHub Pages and built on a simple framework of html, css, and javascript. It uses the latest versions of Wax and ModestMaps to serve the maps which are hosted on MapBox. Due to the compositing technology of the MapBox platform, the map remains fast and responsive regardless of the large number of layers, and rendering in TileMill took less than three minutes per layer.

These tools will aid MIX as they continue to bring the financial landscape of more developing countries into focus. The biggest remaining hurdle is collecting and processing data that is diverse and at times hard to reach. We hope the success of this site compels more organizations to make their data more accessible.

Workshop: New Tools in Mapping for Disasters and Development

Development Seed — 2012-05-03T00:00:00-07:00

This afternoon InterAction and the World Bank are holding a half day workshop on GIS strategy and open source tools for humanitarian aid and international development. This workshop will be today (Thursday, May 3) from 1:00 to 6:00 pm at the World Bank here in Washington, DC.

This event comes on the heels of the InterAction Forum and the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team board meeting, which brought many open geo and development leaders to town. It is designed to be a conversation around the challenges facing many organizations around GIS. Proponents from NGOs, the World Bank, the OpenStreetMap community, and the private sector will share their experiences around mapping in development and aid in a series of panels and workshops.

We will be there giving a workshop showing some of our recent map-based visualizations, talking about storytelling with maps, and diving into how to design and publish custom GIS and OpenStreetMap data with our open source map design studio TileMill. The workshop is geared towards a non-technical audience with our goal being to show what’s possible with existing open source tools.

Infant nutrition map we launched with the 1,000 Days partnership and InterAction.

RSVP for New Tools in Mapping for Disasters and Development.

The event is fully booked right now, but I recommend getting on the waiting list for when space opens up. I will tweet about capacity from the venue right around when the event starts. Follow me on Twitter for updates @lxbarth.

Week in DC Tech: April 30

Development Seed — 2012-04-30T00:00:00-07:00

A lot of international development folks are in town this week for the annual InterAction Forum, which is giving more of a focus to geo tools’ role in development. This leads to many interesting events this week around crisis mapping, disaster response, and OpenStreetMap, in addition to big draws like the monthly DC Tech meetup. Here is our roundup of technology events this week in Washington, DC. Have a great week!

Monday, April 30

6:30 pm

Data Science DC: This meetup will feature a presentation on how information and data visualization can help further science and lead to new and different discoveries. Come out to see examples of visualization tools and what’s possible and success stories of visualization leading new products, approaches, and knowledge.

Tuesday, May 1

7:00 pm

DC Tech Meetup #13: Hacks, Code, and Creative: This meetup always blows up and it looks like this month is no exception with more than 1,000 people RSVPing. Come out to meet them and hear 12 lightning talks on new projects, ideas, and the technology behind them.

Wednesday, May 2

6:00 pm

International Development and ICT4D DC Meetup: This happy hour and tweet up will bring together folks attending the InterAction Forum and those just working in international development to connect and talk about how technology can be used to better advance the field.

7:00 - 9:00 pm

GeoDC Meetup: Crisis Mapping: This month’s meetup will feature five talks on crisis mapping, specifically looking at the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap team’s work in Haiti and beyond, new preparedness experiments, and mapping in Indonesia and the jungles of Mexico. Come out to hear some great talks and meet other folks interested in international development and crisis mapping.

Thursday, May 3

9:00 - 10:30 am

Crowdsourcing for Disaster and Humanitarian Response: In this panel discussion, the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap team will discuss how free, collaborative maps like OpenStreetMap are uniquely valuable to humanitarian work and how to use and verified crowdsourced data to grow the geo dataset. RSVP here.

1:00 - 6:00 pm

New Tools in Mapping for Disasters and Development: The World Bank’s Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery and InterAction are holding this half day workshop to teach people how to use free and open source mapping and GIS tools in projects and showcase successful examples of how they’ve been used successfully in disaster and development scenarios. We will be there to walk through how to make custom web maps with TileMill.

Meet Us at the InterAction Forum

Development Seed — 2012-04-30T00:00:00-07:00

The annual InterAction forum kicked off today with leaders from international NGOs, governments, philanthropy and civil society gathering in Washington DC for a three day event on the most pressing issues in international development and humanitarian aid. We’re going to be there and are looking forward to connect with attendees over open data, data visualization and most importantly - mapping.

The role of GIS for more efficient and accountable relief and development work is steadily raising its profile. InterAction has recognized this fact by installing a GIS working group in June 2011 and this year’s forum will bring a promising workshop on Maximizing GIS Mapping in Monitoring and Evaluation. Two further GIS related events come in the same week as the InterAction Forum, both of them stand to benefit from the number of international development folks in town. On Wednesday night the Geo DC meetup on Crisis mapping will bring lightning talks by leading members of the crisis mapping and OpenStreetMap community. On Thursday afternoon the World Bank’s GFDRR and InterAction convene for a GIS deep-dive with an afternoon on New Tools in Mapping for Disasters and Development.

This level of activity is testimony to the increased interest around mapping and we are excited to be able to contribute with our MapBox open source tools. Find us at the InterAction forum at our exhibitor booth or simply tweet at us, our handles are @ericg and @djindc.

If you couldn’t make it to Washington DC, you can follow the Twitter discussion at the forum with the hashtag #iaforum.

Open Government Happy Hour Tomorrow

Development Seed — 2012-04-26T00:00:00-07:00

We’re opening up the Development Seed garage for the first time this spring to host anopen government happy hour tomorrow (Friday, April 27). This event will kick off Transparency Camp, a two day unconference that brings together open data and open government advocates to act to make the government more transparent and accountable. It will be a great opportunity to start the conversation around what’s needed to open up more data and promote open by default within the government and other agencies.

The happy hour will run from 6:30 to 8:30 pm, where we’ll be serving up cold beers and tasty empanadas while they last. Our garage is located at 174 14th Street NW, between R and S streets. We’re off the alley, so walk around back and look for our sign.

April NodeDC Meetup Tonight at 7pm

Development Seed — 2012-04-25T00:00:00-07:00

The monthly NodeDC meetup is tonight (April 25) at 7:00 pm at Stetson’s Famous Bar and Grill, by the intersection of 16th and U streets NW. This meetup brings together node.js developers and those interested in learning more about the server side JavaScript system. If you’re looking for fast, highly performant software for the online tools you build, you’ll want to check out node.js.

There are two lightning talks on the lineup for tonight:

Dane Springmeyer is in town for a visit and will give an introduction to message passing in node.js, which is critical to scale programs across many cores and machines. He’ll review useful tools, and cover the ‘child_process’ module, the new ‘cluster’ module, and third-party add on’s like zeromq.node.
Aaron Silverman will talk about his experiences using free sandbox hosting services like nodester and nodejitsu for hosting node.js.

Talks will start at 7:30 pm, after introductions of the group. More details on the meetup are at nodedc.github.com.

This event happens once a month. For updates on it and the group’s members, follow @nodedc on Twitter, join the meetup group, and watch the event site on github.

Week in DC Tech: April 23

Development Seed — 2012-04-23T00:00:00-07:00

There are several exciting events happening in Washington, DC this week. The always fun Transparency Camp is bringing together folks to hack for open government this weekend, and we’re kicking it off with a happy hour here in the Development Seed garage on Friday night. Plus there are meetups for node.js, DC Media Makers, DC nightowls, and others. See our roundup below, and have a great week!

Monday, April 23

7:00 pm

DC Media Makers: The future of books is in hot debate as book stores continue to close and more people are using tablets. Come to this meetup to debate what’s in store for books, and see a new interactive documentary-book from the folks at Arcade Sunshine.

