As an open data and open government advocate, I get drawn into conversations with developers, dataset owners and bureaucrats about the difficulty in identifying, cleaning and then publishing datasets in the open. As a historian, I know that half the challenge in good economic history is identifying the appropriate data sources.

Nine hundred and twenty six years ago, William the Conqueror ordered a thorough survey of the property and economy of his recently acquired British Islands. Teams of commissioners visited 13,000 villages, towns and estates and interviewed up to 62,000 witnesses. Their work produced the data that has become known as the Domesday Book.

This data proved critical for developing strategy in the new Norman Court. Facing civil unrest and foreign invasion, the Court needed an accurate count of the financial and human capital available while evaluating their economic, political and military options.

Although there had been previous surveys, inquests and local roll-taking elsewhere in Europe, the Domesday Book looms as a landmark in data collection and analysis in the West. It provides a snapshot of the wealth, land holdings, animal population, household possessions and feudal relationships among the gentry and nobility in William’s kingdom. Really, it’s a record of how the 1% rolled a thousand years ago.

Collecting the data was not an easy process. In fact, the standards for data collection were constantly evolving as the survey was conducted; agricultural, economic and seigneurial data sources had not been combined before; the process of reviewing and correcting data was initially quite cumbersome; and the final product was still the product of a particularly focused and determined individual.

Today, technology has made the collection of social, economic and simply transactional data far simpler, but we haven’t really begun to systematically explore how these volumes of data can help governments and communities address their fundamental public policy challenges. Much of the initiative around open data has been the result of the energetic efforts of a small number of innovators and their supporters. Open data is still largely characterized by the small scale project with localized relevance.

Which makes the Open Domesday project a wonderful link between the past and present. Thanks to academics at the University of Hull and Anna Powell-Smith, an open data volunteer, the data from the Domesday Book has been translated for the technology age. Open Domesday lets the ordinary web surfer sort through this historic data by location, name or by reference to the book itself. The results are overlaid on contemporary maps of Great Britain. The ability to easily drill through centuries of history and reveal data about a community, a family or a region like this is stunning. Data collected ages ago continues to deliver results and insight.

The lasting impact of the Domesday book is often fresh in my mind when I think about the open data initiatives being launched around the world. The capacity to liberate and share data is only just beginning to affect our relationship with the government and with our communities. With every new collaboration, whether at a local level, with the World Bank, the United Nations or through the Open Government Partnership, we can imagine open data achieving scale and an impact similar to that of the Domesday Book in its time.

The Panel is chaired by Tony Clement, the President of the Treasury Board, and includes a number of Canadian and international participants with extensive experience in open government and open data issues. I’ve taken the liberty of copying David Eave’s list of participants and their related Twitter handles:

Bernard Courtois, Past President & CEO, Information Technology Association of Canada (ITAC)

Robert Herjavec, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, The Herjavec Group

Alexander B. Howard, Government 2.0 Correspondent, O’Reilly Media

Thomas ‘Tom’ Jenkins, Head of the Canadian Digital Media Network and Executive Chairman and Chief Strategy Officer, OpenText Corporation

Vivek Kundra, Executive Vice President of Emerging Markets, Salesforce.com.

Herb Lainchbury, Chief Technology Officer, MD Databank Corp.

Colin McKay, Public Policy Manager (Canada), Google

Toby Mendel, Executive Director, Centre for Law and Democracy

Alex Miller, President and Founder, ESRI Canada

Marie-Lucie Morin, Executive Director for Canada, Ireland and the Caribbean, The World Bank

Dr. Rufus Pollock, Co-Founder and Director, Open Knowledge Foundation

Dr. Teresa Scassa, Vice-Dean of Research and Professor of Law, University of Ottawa

I expect to draw in the larger open government community – who are numerous, energetic and truly innovative – through discussion, invitation and maybe even some small sponsored events.

The blog portion of Canuckflack will continue to be home for my longer writing – when I can find the time or inspiration.

It’s this dabbling that led me to open a speech last week with a discussion of the Cassini II expedition to map the interior of pre-revolutionary France. In short, one of Cassini’s team disappeared after working his way into the heart of the Massif Central, a previously isolated and relatively unknown area of France.* I cast this incident as an example of how technological innovation can slam head on to social norms and steadfast traditions – notions of privacy included.

Turning back the clock back two or three hundred years, we begin to recognize that our traditional values, habits and practices were  formed as a reaction to contemporary geographic, political and technological pressures.

Even the simplest and most common of urban features — the cemetery — is sited because of economic and physical constraints:

” … In glacial country, all you have to do is look for cemeteries if you want to find the moraine, Anita [Harris] said. “A moraine is poor farmland — steep and hummocky, with erratics and boulders. Yet it’s easy ground to dig in, and well drained. An outwash plain is boggy. There’s a cemetery over near Utica Avenue that’s in the outwash. Most people prefer moraine. I would say it’s kind of distasteful to put your mother down into a swamp …”(“In Suspect Terrain“, John McPhee)

At work, I find myself considering this handful of factors everyday, as we are buffetted by technological change and attempt to take measure of how society is reacting.

* as described in Graham Robb’s “The Discovery of France.”

“… In contrast to a Minority Report future of aggressive messages competing for a conspicuously finite attention, these sketches show a landscape of ignorable surfaces capitalising on their context, timing and your history to quietly play and present in the corners of our lives …” Media Surfaces: Incidental Media via Dentsu London and Berg.

Oh, and free wifi.

Even on approach, hotels signal their competitive positioning. Family-oriented, business practical, aspirational alternative, or ostentatiously ambitious. The most noticeable are the alternative brands. Modernist building design. Minimalist landscaping. Sans serif font on the signage and letterhead. Sectional furniture in the lobby. Men’s style magazines on the coffee table. A business centre with a Mac.

