Open source, open standards, open data

Hi everyone - I'm Jim Craner; I'm the managing partner of a nonprofit-focused web development group, the Chicago Technology Cooperative, and I'm really looking forward to meeting everyone at N2Y3! I'm an Advocate and one of the volunteer developers for the Movesmart.org project (N2Y3 profile) - a mashup providing housing-seekers with information on neighborhood amenities, quality of life indicators, affordable housing opportunities, and the services and programs of community based organizations.

During the weeks leading up to the conference, we have spent a lot of time talking about "openness." CTC uses only free/open source software (FOSS) on the projects we build for nonprofits; that's the sense of "open" I'm most familiar with. There are many reasons why FOSS is especially compelling for nonprofit organizations: economic, practical, and philosophical. As we further develop our open source mapping platform, we want to stress the importance of two other "open" concepts: open standards, to allow organizations of all types to share their data in an effective manner, and open data, to maximize the use of data for the common good.