8:30 pm

DC Nightowls: Work into the night with other people pushing hard on their projects. This group brings together folks to work together, share their projects, and identify possible points of collaboration.

Wednesday, April 25

7:00 - 9:00 pm

NodeDC Meetup: Node.js is one of the hottest software systems at the moment, known for it’s speed and flexibility. Come out to see how people are using it, what they’re building, and learn more about node.js

Friday, April 27

6:30 - 8:30 pm

Open Government Happy Hour: To kick off Transparency Camp this weekend we’re hosting an open government happy hour. Come out to meet other folks pushing for more open data, transparency, and collaboration in the government space and beyond.

Saturday and Sunday, April 28 and 29

9:00 am - 6:00 pm

Transparency Camp: This annual unconference brings together developers, government folks, journalists, and advocates to discuss and actively work toward making the government more transparent, accountable, and open. Come out to talk about what should be done and start hacking on solutions.

Strengthening Relief and Resilience Efforts in the Sahel

Development Seed — 2012-04-20T00:00:00-07:00

This afternoon at The Resilience Dialogue: Preparing for a Changing World and together with the Global Facility for Disaster Risk Reduction (GFDRR), we are launching SahelResponse.org - a data sharing portal that opens and visualizes critical information about the growing food crisis in the Sahel region of west Africa.

The site is a tool to visualize and share key regional datasets

The site brings together datasets about changing weather and drought conditions, visualizes regional conflict, and shows areas of extreme risk for food insecurity. In all, the site opens up 46 datasets for public and humanitarian use from regional and international organizations working in emergency relief and long term development in the Sahel region, focusing on the critical countries of Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad. All datasets are released to the public domain making them a highly valuable asset for analyzing risk for anybody from individuals to NGOs and local businesses. UNOCHA limits use to humanitarian applications. Here is a just over a minute walkthrough showing how the site works:

Facilitating data sharing between organizations

The food crisis in the Sahel is worsening and it’s estimated that over 15 million people in the region are at risk of food insecurity. As we mentioned in the blog post on MapBox’s OpenStreetMap tracing efforts in the Sahel, having a common operating picture is critical for responding to early warnings about a crisis.

For the first time in the region, the site brings together key datasets in one place to improve situational understanding and provide raw data downloads for further analysis. Early coordination among regional and international actors is needed for an effective and sustainable response. The site was developed as a platform for the partnership convened by the World Bank and the Global Facility for Disaster Risk Reduction (GFDRR) with the World Food Programme (WFP), UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA), UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Information Technology for Humanitarian Assistance, Cooperation and Action (ITHACA), Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET), NASA/USAID SERVIR project, and Development Seed.

Site includes operational and logistical data about providing emergency food assistance to the region

This site leverages a simple HTML and Javascript framework and MapBox Hosting to provide a fast platform to decentralize data sharing and keep ownership of the data within each organization. This reduces maintenance requirements for the central site and allows organizations to easily publish updates to their data. Using filters and layer switching functionality, the site allows users to quickly browse through all available datasets, visualize any combination, and download the raw data for further use. In addition, embed and API functionality is integrated into the site to allow users to republish the maps on their own site or within an internal application.

We’re excited to see openness and public sharing of data discussed as a critical aspect of building resilience. We look forward to continuing to contribute to the project and improve data sharing in critical areas.

Week in DC Tech: April 16

Development Seed — 2012-04-16T00:00:00-07:00

Happy Emancipation Day! Today in Washington, DC we celebrate our only city-specific holiday, honoring Abraham Lincoln’s freeing of the slaves in the District nine months before the Emancipation Proclamation. While some offices are closed today, there are still some great technology events happening today and the rest of the week, including an open government developer meeting today at the FCC, startup events, and networking and shared working meetups.

Monday, April 16

11:00 am - 3:00 pm

FCC’s .Gov Developer Meetup: The FCC is hosting this event to bring together .gov developers across agencies to talk about how they can better work with and maintain data that’s being opened up under open government initiatives. Some of the topics they’ll touch on are APIs, open data storage, improved collaboration, and web services around data. Check it out if you’re a .gov developer or are working with government data.

Tuesday, April 18

7:00 pm

NetSquared: This month’s NetSquared meetup will recap the best sessions and takeaways at last month’s SXSW and NTEN conferences. If you weren’t able to attend - or were and want to give your input - come out to get the scoop.

8:30 pm - midnight

DC Nightowls: This week’s Nightowls meetup will be at Skyline Innovations in Dupont. Bring your laptop and be ready to share what you’re working on and get and give feedback with other participants.

Wednesday, April 19

8:30 am

Pitchit!: This startup event, held at USA Today’s offices, gives folks the opportunity to pitch their idea, get feedback from a group of investors and mentors, and possibly win $50,000 to move their idea forward.

6:00 pm

Hacker News Happy Hour: Come out to this happy to meet other Hacker News readers, demo your latest project or idea, pitch your startup, or just talk about technology with likeminded folks.

Week in DC Tech: April 9

Development Seed — 2012-04-09T00:00:00-07:00

It’s another busy week for technology folks here in DC, with events for pitching TechCrunch, bowling with jQuery developers, and nerding out over beers, presentations, and local music at Nerd Nite. The open source geo conference FOSS4G is also in town this week, holding a three day event on advancing open source in the geospatial space. It should be a fun week!

Monday, April 9

6:00 - 10:00 pm

TechCrunch DC Meetup: TechCrunch is in town and hosting a networking event tonight at RFD. TechCrunch writers will be there looking for pitches and ideas to add to their coverage, and are asking folks to bring their ipads loaded with their pitch decks.

7:00 - 8:00 pm

Meetups@MLK - Prelaunch: This meetup for meetup organizers will show what the Martin Luther King library has to offer in terms of space and equipment, and allow organizers to give feedback on how to best accommodate great events for the local tech community.

8:30 pm

DC Nightowls: Want to work late tonight with the support of others burning the midnight oil? Come out to the Nightowls meetup with your computer and latest project to work on and share with the group.

Tuesday, April 10

All day

FOSS4G Conference: Tomorrow and Wednesday developers and implementers will gather to discuss open source geospatial technology, touching on cool existing technologies and what’s needed to continue advancing moving forward. We’ll be there talking about the future of web mapping, our street-level map of the world, and cartography. Tickets are still available at the door.

6:30 pm

Node.js Explained: This month’s NoVa:JS meetup will feature a presentation on node.js, focusing on the basic theory and programming model central to Node’s approach and discussing the benefits and challenges that come with it. This meetup is in Reston, VA.

Thursday, April 12

7:00 pm

DC jQuery Meetup: Eleven members of the jQuery core team will be joining the DC jQuery group this month to talk about the JavaScript library and answer hands on questions for anyone having trouble figuring something out. Come out to pick their brains and meet other developers.

Friday, April 13

6:00 - 10:00 pm

Bowling for jQuery: Dinner, desserts, drinks, bowling, and jquery! This event will bring out several members of the core jQuery team along with local developers to kick back and talk code (and bowling).

Saturday, April 14

6:30 - 9:30 pm

Nerd Nite: Like to learn something on your Saturday evenings? This month’s Nerd Nite will feature talks on typography, the Nobel Prize sperm bank, and quantum computers, with music breaks from local band J Street.

Week in DC Tech: April 2

Development Seed — 2012-04-02T00:00:00-07:00

Want to learn what local people are doing with web maps or Python, or want to hear why big data and open source matter in business? Then check out the meetups happening this week in Washington, DC. Below is our roundup of the week’s events, and you can find more over at DC Tech Events.

