Raise the Hammer

Quite a thread. Love the points about the secrecy culture in our public institution - that's one of the reasons the Spec is launching this Our City: Our Information project, it runs much deeper than promoting Open Data.

The Spec has spent countless hours - and thousands of dollars - in past years fighting for openness, as we darn well should. But we've been largely re-active in the past. I hope you'll find that over the course of the coming months we're shifting to a pro-active stance - that at least is part of what I hope to be doing.

Permit me too to clear up a few misconceptions: Open data is not going to hurt the Spec - we, like everyone, will benefit from getting access to that information. But frankly there is a community of programmers and designers and the like in our community who have the skills needed to really makes use of that data for EVERYONE's benefit. That's the point of Open Data.

(And pu-lease! Bonuses? For doing an FOI? Or for landing the on front page? Doesn't happen.)

And on a more personal note, calling Mr. Coleman a "gatekeeper" at hospital parking lot was a choice, a deliberate, considered, choice I made as a writer (reporter/journalist/hack). It certainly was not done to "diminish" my colleague in any way. And @Wentworthst your believing that canard, if that wasn't just a glib remark you now regret, sadly says more about your own attitudes towards the service industry than it says anything about Mr. Coleman's life or my intentions.

One of the most exciting things about the times we live in is that people of good will and talent now have access to incredible tools that enable them to take centre stage in our civic life. (Witness the entire RTH community.) That used to be the purview of the wealthy and powerful.

Mr. Coleman's mastery of these tools may give the average Hamiltonian the wrong impression about him - he's not a highly paid professional journalist (at the moment). He's a smart guy who gives a damn and is doing something about it- without the benefit of the wealth and power of a mainstream media outlet behind him (his blogging gigs and Spec internship notwithstanding). I was also tickled by the gatekeeper metaphor as an irony - because so much of what Mr. Coleman does involves throwing gates wide open.

Perhaps I should have foreseen the snob reaction and called him a supervisor or manager or whatever.

Onward and upward.

Comment edited by BillDunphy on 2011-02-08 11:04:00