(Originally posted in Business News Daily)

As a business owner in the modern world, you’ve probably heard a lot about Big Data in recent years. Maybe you’ve even started using it to inform your business decisions. But because of the enormous volume of data being generated every day, it’s difficult to know if you’re really using it effectively.

“Every industry vertical today is opening up to the Big Data world,” said Anil Kaul, the CEO of intelligent analytics company Absolutdata. “Small businesses … have started leveraging a combination of in-house and third-party technologies for developing a 360-degree view of their customers using data coming from multiple sources. However, the main challenge … is to determine which data to really focus on and how they can extract the real value from that data.”

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by Mark Headd

Technical Evangelist, Accela Software

[If] one of the virtues of our approach to democracy in this country is that we have lots of governments below the federal level to act as “laboratories of democracy” then we’re missing an opportunity here. If we can get more small cities to embrace open data, we can encourage more experimentation. We can evaluate the kinds of data that these cities release and what people do with it. We can learn more about what works — and what doesn’t.

Read more in PBS MediaShift

As featured on Government Technology
By: Mike Montgomery and Brian Purchia

We launched an Open Government working group for the State of California earlier this year – with our most recent roundtable at San Francisco-based accelerator Runway last week – to increase collaboration between government and the civic startup community.

This group will benefit people and communities through enhanced services utilizing open data. The benefits to the public, including transparency and reduction in lag time to inquiries are astounding as are the benefits to governmental offices, which include a decrease in paperwork and staff hours on public information requests, for example.

The idea we espouse sounds simple enough, in theory. If government agencies and offices were to institute forward-looking open data policies statewide then the growing industry of civic-focused startups will grow exponentially. These civic entrepreneurs will create new products and platforms that will continue to increase government efficiency, while the reduction in costs to taxpayers will undoubtedly have a net-positive impact on society.

One example is BuildingEye, a civic startup that has created a real-time map with all of the locations that have building permits in the cities in which BuildingEye operates. The San Francisco Entrepreneur in Residence company makes it easier for the public to see what is going to be built in your neighborhood with a click of button. Currently, though, BuildingEye only works in a handful of cities that have opened their data.

At our second open data roundtable hosted at San Francisco-based accelerator Runway last week, we charted a roadmap to bring new policies to unlock civic innovation. While the geographic boundaries of our goals are limited to city, county and state agencies within California, what we accomplish can be shared and borrowed by municipalities across the country as a blueprint for collaboration between tech, government and its inhabitants.

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By: Mike Montgomery 

To quote the great philosopher, Ferris Bueller, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

As fast as life moves, technology moves even faster. It only took Facebook eight years to land a billion users. Twitter hit the five hundred million mark in just six years. Apple’s App Store launched in 2008 and is already closing in on 50 billion downloads.

Government, in contrast, does not move quickly. Especially on the local level, and especiallywhen it comes to embracing technology. Want to take a trip down memory lane? Catch a glimpse of what the Internet was like five years ago? Ten years ago? All you have to do is fire up a municipal website. Chances are you’ll come face-to-face with a dusty web design with information buried behind confusing menus, documents with inscrutable titles, and slideshows that move at the speed of continental drift.

As more and more people carry an Internet connection in their pocket wherever they go, many local governments are struggling to effectively serve their citizens. People don’t need a Hall of Records. They need information at their fingertips. They need a government that is more open, more available; a government that speaks their technological language.

Enter Appallicious, the brainchild of San Francisco innovator, Yo Yoshida. The former Founding Director of the nonprofit Under the Baobab Tree, Yoshida is a Government 2.0 evangelist, and his goal with Appallicious is to transform the way governments and citizens engage. Here’s how Jeremy Wallenberg, Director of External Affairs for San Francisco Citizens Initiative for Technology and Innovation, described Yoshida’s work:

 Yo and his team have spent years developing a revolutionary technology utilizing open data that makes it easier for San Francisco residents to effectively engage with City Hall and elected representatives. The Appallicious platform is an invaluable tool helping San Franciscans find and navigate through city parks, playgrounds and museums.

One way Appallicious is already helping the City of San Francisco better connect with its citizens is the freeRec & Park app, developed in 2012, which utilizes open data to provide information on the city’s many parks. Or as Mashable described it in more detail:

 The app… helps people find and navigate thousands of parks, playgrounds, dog runs, museums, recreation centers, picnic tables, gardens, public restrooms and other points of interest and facilities that are maintained by the city of San Francisco.

The Appallicious Rec & Park app is just one example of the good that can come from the utilization of government data. The platform is also being used by SFArts and the San Francisco Department of Public Health to create useful tools for the public using open data—stay tuned for these new apps which are due out later this year.