Tuesday, April 3

7:00 pm

DC Python: This month’s Python group meetup will feature a presentation on using the Python API to send push notifications to iOS, Android, and BlackBerry.

Wednesday, April 4

7:00 - 9:00 pm

GeoDC: Like to talk maps, GIS, and geo data? Come out for this lively meetup, which this month features lightning talks on rendering dynamic tiles with Mapnik and Tilelive and the new transit app OpenTripPlanner.

Thursday, April 5

6:00 pm

Open Analytics DC: This meetup will discuss the business value of big data and open source technologies, touching on the benefits of open source and agile building, and the performance and scalability of open tools.

Support Development Seed's Knight News Challenge Submission

Development Seed — 2012-03-30T00:00:00-07:00

Development Seed is applying for the Knight News Challenge with a plan to create new, user-friendly contribution tools for OpenStreetMap. We’d like to do for community open data what TileMill, a previous Knight news project, has done for map design and publishing. Check out our brief submission, and if you want to see these tools funded, like it - every like counts in the voting process.

OpenStreetMap proves that citizens make maps of their surroundings with greater detail and focus than any company ever could. It’s the dataset that we chose for MapBox Streets, and that humanitarian groups like the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team base their important work around.

OpenStreetMap has already moved incredibly far based on the work of volunteers, large companies, and the open source community working together. Its tools are made not only for simple road corrections, but for the community itself to map cities from scratch, validate that data, and distribute it on a massive scale.

However, there’s much further to go. Due to the recent news of large switches like foursquare and Apple, and coverage in The New York Times and The Guardian, OpenStreetMap garners more attention than ever.

Our proposal to build new tools around OpenStreetMap targets this wave of contributors as well as the long-term viability of the project: the transition from mapping cities from scratch to the maintenance, validation, and improvement of local data, by locals.

We are proposing three new open source tools for OpenStreetMap - a simplified editor, a geo aware task tracker, and a tiled geo data delivery system. The three tools together are designed to lower the threshold for first time contributors, to facilitate coordination within the OpenStreetMap community, and to make OpenStreetMap data easier to consume by providing a bandwidth optimized data delivery system. The proposed plan with a budget of $910,000 intends to concentrate serious resources on these three key areas of the OpenStreetMap infrastructure to provide polished and solid foundations for OpenStreetMap’s growth.

Simplified editor

There is a clear need for a simplified web-based editor that focuses on the most common OpenStreetMap tasks - an editor that guides contributor’s first steps and helps advanced users be efficient, precise, and focused. The editor should be simple to deploy and define a plugin system so that it can be tuned for specialized use cases like satellite tracing, street name entry, or validating large-scale changes.

In its generalized form this editor could be the default experience for openstreetmap.org - if it earns the broad consent of the OpenStreetMap community - but it could be equally useful as a platform for mapping parties and large scale team mapping efforts like the ones led by the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap team in Indonesia right now.

We propose to use a similar architecture like TileMill, an application that can be equally run offline on the desktop or online from a web server.

This work is not without precedent. The Potlatch project, for instance, has served as OpenStreetMap’s web editor for years and has benefited from hundreds of hours of improvements by skilled contributors. Our work aims to build tools within and with the existing community of developers, and to push them to completion so there’s a tangible improvement in the experience of a user initially going to OpenStreetMap.org, clicking edit, and adding their own knowledge to the map.

Geo aware task tracker

There is a real opportunity to broaden the OpenStreetMap community by tapping into contributors who are not able to actually add or modify geo data, but who are very well in a position to describe missing or wrong geographic information. OpenStreetMap, like any other worldwide map, is incomplete and imperfect, and so it needs a strong system to monitor, prioritize, and address problems - especially as the number of people using and participating skyrockets.

We propose a nimble geo aware task tracker that helps coordinate tasks around OpenStreetMap data with direct referencing of nodes and geographic areas, task packaging for team mapping efforts, and an easy to use submission form that allows newcomers to provide productive input.

Tools like the OSM Tasking Manager or OpenStreetBugs lead the way here and cover some of the functionality we propose, but we believe there is an opportunity to take coordination to the next level and radically lower the barrier of entry to the OpenStreetMap project by providing a really polished management tool for geo tasks.

Data delivery system

Processing OpenStreetMap data today takes an individual skilled enough to set up a local PostGIS database and TileMill, if not a more involved Mapnik setup. If OpenStreetMap data itself could be delivered in a tiled fashion by a remote server - just like the rendered tiles - a map renderer, on a server or in a browser, could plug directly into a dataserver, avoiding the slow, complex, and manual data conversion process.

While this is a low level component, we view this as a huge step towards better leveraging OpenStreetMap’s core strength - its availability as open data.

Next steps and your support

In the happy case of an awarded grant, we are looking forward to further refine directions with our OpenStreetMap colleagues. Feedback is more than welcome at this point. We’re excited to see this conversation has already started with Kate Chapman’s post yesterday on All I Want for OpenStreetMap is Simple and Mikel Maron’s today on All I Want for OpenStreetMap is…Social and Attention.

If you like where this is going, show us some like-love on the Knight tumblr :) Every like, comment, and reblog counts for the decision that judges will be making next week.

World Bank Commits to Open Geo Data

Development Seed — 2012-03-19T00:00:00-07:00

Today, the World Bank stepped up its open data commitment explicitly acknowledging the value of open geographic data:

the World Bank only supports citizen-mapping efforts that give users free access to the map data they create.

This means that the World Bank is not going to be supporting Google Map Maker or using it in its operations, nor advising its partners to because of the closed data policies of Google and the restrictive Terms of Services that essentially transfer rights to contributed data to Google.

This comes after the World Bank’s announcement of an agreement with Google in January over Map Maker left many wondering about the implications of the deal and whether the World Bank had changed its open data policies.

Today the World Bank clarified that the purpose of the agreement with Google is limited to expediting data procurement from Google Maps, and explicitly not contributing to it.

Questions have been raised about our partnership with Google for the use of Map Maker data. The single goal of this joint project is to provide UN agencies and governments faster access to Map Maker data for humanitarian, development and disaster preparedness efforts.

In short this agreement is great, Google is hooking up the international development community with proprietary data, which will only help the Bank especially in times of emergencies while the Bank is directing the larger international community to stay focused on open data.

Now all eyes turn to OpenStreetMap. Unlike Map Maker, OpenStreetMap provides simple, complete access to its entire database under an open license. Today’s announcement validates the great humanitarian and international development work being done with OpenStreetMap - some of which is actually enjoying World Bank support, like the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team’s work in Indonesia and mapping Tandale in Dar es Salaam.

OpenStreetMap work in Tandale, Dar es Salaam was funded by the World Bank

While today’s post does not amount to an official endorsement of OpenStreetMap, the direction is promising. Recent contributor base growth suggests that high profile endorsements of OpenStreetMap can translate directly into contributed data. The responsiveness of the OpenStreetMap community and its open geo infrastructure present a huge opportunity for the World Bank, while OpenStreetMap stands to benefit from increased use as an open geo data platform for humanitarian aid and development.

Most importantly, citizens on the ground own their own data allowing the Bank to be a true participant in local development - a premise that we believe will ultimately make for better data.

Week in DC Tech: March 19th

Development Seed — 2012-03-19T00:00:00-07:00

Want to meet other developers using node.js or MongoDB, hear short stories from journalists and others about their work, or get advice straight from entrepreneurs who “made it”? Then check out the tech events happening this week in Washington, DC. Our roundup is below, and a full calendar is available at DC Tech Events.