If you’re at all uncertain, just check the name etched in the glass over the polished aluminum handles. More often than not, it’s a short given name, or a vague scientific allusion. ARc. Oxygen. Alt. George. Helix.

Despite all this effort, there is one common element fouling each and every lobby: the clunky brass luggage cart. No matter the target market, no matter the guest demo, a four post brass luggage cart can be found lurking around the corner, swivelling wheels never at the ready, dirty rubber bumpers marking every corner.

Really? In a world where Knoll, Herman Miller, Eames and Saarinen can each make a half decent office chair, why are we stuck with the same uninspired luggage cart?

Given a moment of introspection and another of inspiration, what could a hotel baggage cart offer?

• graphic map of the facility to help with navigation
• a handy place to put my room key/card while fumbling with the cart
• a design agile enough to get through the door of the room
• footprint versatile enough to accomodate big family suitcases as well as carry-ons
• something that can get past a laundry cart in the hallway

Oh, and maybe a design aesthetic consistent with every other overly thought out element in the building?

I really wish people would just stop ordering right from the industrial supply catalogue.

Can a large organization – at least one headquartered outside Silicon Valley – accomodate cultural change and an ongoing challenge to the organizational status-quo?

It appears that General Electric is taking steps in the right direction. In an article in this month’s Harvard Business Review, and accompanying podcast, chief marketing officer Beth Comstock explains how the global conglomerate has identified four specific roles that marketers must assume if the organization is to continue to grow: instigator, innovator, integrator, and implementer.

“Marketing leaders need to think strategically and challenge the status quo, using their unique external vantage point to see what may not be apparent to others in the business. Sometimes this entails moving beyond preaching about marketing’s merits to imagining scenarios that business heads might face—perhaps marketing’s most important role. Leaders must be willing to push change.”

An instigator is just that: a member of the team that pushes for strategic change, often to the discomfort of others.

Or, more simply:

Instigator: Incites a “better way” using a unique vantage point to see around corners (a GE Director, speaking at BMA Chicago)

In a comment to David’s original post, Geordie Adams notes that

“I see them inside the public service regularly, wish I could say everyday. I just call them progressive though, not insurgents.”

Let’s remember that GE has identified FOUR roles as essential to the success of its unit, industry and global marketing efforts: instigator, innovator, integrator, and implementer .

I argue that we can identify colleagues in the public service (whether you self-identify as #w2p, #goc, #gov20 or whatever) whose behaviour echoes one or more of these roles. Some are good at selling ideas, others are good at developing new strategies, and others are very good at the not-so-simple job of execution.

Working as a team, public servants from a range of backgrounds and equipped with a variety of skillsets can get great work done.

“Mary Woronov observed in Swimming Underground: My Years in the Warhol Factory that the Screen Tests were like a psychological test: “You would see the person fighting with his image—trying to protect it. You can project your image for a few seconds, but after that it slips and your real self starts to show through. That’s why it was so great—you saw the person and the image.”(Bomb magazine)

For example, take a look at Lou Reed as a young man. With the advantage of hindsght, we know that quite a few hard years were ahead of Reed:

In 2009, I had the chance to watch one of the Marcel Duchamp tests as part of an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington. From what I remember of the accompanying narrative, this particular sitting was irritating to Warhol because Duchamp “broke the rules” – he consciously avoided the camera’s gaze and repeatedly acknowledged other people outside the camera’s frame. Which is what made it so engaging and amusing for me.

Among the screen tests in Seattle is Freddy Herko‘s. An unfortunate story, Herko ended his life at a young age in quite a spectacular fashion shortly after the fim was shot. Herko was celebrated by his friends after his death, and was eulogized quite eloquently by Warhol (click through the link and read the entire page):

“… The people I loved were the ones like Freddy, the leftovers of show business, turned down at auditions all over town. They couldn’t do something more than once, but their one time was better than anyone else’s. They had star quality but no star ego – they didn’t know how to push themselves. They were too gifted to lead “regular lives,” but they were also too unsure of themselves to ever become real professionals.” (Warhol & Hackett, cited at the exhibition)

As for Cobain: it’s always interesting to view a retrospective of an artist whose work and identity has come to assume a large role in the development of one’s own generation. (view a slideshow here) It seems we only appreciate the cultural impact of a once-familiar icon after time,  a certain amount of emotional detachment, and several galling instances of cultural apropriation.

Alice Wheeler’s portrait of Cobain (copied in Seattle Weekly) echoed familiar Marilyn Monroe imagery, frequently referenced and featured as part of Warhol exhibitions. Somewhat unsettling were the several images of children, too young to actually remember the grunge days, sporting Nirvana and Cobain t shirts.

To tell the truth, I left the Cobain exhibition feeling like I hadn’t appreciated the impact of the grunge movement more consci0usly at the time.

Of course, I’m talking about 1974 and a portable 8-track player.

Panasonic’s “Dynamite 8″ 8-Track player was a choice piece of consumer electronics with unprecendented music portability and a clean and bright modern design. It’s still sought after, the focus of bidding wars every time one appears on eBay.

Even better, the dealer prospectus promised a wide range of marketing support for this great new product: a big magazine buy (Seventeen, Hot Rod and other demographically appropriate pubs), four months’ worth of TV buys in the fall schedule, a full package of TV, radio and print templates for dealers, and an EARTH SHATTERING COUNTER DISPLAY.

And it wasn’t just 8-tracks – just look at the range of electronics Panasonic released as part of the same line: portable radios, phone handsets and alarm clocks.

But good design will only carry your product – and your company – so far. Especially if the underlying music format is inflexible. While the 8-Track format offered improved music portability, indexing and easy song selection, it still had its ass kicked by the cassette and the relatively messy but creatively inspired home mix tape.