Open Visualization

Gregor Aisch driven-by-data.netDienstag, 21. Juni 2011

Open VisualizationDienstag, 21. Juni 2011Welcome :)Open Visualization is about Giving people the right tools to create knowledge out of data AS WELL AS the freedom to use those tools how and for whateverpurpose they want to.Truth: simply just canʻt imagine all those things people might me using our tools for, so the obvious thing is to Open up them as much as possible.- Looking at visualization that way, answering the question „Is it useful“ is pretty easy.To begin with, I want to make clear what I mean by open visualization.

Open SourceDienstag, 21. Juni 2011The ﬁrst point is pretty obvious, for a visualization to be open, at least it‘s source code must be published under aopen software license.

Open Source Open to DataDienstag, 21. Juni 2011Secondly, open visualizations shouldn‘t be closely tighted to a speciﬁc dataset. Instead,Everybody should be able to explore their own data with it.

Open Source Open to Data Open to CommunityDienstag, 21. Juni 2011Lastly we believe that a successful Open Visualization must be open to the community. Interms of technologies used, terms of documentation, since we want to invite people to doawesome stuff with it..

Dienstag, 21. Juni 2011Many Eyes is open to new datasets which users may upload in order to visualize it using oneof the many tools.- But, the tools itself aren‘t open.- People are still using this- But Virtually no community around this project anymore.

Dienstag, 21. Juni 2011Let‘s have a look at the Gapminder project. Is it ready to upload custom datasets? No, it isn‘t.Is it open source or reuseable in some other ways? Again no. Instead the Gapminder FAQsuggests using the BubbleChart Gadget that‘s part of the Google Spreadsheet application.

Dienstag, 21. Juni 2011Same with wordle, you may upload and explore your own data, but source is closed propertyof IBM. No updates for a couple of years now.

Dienstag, 21. Juni 2011Letʻs now take a look at a recent example of our work at the OKF. You probably all know WhereDoesMyMoneyGo dot Org, which was one of the ﬁrst open data portals, I think.

Dienstag, 21. Juni 2011- result of this process: OpenSpending- site aims to provide tools for analyzing all kinds of budgets around the world- clear API to separate data from representation- ﬂexible enough to work with virtually any money-related dataset- built entirely in JavaScript (strong community)- completely open source- guess what happens?

Dienstag, 21. Juni 2011People actually start to re-use the code. This is a snapshot of an OpenSpending fork, maintained by individuals in Brazil.Localization is a very big and under-estimated issue. People actually need to understand the language.Open Visualization means are by deﬁnition ready for customization and localization.

http://infograﬁcs.livejournal.com/Dienstag, 21. Juni 2011Love this map.

Dienstag, 21. Juni 2011- give you a quick demo of the current progress on the OpenSpending project.

Dienstag, 21. Juni 2011

Fair share of knowledge Community support Software QualityDienstag, 21. Juni 2011 In the ﬁrst place, opening data and visualization is a matter of fair share of knowledge. Developing countries or local communities often cannot afford to develop feature-rich data portals like OpenSpending. But there are more good reasons..

Fair share of knowledge Community support Software QualityDienstag, 21. Juni 2011 As in any other open source projects, the support by the community is a great beneﬁt of open visualizations. Need last minute translations into 16 languages?

Fair share of knowledge Community support SustainabilityDienstag, 21. Juni 2011 As a result of the above two points, creating Open Visualizations simply makes more fun for the developers. Also not to forget: Knowing that the entire world will be able too take a look at my code always forces me to write very robust and software.

ThanksDienstag, 21. Juni 2011

Open Visualization

by okfn on Jun 21, 2011

Accessibility

Upload Details

Usage Rights

Statistics

Open Visualization Presentation Transcript