Monday, March 19

7:00 pm

NodeDC Meetup: Come out for two talks on using node.js to visualize data - one on solving the problem of analyzing road density data with redis, d3, sqlite, and polymaps, and one on turning Capital Bikeshare data into a scoreboard of fastest point-to-point trips using the Persevere API.

Tuesday, March 20

6:30 pm

DC Lean Startup Circle: This meetup on “Lessons Learned the Hard Way” will have the founders of CareerBuilder and Evite sharing stories and advice gleamed from the trenches of startups to help others avoid mistakes they made.

Wednesday, March 21

6:30 pm

ONA DC: This month NPR is hosting the online news association meetup, which will feature five minute lightning talks on how journalists are using online technology in their reporting.

6:30 pm

MongoDC Meetup: Want to learn more about MongoDB and meet folks using it? Check out this meetup. There will also be a presentation on the new MongoDB Aggregation Framework.

Thursday, March 22

6:00 - 11:00 pm

IgniteDC #9: 16 artists, technologists, entrepreneurs, and philosophers will talk for five minutes using 20 slides on topics like Syria, Super PACs, DJs, and “Sht We All Say” at this event. Come out to hear their stories.

Development Seed Presenting at DrupalCon Denver

Development Seed — 2012-03-15T13:00:00-07:00

Jeff, Eric and I land in Denver on Tuesday morning for DrupalCon. We’re excited to get in touch with all our friends from the Drupal community (it’s been a while!) and connect over node.js and our recent mapping work at MapBox. We are presenting two sessions:

Node.js, Javascript and the Future: Jeff will talk about our experiences building server side JavaScript applications in this session. He says, “for the past year I’ve been writing and launching websites built on node.js that run javascript on the server. This presentation is a update from the front lines of what using javascript for nearly everything is like.”

Designing Fast and Beautiful Maps: Eric and I will show how to design fast and beautiful maps with MapBox and our open source tools like the design studio TileMill. We will also do an in depth walk though around MapBox Streets, the new fully global map with street level detail for the entire world - all powered by OpenStreetMap. We’ll also be talking about how we handle high traffic use cases like foursquare’s switch to MapBox from Google Maps.

If you’re a site builder or mapping enthusiast, we’ll get our hands into code, render maps, and walk through integration options between MapBox maps and Drupal in the BoF session Fast and Beautiful Maps in Drupal - Site Building Strategies with MapBox Maps that we’ll host together with Sean Larkin from ThinkShout.

Anyone looking to talk more specifics about mapping, we are table crashing the exhibit hall with our friends Phase2 Technology, so look for the MapBox sign! The conference is large. Find us on Twitter to track us down: @ericg, @miccolis, and @lxbarth. Looking forward to talking with you!

Zoomable street map of Denver and DrupalCon location is here.

Week in DC Tech: March 12th

Development Seed — 2012-03-12T00:00:00-07:00

Spring has hit Washington, DC with temperatures in the 70s all week. But if you can pull yourself inside, there are some good technology events scheduled. Below is our roundup for the week, and you can find a full calendar at DC Tech Events.

Tuesday, March 13

6:00 - 8:00 pm

DC Women in GIS: This group brings together women working in GIS and mapping technologies from across the DC region. The inaugural meetup drew a good and energetic crowd - it will be fun to see how this group grows with the geo explosion happening now in the city.

7:00 pm

Pair Programming: Want to hack on a problem with the help of another programmer? Come out to this meetup ready to program with a partner.

Wednesday, March 14

6:30 - 8:30 pm

Legal Issues for Founders: Legal missteps can cause some of the biggest headaches for entrepreneurs. In this event, a VC and startup lawyer will discuss the biggest issues to look for and be sure to nail from the start.

8:30 pm - 3:00 am

DC Nightowls: Bring a laptop and be ready to get to work with others into the night. Introductions will give you a chance to get to know other folks and become familiar with their projects, and of course to see if there’s overlap and possibilities for collaboration.

Mapping Nutrition Interventions

Development Seed — 2012-03-12T00:00:00-07:00

We partnered with ThousandDays.org to map the nutrition projects of 15 of their partner organizations. Their work, covering 27 countries where USAID has committed to nutrition investments, uses proven, cost effective interventions to fight malnutrition in the critical 1,000 day window between pregnancy and a child’s second birthday.

Identifying opportunities for NGOs

The map highlights areas of strong program coverage and gaps by placing contextual nutrition layers underneath project locations. In Ethiopia, for example, there is a strong need for nutritional assistance with more than 50% of children suffering from stunting, or low height for age. The map shows the 52 projects in the country and where they’re operating, and also provides details on the programs to help organizations working in common areas collaborate.

Other views show the prevalence of wasting, low infant birth weight, and the presence of anemia in children. While often the same countries show similarly low rates for all, that’s not always that case. Mauritania, for example, shows a high rate of low infant birthweight and relatively lower instances of stunting and wasting when compared to its neighbors. Information like this can help programs target efforts to what’s needed.

Embeds and iframes

The 1,000 Days nutrition map is an example of a microsite being pulled into a larger site. 1,000 Days wanted to display the nutrition map from its main website, while keeping the framework of its website and allowing users to browse the map in more detail and without formatting constraints. This is achieved by embedding the map through an iframe into their main site and making it available to browse in a separate microsite accessed through a “full screen view” button.

This is a similar approach to embedding a map from a MapBox account onto a blog or any other website. Embeds and iframes allow for the easy integration of beautiful, data-rich maps and microsites like this into any website, while keeping with a site’s original format and requiring little to no technical work or maneuvering. For more details, see our documentation on the differences between embeds and APIs.

Technology powering the maps

We built these maps with our open source map design studio TileMill and host them on MapBox, which allows for easy embedding.

To test this out create a free account on MapBox. From there you can start making maps with TileMill, and when you’re ready, you can integrate side bars and layer-switchers using our open source javascript library Wax.

There’s documentation from MapBox about every step in this process, from our crash course in TileMill to building a microsite and a layer switcher. These open sources tools paired with this documentation make building microsites like 1,000 Days’ nutrition map possible for users of all levels of experience.

Week in DC Tech: March 5th

Development Seed — 2012-03-05T00:00:00-08:00

Whether you’re looking for a progressive and technological crowd to watch Super Tuesday results roll in with, celebrate or get advice on start ups, or learn the latest technology power or uses of mapping, there are meetups for you this week in Washington, DC. Below is our roundup of the week’s events.

Monday, March 5

6:00 - 9:00 pm

#DCTech SXSW Pre-Party: Headed to SXSW? Come out to meet local folks before hitting the larger conference, or just stop by to meet other folks interested in an event like SXSW.

Tuesday, March 6

6:30 - 8:30 pm

DC Com Tech for Progress: Super Meetup: Join other progressives to hear from for U.S CTO Aneesh Chopra and co-chair of Technology for Obama Adam Riggs talk about the technology they’re utilizing, where it’s headed, and what can be done to help the reelection campaign. Following the presentations, the group will watch Super Tuesday results come in over drinks.

7:00 pm

DC Python Meetup: This month’s meetup will feature a talk on the geospatial data and maps used in Everyblock.

7:30 - 10:00 pm

Entreprelooza!: This party is in support and celebration of entrepreneurs and the folks behind startups, and will bring folks together to watch CTRL, ALT…Compete, a documentary about startup life. Followed by a date auction, of course. Sound intriguing? Come out to experience it and meet people leading local technology startups.

Wednesday, March 7

6:30 8:30 pm

Book Discussion: The Partnership Charter: David Gage, author of The Partnership Charter, will speak on building and maintaining business partnerships among startup founders, specifically talking on points such as managing expectations, scenario planning, and conflict resolution. He’ll also be taking audience questions.