The software created by Appallicious is easy to scale and gives governments the ability to build apps in a number of days rather than months—as long as there is open data available.

So what is open data?  According to the Open Knowledge Foundation, “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.”  Trailblazing Government 2.0 advocate Alan Silberberg calls open data “Information that was previously only available via fax, paper or walking into an office that can now be found in a media form that can be used on websites or mobile phones.”

Phil Ginsburg, the visionary General Manager of San Francisco’s Recreation and ParkDepartment, says that, “Open data allows government to leverage the talents of app developers all for the benefit of those relying on our services and programs.”  Ginsburg reminds citizens that no personal information is shared with app developers.  The anonymous data is being utilized to serve residents in ways never before envisioned by government or private industry.  “It’s a win-win,” says Ginsburg.

In order to get the Rec & Park app off the ground, Appallicious worked with San Francisco city leaders like Ginsburg and San Francisco CIO Jay Nath to revise open data legislation, steps other cities will need to take in order to fully leverage the power of mobile apps and social networks to reach their citizens. According to Yoshida, every major city in America could have its own Rec & Park app within a year—all they have to do is embrace the age of open data.

Technology moves fast. Platforms like Appallicious can help governments keep up.

The cloud is a deceptively simple concept for the modern consumer. Most of us use the cloud every day and probably never think about it. Popular online services and destinations like Gmail, Netflix, MobileMe, and Twitter are all operating in the cloud and the information and media we send to, or receive from, these sources is all passed through the cloud.

When people talk about the cloud, they’re using the concept of a cloud as a metaphor for the internet. Services like Gmail, which save you from having to own and operate your own email hosting server and software, are actually hosting your emails and information in many remote data centers via the internet or cloud. These redundant data centers, where your information is housed, are important because they’re the reason using the cloud is so powerful, cheap, and easy for all of us.

For example, when you send a new tweet on Twitter, your new tweet is instantly housed in and across a wide expanse of data centers- large groups of powerful computers you never see. These data centers store your tweet securely and make it possible for you and your friends to see your tweet from multiple devices (smart phones, laptops, desktops) and from anywhere in the world (your house, your office, on the train) instantly. Your new tweet is in the ‘cloud’ and the benefits that come with using the cloud don’t end there.

In addition to allowing device and location independence, the cloud provides security for your data. Data, once in the cloud, is essentially backed-up and lives in the cloud even if you lose the original copy on your PC. Decentralizing your data means you’re covered should something go wrong. Services and applications that use the cloud make it easy to instantly upload, backup, share, and access information to and from anywhere in the world. Because the cloud has so many applications, it’s already become a big part of many users’ daily online activity.

California is home to many of the leading services using the cloud like Google, Flickr, Twitter, Netflix, and Apple. The cloud is the online space in which the future of exchange between users and services will be made possible and Californian innovators are leading the way. Whether or not users are aware that they’re utilizing the cloud when they log-in to read their mail or upload some photos, the cloud is becoming an integral part of how we all use and share information more freely and effectively.

The cloud is a deceptively simple concept for the modern consumer. Most of us use the cloud every day and probably never think about it. Popular online services and destinations like Gmail, Netflix, MobileMe, and Twitter are all operating in the cloud and the information and media we send to, or receive from, these sources is all passed through the cloud.

When people talk about the cloud, they’re using the concept of a cloud as a metaphor for the internet. Services like Gmail, which save you from having to own and operate your own email hosting server and software, are actually hosting your emails and information in many remote data centers via the internet or cloud. These redundant data centers, where your information is housed, are important because they’re the reason using the cloud is so powerful, cheap, and easy for all of us.

For example, when you send a new tweet on Twitter, your new tweet is instantly housed in and across a wide expanse of data centers- large groups of powerful computers you never see. These data centers store your tweet securely and make it possible for you and your friends to see your tweet from multiple devices (smart phones, laptops, desktops) and from anywhere in the world (your house, your office, on the train) instantly. Your new tweet is in the ‘cloud’ and the benefits that come with using the cloud don’t end there.

In addition to allowing device and location independence, the cloud provides security for your data. Data, once in the cloud, is essentially backed-up and lives in the cloud even if you lose the original copy on your PC. Decentralizing your data means you’re covered should something go wrong. Services and applications that use the cloud make it easy to instantly upload, backup, share, and access information to and from anywhere in the world. Because the cloud has so many applications, it’s already become a big part of many users’ daily online activity.

