Post-event thoughts (updated 8 June 2009):

I enjoyed this presentation even though I didn’t understand a lot of it. I am not in any way technical and so things like APIs etc are straight over my head (although props to Stuart as he did explain and I am closer to understanding)!
It was interesting to hear about the development of TwitterPlan and the reason’s why Stuart had decided to give it a go in the first place. This sort of creativity spinning off wider networks and council data is a fascinating area where more work is surely possible (and I’m sure Stuart has a few more things up his sleeve).
There were some good points made about an open collaborative, interactive web being the original intention of Sir Tim Berners-Lee despite it now being referred to as web 2.0.
Also useful to know that Stuart has blogged himself about how easy it is to start mashing and sharing data.
Looking forward to seeing what he comes up with next 🙂

What I wrote at the time:

Yet another #epicvisionary!

– Planning Alerts – volunteers grab info from councils and push out to users by email
– Stuart realised that lots of ppl prefer Twitter and pay more attention.
– Used the Planning Alerts API to make Twitter version (am I getting this? non-techy alert!)
– API delivers ‘stuff’ in standard format
– Twitter username and postcode, stored in db, runs script everyday to look for applications in there area, then throws a tweet with links if there is a match
– Looking to develop so you can add more than one postcode
– Brave / stupid move – going live at PSFBuzz to sign someone up to Twitterplan – go Stuart! (right address helps 😉 )
[email protected] goes for it!
– Turning browsealoud off – but is online so faring well so far! Alert set up complete.
– Did have autofollow but not switched on right now
– opening up data – I think Stuart wants to shout Free Our Data really!!!
– What formats are available – RSS: only 101 have RSS news feeds. Mash The State
– They Work for You Local – get info about councillor / committee etc
– Add extra information into the profiles, make it easier to re-use info and helps with search
– Sir Tim Berners-Lee says this is the web done right prob recommend that councils etc publish using link data – good call Stuart / Sir Tim; here we go with semantic web
– Widgets! (not the John Smith kind)
– Allow information from your site to be republished on other sites and be automatically updated. Some instructions on Pezholio’s blog about how to get started
– only limit is your imagination – publishing data in RSS etc is as easy as publishing a web page
– I can haz API! lolcatz feature!

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