7:00 - 9:00 pm

Geo DC Meetup: This month’s Geo DC meetup - bringing together folks interested in geography, mapping, geodata, and data visualization - will feature four lightning talks on topics ranging from Maryland’s opening up of GIS data to mapping disputed waterways and food truck movements to looking at map projections in new and interesting ways. Come early to get a drink - these meetups draw a crowd.

Week in DC Tech: February 27th

Development Seed — 2012-02-27T00:00:00-08:00

Data is the focus of several events in Washington, DC this week, with the weekend’s Datadrive to help nonprofits better use, visualize, and make decisions with their data, and the Big Data meetup. There are also events around startups, networking, and more. Check out our roundup below, and visit DC Tech Events for the full calendar.

Monday, February 27

8:30 pm

DC Nightowls Co-Working Group: Looking for some camaraderie as you work into the wee hours of the night? This event will give you a chance to do so while meeting new people and hearing what they’re working on.

Tuesday, February 28

6:30 pm

Startup Rockstars 11: Want to meet the people behind and working at local startups? This meetup is a great opportunity, with three presentations on local startups mixed in with time for networking.

Wednesday, February 29

6:30 pm

Big Data DC: This month’s meetup will feature presentations on the production practicalities of developing on CouchDB, along with some case studies, and on the distributed database solution Riak. This meetup is in McLean, VA.

Friday, March 2

7:00 pm

DC Data Drive Opening Mixer: Listen to participating organizations pitch their data and where they need help, before breaking to talk data and data solutions over drinks. This is the opening happy hour for this weekend’s Data Without Borders Datadive.

This Weekend

9:00 am - 6:00 pm (Noon on Sunday)

Data Without Borders Datadive: This weekend event organized by the New America Foundation will bring together socially conscious organizations that have data and want to use it with people who can help them analyze it, open it, visualize it, and get it into people’s hands. Sign up and join a team to make data more actionable.

Mapping and Open Data Events in Lima This Week

Development Seed — 2012-02-22T00:00:00-08:00

We are holding two mapping events this week in Lima, Peru. Last night we held a Geo & Open Data Meetup, the second of its type. We had a great turnout last night, with 30+ people coming out to talk about geo and geodata.

30+ people came out to talk about geo and open data.

The meetup consisted of several lightening talks on topics like scraping for data, reflections on DAL, and OpenStreetMap Peru. I presented on using TileMill and OpenStreetMap to make custom maps, and Ruben presented on on his work opening up data with the local municipality of Huamanga.

Ruben presenting on his work opening data with the local municipal government in Ayacucho.

Tonight Ruben and I are leading a training on designing custom maps with TileMill. We’ll cover topics ranging from geographic information system basics, basic TileMill, choropleth map creation, data processing for census mapping, to mention a few topics. If you’re new to TileMill, I recommend arriving at 5:00 pm with your laptop, and we can help you get it installed. Full details on the training are posted on opendata.pe. There is no cost for the training, and all are welcome to attend.

Based on last night’s turnout and discussion it is clear the community and interest is growing. We hope to hold more events relating to geo and open data in Peru moving forward. Watch opendata.pe for updates on events.

Week in DC Tech: President's Day Edition

Development Seed — 2012-02-20T00:00:00-08:00

Happy President’s Day! While it’s a short week for some, it’s still a full week of technology events in the city. Below are our picks for the week, and you can find a full calendar over at DC Tech Events.

Monday, February 20

7:00 pm

NodeDC + DCjQuery Meetup: Tonight the NodeDC and DCjQuery groups are joining forces for a joint meetup on all things JavaScript. Lightning talks will cover topics like async.js, HTML Canvas, and building gaming sites. Come out to learn about Node.js and meet developers working with it, jQuery, and JavaScript.

Tuesday, February 21

7:00 pm

Django District: This month’s Django meetup will have lightning talks on seven different topics related to the web framework, ranging from integrating EC2 and Github to building multilingual sites to what’s coming in Django 1.4. Come out to learn more about Django and meet other developers using it.

NetSquared Meetup: This month NetSquared will host a conversation with Clay Johnson, author of The Information Diet, where he’ll discuss his book and answer questions.

Wednesday, February 22

7:00 pm

ONA DC: This month’s meetup will look at LegiStorm, a site that puts out data on Congress and all of its staff. Specifically, folks from LegiStorm will demo their new paid subscription service and show what data it includes.

Thursday, February 23

7:15 pm

Selenium Basics: This month’s meetup around Selenium, a web application testing system that automates browsers, will cover the basics of creating and running tests.

Visualizing the Media Landscape in Afghanistan

Development Seed — 2012-02-20T00:00:00-08:00

Access to media and news is severely limited in Afghanistan. Internews, as part of its support of local media efforts, just launched a data visualization of the media landscape in Afghanistan, mapping comprehensive survey data on media usage and access in the country. This hard data helps Internews and other organizations target their efforts on the ground and decide what actions need to be taken first.

Commissioned by USAID, its partner Altai Consulting conducted 6,648 close-ended interviews across 107 districts in all 34 provinces of Afghanistan. We then processed this data to visualize the survey results, making the data easy to explore and easy to reuse. The site lets you explore people’s access to the radio, television, mobile phones, and the internet - with internet access being the most limited at just 9% in the country as a whole. On the internet tab, hovering over provinces reveals five provinces where citizens reported they had no internet access.

In Baghdis, which does not have any internet access, only 22% of the nearly 500,000 citizens have electricity and 70% are illiterate. Similar stories appear for other provinces without internet access, such as Zabul, Laghman, and Uruzgan. All are rural, all have high illiteracy rates, and all are without internet. Digging deeper into the maps shows that some of these provinces without internet do have access to other media. Uruzgan and Laghman have very high access to radios and mobile phones. In Uruzgan 99% of respondents reported listening to the radio daily and 90% own a mobile device, with numbers at 77% and 73% respectively in Laghman.

Data captured in the survey and visualized on data.internews.org/af-media helps inform Internews’ strategies for supporting local media initiatives in provinces throughout Afghanistan, which is reflected in their support of 46 local, independently operated radio stations. By focusing on radio infrastructure and training local journalists to reach rural areas, Internews empowers citizens in the difficult realities of low electricity and high illiteracy. Read more about Internews’ work with this survey on their blog post.

The data

All of the survey data is available through data.internews.org/af-media/data, and is released openly and available to download, process, and work with.

The technology

All maps on the site were created using the free and open source map design studio Tilemill and hosted with MapBox. To learn how to start creating maps yourself, check out the documentation and support guides on Mapbox.com/help.

NodeDC and DCjQuery Joint Meetup Tonight

Development Seed — 2012-02-20T00:00:00-08:00

Tonight, Monday, February 20 at 7:00 pm, we’re holding a NodeDC meetup at Fathom Creative at 1333 14th Street NW (at Rhode Island). This month we’re teaming up with the DCjQuery folks to bring together a bigger crowd who is interested in all things JavaScript. There are three lightning talks on the lineup:

Dylan Greene will present HTML Canvas and show how he’s using it on the drawing game DoodleOrDie.
Ryan Roemer will talk about async.js.
Jafar Amjad will present on making a Node.js multiplayer site, specifically one that uses a low amount of bandwidth per player and features lasers, gravity, and walk cycles via animated gif’s. Check out his early beta version for a preview.

It should be a fun time to meet Node.js, jQuery, and JavaScript developers, share experiences, and learn what everyone is up to. Grab a six pack or some snacks to contribute to the group, and come on out tonight at 7:00 pm.

NodeDC holds a meetup once a month, usually on the third Monday of the month. Watch the website and follow @NodeDC on Twitter for updates.

