#stockho

Title: "Drömmer" (1901)

Medium: oil on canvas (56 x 76 cm)

Collection: Thielska Galleriet, Stockholm, Sweden.

How many people are sitting on the toilet during a specific moment everyday? How many people passing the traffic lights? How many people eat steak on monday? I didn’t realize that there is so much data represented everywhere! But what is open data?

Open data is data that can be freely used, reused and redistributed by anyone - subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and sharealike.  (source: Open data handbook)

Daniel beauchamp is specialist in data visualisation in open data. He works as a software developer at Shopify (ecommerce solutions) but also teached to hyper students to think about open data. During his lecture he spoke about how do companies make use of open data. They publish their data to push open innovation and to increase creativity. For instance, Goldcorp Inc. a gold producer headquarted in Vancouver, Canada worried about underperforming mine in Ontario. The company was producing relatively low amount and the main deposits were deeper underground. As a result of this problem he put all the geological data into a file and shared it with the world. In return he offered $575,000 in prizes to the participants with the best methods. However, it was a risky venture. The word spread very fast and after launching the challenge more than 1000 virtual prospectors bent over the data. Mostly individuals in unrelated sectors such as; military, officers, students and consultants.