[okfn-labs] Exversion - Clean up the worlds datasets....

Fri May 10 14:00:56 UTC 2013

Of course :)

So basically what we keep hearing over and over again from organizations is
that they really want to engage with the developer community. There's some
interest in seeing this data used in research, but the big incentive is
getting people to build things with it.

However, most of the current solutions have an 'if you build it they will
come' mentality: framing the bulk of their features around the data
providers needs and assuming that once the data is available online the
developers will find some way to figure out how to use it.

We're developers, veterans of startups and the hackathon scene, so we built
Exversion to serve the developer's needs first. The big problem with
Socrata and CKAN is that the data is not always available programmatically.
If the developer has to download the entire dataset, configure a database
and host it himself he probably will not bother.

Our industry requires fast prototyping. What often happens in development
is that you build something only to find out later that there's no market
for it, or it isn't being used the way you intended. Then you have to scrap
a lot of your work and try again. A normal development cycle is just
constant iterations of this: build, test, rebuild.

So from a developer's perspective: the more time, money and resources it
takes to use the data the less appealing the project itself becomes. We
keep hearing the same thing from developers: found a great data set,
couldn't figure out how to use it, gave up on the project.

That's the problem we'd really like to fix. And what Exversion does is
allow users to upload data, then generates an API through which it can be
accessed.

-Marianne

On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 11:20 AM, ALEX STOBART
<alex.stobart at btopenworld.com>wrote:

> Marianne
>
> Perhaps you could send a short description of the Exversion project - what
> it is hoped to be
>
> Thanks
> Alex
>
>   ------------------------------
>  *From:* Marianne Bellotti <marianne.bellotti at gmail.com>
> *To:* okfn-labs at lists.okfn.org
> *Sent:* Thursday, 9 May 2013, 15:40
> *Subject:* Re: [okfn-labs] Exversion - Clean up the worlds datasets....
>
> Ha!
>
> As it happens you have the CTO of Exversion here on this list :) (err...
> me!) We're still in very early private alpha, but if you have any questions
> about what we're up to I'd be happy to answer them.
>
> -Marianne
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