Young Professionals in Foreign Policy: Communicating About the Ongoing Famine

Development Seed — 2012-02-15T00:00:00-08:00

Tonight I’m joining Young Professionals in Foreign Policy and USAID’s FWD Campaign for a discussion on the continuing crisis in the Horn of Africa. The Director of USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, Mark Bartolini, will kick the event off with a keynote on the famine and USAID’s response. A panel will follow, which I’ll participate in to discuss the maps and data visualizations we developed as a part of the ongoing famine mapping work we’ve done with USAID, the World Food Programme, and ONE.org. Specifically I’ll highlight how critical data can be transformed into a map to become a powerful advocacy tool.

USAID Administrator Dr. Rajiv Shah first announcing the famine maps at the Social Good Summit in New York City.

Tonight’s overall objective is to continue to advance the conversation around the famine that was declared last summer in the Horn of Africa. As a part of its response, USAID released a series of maps as an integral piece of the FWD (Famine, War, and Drought) Campaign to raise public awareness about the crisis. We worked with USAID to release these maps, as well as with ONE.org on its advocacy campaign Where is the Hunger? and the World Food Programme to map their on the ground response operations.

Latest Horn of Africa map showing the December 2011 food insecurity estimates

From spreadsheet to map

All of these maps leveraged open data made publicly available by organizations to tell the complex story of this crisis. Drought conditions, food prices, and conflict were compounding factors leading to the famine. The key to effectively communicating its extent and impact involved creating visualizations that packaged the data in a consumable way. Spreadsheets don’t do this. Maps, on the other hand, can be incredibly powerful in conveying who is affected and to what scale - two key pieces to communicating about the famine.

The Young Professionals in Foreign Policy event is tonight (Wednesday, February 15) from 6:30 - 8:30 pm. While it is currently full, there’s a waitlist for those interested in attending.

Week in DC Tech: Social Media Week

Development Seed — 2012-02-13T00:00:00-08:00

It’s Social Media Week, and here in Washington, DC we’re joining other cities around the world to celebrate. Below are our event picks for the week, and I recommend you check out the full Social Media Week calendar to see which of the 10+ daily events you want to attend.

Tuesday, February 14

8:30 am

We Love DC: Head to Dupont Circle to check out this pop-up photo booth where OnomonoMEDIA and the People’s District will be asking people “what do you love about Washington?”. The exhibit will highlight the “wonderful and unique elements of DC” - from the monuments and history to food trucks and jumbo slice.

Wednesday, February 15

10:00 am - noon

Beyond the PDF: This event hosted by the Center for Digital Information will look at how policy and research organizations can better use technology, data, and data visualization tools to stretch the use and utility of their reports, whitepapers, books, and policy briefs.

6:00 pm

Digital Trivia Night: Pub trivia with a technical spin. Come test out your knowledge of technology minutiae with the chance to win a $100 bar tab.

7:00 pm

DC Tech Meetup: This month’s DC Tech meetup - always a packed event - will have five short demos of new platforms, and talks on social media by Macon Phillips from the White House and Joaquin Alvarado from American Public Radio.

Thursday, February 16

5:30 - 8:30 pm

Who was Really Behind Internet Blackout Day?: This panel discussion will look at who was behind the “Internet Blackout Day” to protest SOPA and PIPA and what caused the most impact. Happy hour planned for after the discussion.

6:30 pm

Refresh DC: This month’s meetup will tie into Social Media Week, with the art director from nclud talking about new approaches and best practices for social media design.

6:30 - 9:30 pm

Tech Cocktail’s DC Winter Mixer: Come out to meet technologists, investors, bloggers, and entrepreneurs over cocktails and find out the latest projects folks are working on.

This Weekend

9:00 am - 5:00 pm

RootsCamp: This two day unconference brings together organizers and campaigners to learn the latest techniques and strategies around getting their message out online, engaging their audience, and successfully communicating their message. Eric and DJ will be there showing folks how to make custom web maps with TileMill.

9:00 am - 6:00 pm

OpenStreetMap Hack Weekend: Come help improve OpenStreetMap this weekend. Just bring a laptop and be ready to hack on some core components, editors, documentation, data, and anything else that could use some love. Tom and AJ will be there to help from our team.

Week in DC Tech: February 6th

Development Seed — 2012-02-06T00:00:00-08:00

There is a lot happening in the technology scene this week in Washington, DC, with events on openness in government, R, and mobiles in international development. Add to the mix two storytelling events and some happy hours, and it’s a great week. Below is our roundup of events, and you can find a full calendar over at DC Tech Events.

Tuesday, February 7

7:00 - 9:00 pm

The Anecdote: Stories about Not Love: In preparation of Valentine’s Day - or in spite of it - come out for a night of storytelling about failed love, dating troubles, and overall bad romance. Danny Harris from the People’s District - whose stories we helped map - is one of the presenters.

Wednesday, February 8

9:00 - 10:00 am

Open Innovation: Tools to Solve Problems and Grow the Economy: At this event held by the Center for American Progress, exiting U.S. CTO Aneesh Chopra will talk about his work pushing for open policies around innovation and how the government can stay on track - and open - moving forward.

Thursday, February 9

3:30 - 5:30 pm

Mobile Disconnect: Can Mobile Solutions Really Combat Global Poverty?: This panel discussion hosted by the New America Foundation will look at the potential of mobile phones aiding international development and political activism, and also the limitations in their use.

6:00 - 10:00 pm

ICT4Drinks in DC: After the Mobile Disconnect event, attendees and others in the international development and technology sectors will meet to continue the discussion over drinks. If you want to talk mobiles in development and pick the brains of presenters and attendees, check this out.

6:30 pm

R Lightning Talks: Want to dip your toe into a bunch of different topics around R? This month’s R user group will feature seven lightning talks on topics like R’s spatial tools, version control in Git, and webscraping with R.

Saturday, February 11

6:30 - 9:30 pm

Nerd Nite: Nerds in Love: Want to start your Saturday night by learning about the science of love, sexual attraction to objects, and frogs mixed with some drinks and live music? Then Nerd Nite at DC9 is your ticket.

Week in DC Tech: January 30th Edition

Development Seed — 2012-01-30T00:00:00-08:00

There are several interesting events happening this week in Washington, DC, from strategically using open data to improve response to climate change to mapping traditionally undocumented areas and slums to talking real-time data at Tech@State. See our roundup below for the events we’re hoping to attend this month, and find a full calendar over at DC Tech Events.

Tuesday, January 31

Noon to 1:30 pm

World Bank Climate Data Briefing: On the heels of opening up of a large climate dataset, the World Bank is hosting this discussion on how open data can help respond to climate change. This meeting is specifically focused on developers working with data and data visualizations, and climate change experts. Alex and Eric will be there to talk about the benefits of open data and how to release it in usable ways.

Wednesday, February 1

7:00 - 9:00 pm

GeoDC Meetup: This month’s meetup will look at mapping slums and other un ddocumented areas, with speakers presenting on the techniques they’ve successfully used to map areas in Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, East Jerusalem, Cite Soleil, and more. Really looking forward to this one.

Thursday, February 2

7:00 - 9:00 pm

CocoaHeads Meetup: This meetup will feature two presentations from Apple developers and give you a chance to meet and talk with local developers building on the platform.

Friday, February 3

8:00 am - 5:00 pm

Tech@State: Real-Time Awareness: Access to real-time data and the ability to quickly process and analyze can tremendously help when responding to disasters and breaking events. Tech@State will look at how to deliver real-time data and use it effectively. Alex and I will be here, specifically interesting in talking about data visualizations.