California is home to many of the leading services using the cloud like Google, Flickr, Twitter, Netflix, and Apple. The cloud is the online space in which the future of exchange between users and services will be made possible and Californian innovators are leading the way. Whether or not users are aware that they’re utilizing the cloud when they log-in to read their mail or upload some photos, the cloud is becoming an integral part of how we all use and share information more freely and effectively.

Few businesses providing products and services today can abstain from maintaining an online presence or engaging in some form of e-commerce. To be competitive in the modern marketplace, enterprises, both large and small, have adopted online business solutions to reach consumers and deliver their products in a fast, efficient, and unencumbered manner. However, until recently the daunting costs; in terms of personnel, upstart and upgrade time, and capital; associated with software and hosting solutions have made those solutions as much of a challenge as an asset to the world of e-business.

The solution to these problems is cloud computing. Cloud computing is a new approach to providing businesses with the software and hosting services they need. The ‘cloud’ is a metaphor for the internet, and cloud computing relies on utilizing the internet for a business’ software needs. Traditionally, a business needed to buy or rent servers and software and employ a staff of IT professionals to maintain them. This approach required significant capital, personnel, space, and equipment while lacking flexibility, efficiency, and ease of use.

Cloud computing is different; it allows businesses to interact with their hosting and software resources over the internet. This means that a business does not have to pay the high costs associated with buying and maintaining the software solutions they need. Those resources are pooled within the cloud to be used immediately when a business needs them. In cloud computing, a business simply interacts with and customizes the software they need via the internet or ‘cloud’. For this reason, cloud computing offers greatly diminished startup times and altogether eliminates startup costs. Instead of setting up a complicated system of software, businesses simply ‘plug in’ to the cloud’s existing services and pay a small, predictable subscription cost determined by their needs. In this way, cloud computing is similar to a utility- when you use more you pay more and vice versa. If using cloud computing is like using your energy meter at home, the traditional model of hosting would be akin to building and maintaining your own power plant.

Cloud computing offers further benefits compared to traditional software and hosting models. For example, scaling your needs is easy and instant with cloud computing. As an enterprise’s online business grows, the enterprise can simply pay more for the additional services they require. And, if a business requires less, they aren’t forced to pay for more than they need. Large and small businesses alike will benefit from the reduced cost, increased flexibility, and ease of use that cloud computing provides. Cloud computing will allow California’s businesses to compete in the digital marketplace without the traditional and often prohibitory costs associated with growing an online business. California is already home to many of the leaders in cloud computing such as Google and Salesforce and California’s rich, pioneering history of online business makes cloud computing an important development in the state’s continued advancement of e-business. Cloud computing will help lend an edge to California’s businesses and will provide tools that allow the state’s entrepreneurs and enterprises to grow and succeed unhindered.

I have to admit, for awhile, I was one of the nearly 80 percent of American’s who didn’t know what people were talking about when they talked about the cloud.  I knew it wasn’t a meteorological reference but that was about as far as I got and then one day I visited the cloud-no plane or rocket ship necessary.

The particular cloud I visited is just outside Sacramento, a place ironically, in the meteorological sense, is rarely cloudy.  The cloud is actually an incredible physical place that pretty much all of us visit, virtually, on a daily basis.  Salesforce.com: pretty much invented the cloud. Amazon: it’s in thecloud.  Netflix: it’s in the cloud. Facebook, yup, in the cloud.  But the cloud isn’t in actuality, in a cloud; it’s real bricks and mortar, and lots of it.  Acres of huge, high tech, high security servers are in fact thecloud-many of them with their own power generation and military-styled security and defense.  It turns out, the cloud, unlike its metrological namesake, takes up a hell of a lot of room.

Though our computers have gotten so small that I can do virtually anything I have to on my phone, the amount of infrastructure needed to support technology has grown.  Like the cloud, the build-out of all technology infrastructure takes space.  Don’t like our carbon footprint? Well, neither do I, but recognize that solar power takes space-we’re talking hundreds, if not thousands of acres of land to produce solar power at utility scale.  Like your cell phone to work wherever you are?  I do, especially at times of emergency but that takes cell sites, and lots of them statewide to provide what can literally be a life saving service.  And yes, AT&T’s new IP network, if approved, is going to take some space on city sidewalks to provide this platform that will at the onset provide a fancy, smancy new home entertainment option and a lightening fast platform for developers who are already working on how to best utilize this new technology.

As technology advances, so do the platforms we need to support it.  I am willing to give up a bunch of land in the desert to reduce our dependence on coal and foreign oil.  I am willing to give up my unblemished sightlines so that cell service can be far reaching when I need it most.  And, next Tuesday, as additional fiber optics are considered by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, we’ll find out whether San Francisco is willing to give up a little space in order to take advantage of this new technology.

All it takes is a little space.