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

Fri May 10 14:37:21 UTC 2013

hi there, thanks for the explanation. To be honest, I did not understand this from your web site.

Anyway, I agree with the fact that most of the solutions are focused on the data providers and solving their problems. The developers are having hard times to actually experiment with the data sets. I think there is a lot of space for improvements.

On the side note, here is some further inspiration. I'm a co-founder of a mingle.io platform (https://mingle.io). We aim to approach the same problem but a bit differently. We already provide an interface to mingle and experiment with the data using a comprehension based query language and a simple HTTP API. So far we're the only one who uploads the data but we're happy to provide an API to developers to upload and experiment with their own data sets.

Looking forward to see more discussion on this topic.

Cheers,
Julius Chrobak
@julochrobak

On May 10, 2013, at 4:00 PM, Marianne Bellotti wrote:

> 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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