Saturday, February 4

8:30 am - 4:00 pm

Tech@State Unconference: Following Friday’s event, this will be a hands on dive into using technology to help collect, filter, analyze, and visualize real-time data. Check it out if you want to work with some real data and code.

Announcing the MapBox Blog

Development Seed — 2012-01-30T00:00:00-08:00

As you’ve seen from the amount of mapping posts on this blog, we’re ramping up our investment in MapBox - our open source mapping tools backed by a cloud platform for sharing and embedding custom maps and beautiful worldwide maps. To capture this momentum and communicate about MapBox news, we just launched the MapBox Blog over at MapBox.com. Follow us there or via RSS and Twitter.

Moving forward, all MapBox news will be posted on MapBox.com instead of here. So if you’re following us on Twitter @developmentseed, now would be a good time to follow @mapbox too. Of course we will continue posting here on DevelopmentSeed.org/blog about our data visualization and open data strategy projects, Node.js development, and local technology events.

Week in DC Tech: January 23rd Edition

Development Seed — 2012-01-23T00:00:00-08:00

Interested in learning about Python, meeting other people behind tech startups, or just working into the night with friends? Check out our roundup of technology events in Washington, DC this week, and check out that full event calendar over at DC Tech Events.

Monday, January 21

8:45 pm

DC Nightowls Co-Working Group: Interested in brainstorming, bouncing ideas, hacking, or just working late night? Check out this meetup to get some work done and meet other productive people.

Tuesday, January 22

6:30 pm

DC Lean Startup Circle Meetup: Folks from local startups like UmbaBox, mphoria, and HelloWallet will talk about their strategies for reaching out to new customers and keeping them on board at this meetup.

7:00 pm

DC jQuery Meetup: This month the DC jQuery group is teaming up with the Selenium meetup to talk about testing suites like Jasmine and others.

Thursday, January 26

6:30 pm

Refresh DC: Want to learn more about what services are offered in the cloud, and what all the hype is about? Check out this month’s meetup for an introduction.

Saturday, January 28

11:00 am - 2:00 pm

Python Web Scraping 101 for Journalists: The good folks at the Sunlight Foundation are hosting this hacking how to, introducing the fundamentals of Python using a simple web scraping example. If you’ve been wanting to dive in or hone up on Python, you’ll want to check this out.

A Google Maps Alternative: Switch to MapBox

Development Seed — 2012-01-20T00:00:00-08:00

We just launched MapBox.com/switch, a walk-through showing how MapBox is much more than just a mapping API. Particularly when combined with open source libraries like Leaflet, MapBox provides an incredibly powerful alternative to big traditional providers. The goal of /switch is to show how you can get up and running with an open mapping stack supported by a scalable cloud infrastructure.

In addition to featuring the open source wins of the MapBox Platform, the campaign also highlights some price comparisons. Specifically we’re looking at Google Map’s new price increase for high-end users, which for many businesses that depend on maps, are potentially debilitating. While we continue to look at Google Maps as a powerful integration point for MapBox, and something we continue to support for layering under custom maps, some organizations need to exit Google maps all together to save resources and are looking for viable alternatives. With MapBox, you have options.

To be clear, though, we are not trying to make a one-to-one comparison. MapBox doesn’t have its own satellites orbiting or cars roaming cities. We are not in the business of managing routing information to provide driving directions nor do we currently have the geocoding infrastructure that Google does. But we are in the business of making fast and beautiful maps, and for many organizations incredible base maps at a fair and flexible price makes MapBox a real alternative to Google Maps. Check out our new custom OpenStreetMap base maps that we’re launching later this month.

Read more about how to switch to MapBox and reach out to us if you want to talk about custom pricing packages or longer term contracts.

GDAL 2.0 to Support MBTiles

Development Seed — 2012-01-20T00:00:00-08:00

GDAL, the library underlying nearly all major open source geospatial projects (it’s used in apps like QGIS, ArcGIS, and Google Earth), has gained MBTiles read support. This adds a big name to the list of MBTiles supporting implementations because GDAL shines at data exploration and format conversion. It means MBTiles will be easier to use from any application that uses GDAL, and the list is impressively long. Once GDAL 2.0 is released, this potentially means you’ll be able to open MBTiles files directly in applications like QGIS. But already with GDAL trunk you can do fancy things like:

Query remote mbtiles for their metadata:

$ gdalinfo /vsicurl/http://a.tiles.mapbox.com/v3/mapbox.geography-class.mbtiles | grep description

One of the example maps that comes with [TileMill](http://mapbox.com/tilemill/) - a bright and colorful world map that blends retro and high-tech with its folded paper texture and interactive flag tooltips.

Or turn Konstantin’s gorgeous Iceland Map into a single 1.5 GB image suitable for high resolution printing:

$ wget http://a.tiles.mapbox.com/v3/kkaefer.iceland.mbtiles
$ gdal_translate kkaefer.iceland.mbtiles iceland.tiff
Input file size is 16384, 16384
0...10...20...30...40...50...60...70...80...90...100 - done.
$ ls -lh *tiff
-rw-r--r--  1 dane  staff   1.0G Jan  8 18:12 iceland.tiff

Or even remotely lookup a temperature anomaly value for a given coordinate in the World Bank Climate Scenario A2 Map:

$ gdallocationinfo /vsicurl/http://a.tiles.mapbox.com/v3/worldbank-climate.wbc-temp-anom-a2.mbtiles -wgs84 2 49 -b 1
Report:
  Location: (5279P,11525L)
  Band 1:
    11549{"control_vals":"-1.90,-1.08,1.09,3.90,8.48,12.43,15.96,15.42,11.18,6.04,1.80,-1.11,-1.90","id":11549,"p10_vals":"-1.58,-0.09,1.85,4.70,8.60,13.81,17.82,17.62,13.58,6.83,2.19,-0.38,-1.58","p10_yr_anom":3,"p50_vals":"1.17,1.85,3.71,6.75,11.32,16.57,21.35,21.34,16.14,10.01,5.37,1.88,1.17","p90_vals":"4.28,5.05,6.68,9.34,13.67,19.06,24.62,25.00,19.31,12.18,7.59,5.43,4.28","p90_yr_anom":4.7}
    Value: 255

More details about GDAL’s MBTiles support are on its docs page.

This is brilliant. I noticed the addition two weeks ago in #gdal IRC and quickly realized it was Even Rouault (profile/blog) at work. He’s a true force of nature - an amazingly smart and focused developer and one of the lead maintainers of the GDAL project. This is a very key position now that the lead and founder of the project Frank Warmerdam has been hired by Google and his commits have understandably declined. In addition to helping maintain a huge project, Even seems insanely deft at adding new drivers overnight to the delight of programmers the world over.

So, thanks for this awesome feature Even, and thanks Frank and others for creating such a powerful library for developers like Even to build on. We notice :)

Open Climate Data Meeting with the World Bank

Development Seed — 2012-01-18T00:00:00-08:00

Over lunch on January 31, the World Bank is holding a meeting with developers and data and climate change experts to discuss how open data can help address some of the challenges of climate change. Eric and I will be there to talk open data best practices and specifically on our experience mapping open data for the World Bank and the Global Adaptation Institute.

This meeting comes on the heels of the COP 17/CMP 7 Climate Change Conference in Durban two months ago, where the World Bank released a series of climate data sets to improve climate and development decision-making. Now that this climate data is available to a broader audience, the World Bank is bringing together an overlapping community of development practitioners, climate change experts, and programmers to further explore how to use open data to improve decision making, planning, and communications. This meeting takes place in addition to the World Bank’s efforts to get a larger audience using its data through the ongoing Apps for Climate Challenge.

Eric and I are looking forward to discuss using open data with an eye toward visualizing it, specifically by creating compelling map-based visualizations like the climate change maps on climate4development.developmentseed.org. We’ll also show how easy it is to add more data to existing maps like this through overlays, to tell new and different stories with your data.

You can find more information about the event on the World Bank’s site, and rsvp to attend the event in person or online.

Projected temperature changes by the year 2100 according to one scenario.

Mapnik Creator Artem Pavlenko Joins the Team

Development Seed — 2012-01-18T00:00:00-08:00

Artem Pavlenko, the creator of Mapnik - the amazing map renderer at the heart of many open source mapping tools ranging from our map design studio TileMill to huge live updating datasets like OpenStreetMap - has joined the MapBox team. He comes on board after playing a critical role in the launch of MapQuest Open, which is based on open source Mapnik and OpenStreetMap data.

Artem is a incredible addition as we further grow the MapBox platform this year. Most recently he has been working with Dane porting TileMill to Windows.

Artem will continue to lead Mapnik’s core development - in fact his main work right now is focused on developing for Mapnik 3. All of this work will result in huge performance improvements for us, which will be critical as we build out our world base maps and further scale our platform. After years of coordinating together in the open source space, it is amazing to get to work together on the same team.

Mapping for Nonprofits at Tonight's NetSquared DC Meetup

Development Seed — 2012-01-17T00:00:00-08:00

Tonight’s NetSquared DC meetup will look at how nonprofits are using web maps and discuss emerging tools that are making custom mapping easier, more flexible, and more affordable. I’ll be there presenting on where we see the future of web mapping heading. I’ll specifically discuss the open source map design tool TileMill and how it allows users to quickly turn a spreadsheet of data into a beautiful, custom online map.

Speed, design, and usability are what really matter when communicating data, and custom maps are now a viable option for nonprofits of all budgets. I’ll highlight how three nonprofits have leveraged open source mapping tools to change the way they communicate, showing how A Wider Circle maps its furniture donors and recipients to better target its efforts, how ONE.org has used maps and data to boost public awareness of a humanitarian crisis, and how the urban history initiative People’s District maps its storytelling. Danny Harris from the People’s District will be joining me to talk more about their map tells the stories of DC.

Screenshot of ONE.org’s famine mapping presentation

Lastly I’ll give a sneak peek of our coming soon minimal OpenStreetMap baselayer, which serves as an alternative to the common Google baselayer map we’ve all seen a million times. InterAction will also be presenting tonight on how they use maps to help their member organizations connect and collaborate with the NGO Aid Map, made by our friends at Vizzuality and also powered by open source.

I’m looking forward to meeting with the local NetSquared community and helping more nonprofits communicate their data through smart maps and visualizations. TileMill is only getting easier to use, and with new $5 a month plans for MapBox Hosting, custom web mapping is in reach of a much larger audience.

Designing a Minimalist OpenStreetMap Baselayer for MapBox

Development Seed — 2012-01-17T00:00:00-08:00

I am designing a new minimal OpenStreetMap base map in TileMill to use with MapBox hosting platform’s map builder. The goal for the design is a general OpenStreetMap layer that can be used as a light, very subtle background for compositing further data on top of. Here is an early look at the features and design aspects I have been working on for the map.

I used the OSM Bright template as a starting point for the design and removed all color, choosing to limit the palette to light grays. For simplicity, most land use and land cover area types have been dropped, however wooded areas and parks remain and are indicated with subtle textures instead of color.

Label improvements

For city labels I’m making use of the ‘simple’ label placement logic new to Mapnik 2. With this method you can specify multiple placements for the renderer to attempt, and the label will be rendered in the first one where it fits. The result is more cities end up being labelled at low scales.

Improved label placement in the Northeast United States.

I’ve also created shield styles to show route numbers for major highways like I-95 at mid-level scales.

Road improvements

The style now includes more types of roads. Tracks have been added, as have pedestrian routes, bike paths, and bridleways, which are shown as dotted lines. Roads without general public access (for example private roads) are shown faded out.

The rendering of overlaying tunnels, streets, and bridges has also greatly improved, with most overlapping lines separated and stacked in the proper order.

Overlapping bridges in Boston

The tunnel and bridge improvements are one of the more significant changes. The method I used was inspired by the bridge handling in Michael Migurski’s excellent High Road project. The method involves pulling multiple copies of the same bridge or tunnel segment from the database in order to render the casing and fill. Road casing is something I normally handle in Carto with multiple symbolizers on the same object. But in the case of bridges where you are dealing with potentially many overlapping layers, it’s easier to control the rendering order with PostgreSQL’s ORDER BY than it is with Carto attachments. Some modifications to the ImpOSM import mapping were required in order to bring in the layer tag value from the OpenStreetMap data.

At first glance it might seem like I’ve removed the outlines from standard roads. What I’ve actually done is made the casing the same color as the land. Rather than a standard outline, this provides a pseudo-knockout border when roads pass over tunnels or land cover textures.

Trails cutting a path through a wooded area in Chicago.

This border is slightly wider trails, cycleways, and railways. These features are represented by thinner dashed lines, and a wider outline give them some breathing rooms from any background texture and also makes for nice-looking bridges.

Coming soon: OSM Bright

Many of the adjustments that I’ve made for this minimal style are things that can be pulled back into the OSM Bright template project. I’ll be working on doing this in the near future as I wrap up work on the minimal design. Keep an eye on GitHub for these improvements as well as our blog for information about when the minimal design will become available on MapBox.

MapBox for design

Try using TileMill to style your own data or pull in extracts from OpenStreetMap. If you are new, check out our documentation on mapbox.com/help and follow us on Twitter @MapBox - you can also sign up to our email newsletter for updates every few weeks. When you’re ready to share your maps, check out MapBox plans starting at just $5 a month.

Week in DC Tech: January 16th Edition

Development Seed — 2012-01-16T00:00:00-08:00

There’s a lot going on in the Washington, DC technology space this week with meetups on Node.js, nonprofit mapping, big data, SOPA, and more. Below is our roundup of the events, and you can find the full local calendar at DC Tech Events.

Monday, January 16

7:00 - 9:00 pm

NodeDC Meetup: Want to learn more about the high performance javascript engine that’s powering more and more data heavy sites and our set of MapBox tools? Come out for this meetup to learn more about node.js, see what’s being built with it, and meet local developers.

Tuesday, January 17

7:00 pm

Netsquared: Modern Mapping: We’re presenting at this month’s meetup talking about how nonprofits can use web maps to better communicate about their work, track operations, and connect people. We’ll also walk through how technical and non-technical users alike can go from a spreadsheet to an interactive web map in ten minutes using TileMill and MapBox tools.

Erlang Hack Night: Come out to hack on Erlang with other developers. This event will group two to three people of various coding levels together to address a common challenge while pair programming. It’s a great opportunity to improve your Erlang coding and grow the community.

Wednesday, January 18

10:00 am to Noon

Emergency DC Tech Meetup: There’s no doubt that if passed, SOPA will hugely impact the technology community. DC Tech is organizing people to go to the Hill to advocate against the measure.

6:30 pm

Big Data and Mongo DC Joint Meetup: The Big Data and Mongo meetup groups are teaming up this month with presentations on MongoDB and advice for monitoring big data systems.

Thursday, January 19

7:00 pm

ONA: Homicide Watch: This month ONA’s meetup will look at Homicide Watch, a website that covers every single homicide in Washington, DC from the criminal act until conviction. The site has received good attention for giving a voice to victims and for providing some of the most thorough crime coverage in the area.