Cook County webcast this Friday on new Socrata Data Portal

 Posted by at 9:00 am  No Responses »
Apr 262012
 

Here’s an exciting announcement for those of us in Cook County. The County is following the City of Chicago’s lead to create a state-of-the-art data portal at data.cookcountyil.gov. I’m particularly interested in the “courts” data. Here’s a press release for webcast about the portal this Friday (and a couple of other events that are part of Cook County’s “Open Data Week”).

On Friday, April 27th, the County, the State of Illinois, and Socrata, a data archive company, will live stream a webcast on the new regional data portal, MetroDataChicago.org (http://metrochicagodata.org).  During the broadcast, viewers will learn more about how the portal works, how to use data found there, and what are the goals of the County and State going forward.

The County will also release new and updated datasets.

The County is also partnering with global Big Data Week (http://bigdataweek.com) for an international angle to local data.  Big Data is an emerging data science that allows organizations to analyze very large datasets, find patterns, create predictive models, and help understand more about the vast amounts of data generated by the public.  During Big Data Week, Cook County is hosting a webinar showcasing the projects and achievements of local Big Data developers on April 27th, and co-sponsoring a hackathon competition on April 28th.

A Concise History of the Federal Role in Education

 Posted by at 8:32 pm  No Responses »
Apr 242012
 

I apologize for not posting for awhile, more will be coming soon. I have a new article coming out in the BYU Education and Law Journal in which I argue that Congress should give more control to the U.S. Department of Education in reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind Act (something that could happen any day now) because doing so would address concerns over federalism (the constant power struggle between state and federal government). It might seem that giving more control to a federal agency would decrease the ability of state and local government to control the details of education reform, but I conclude that, to the contrary, the Department of Education may actually be more accessible to state and local concerns. The citation is 2012 B.Y.U. Educ. & L.J. 79 , and you can get the whole article here.

I like the section that lays out the history of federal involvement in education, so here it is (citations omitted):  Continue reading »

Patent Office plans first-ever satellite office – in Detroit

 Posted by at 9:16 am  1 Response »
Mar 052012
 

I think that this news has flown too far under the radar: The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is planning to open its first satellite office in Detroit this July. According to AnnArbor.com, the agency expects employ 100 people in its first year; they will operate out of a 31,000 sq-ft building east of downtown.

It’s hard to underscore how awesome this is (and not just because it brings jobs). As the University of Michigan VP for research puts it: “This is great news for the Great Lakes region, the state of Michigan and the University of Michigan.”

Why Detroit? As acting chief communications officer of the USPTO, Richard Maulsby, told Inc.com’s Eric Markowitz, Detroit “fulfilled a number of critical criteria, including a high percentage of scientists and engineers in the workforce; access to major research institutions; a high volume of patenting activity; and a significant number of patent agents and attorneys in the area.”

According to Markowitz, “Detroit also has the highest concentration of industrial and mechanical engineers in the United States—about three times the U.S. average—according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 2009, Michigan ranked 7th in the nation for the total number of patents with 3,516. And The Dice Report, a monthly look at the technology job market, reported last year that Detroit is now the fastest-growing region for technology jobs in America.”

Wow! Gene Quinn, President of IPWatchdog, thinks it also has to do with Michigan being a swing state in the upcoming election.

The Patent Office is opening two more satellite offices this year, and they are seeking input on locations. Quinn outlines the factors identified in the Federal Register as the following:

  1. Will the location increase outreach activities to better connect patent filers and innovators with the USPTO?
  2. Will the location enhance patent examiner retention and provide a strong quality of life;
  3. Will the location improve recruitment of patent examiners;
  4. Will the location decrease the number of patent applications;
  5. Will the location improve quality of patent examination;
  6. Does the location have available office space;
  7. Are there universities with strong engineering programs nearby?
  8. Are there research facilities nearby?
  9. Will there be a positive economic impact to the region?

Quinn doesn’t think that Detroit fares well under this rubric, but I disagree. I guess it depends on how you weight these factors. Number 9 and 6 are obvious wins. Cheap office space abounds (certainly more so than one of Quinn’s suggested Midwestern locations—Chicago). 1, 4, 5 are pretty amorphous. 7 and 8 are met. Detroit is filled with universities, and then Ann Arbor, just a short jaunt away, has University of Michigan, one of the nation’s premier engineering program, and Flint has Kettering University, also a great engineering school.

Quinn suggests the following 10 cities as possible locations: Orange County California; Houston, Texas (or somewhere in Texas); Melbourne, Florida; Syracuse, New York; Denver Colorado; Madison, Wisconsin; Chicago, Illinois; Albuquerque, New Mexico; San Diego, California; Northern California.

It seems obvious that somewhere in California needs to be on the list. What are your thoughts?

2012 TED Prize Winner “City 2.0″ announces its “wish”

 Posted by at 12:16 pm  2 Responses »
Mar 012012
 

TED awarded its annual prize this year to an idea rather than a person, and that idea is “City 2.0.” Now, they’ve announced the winner’s “wish.” Here it is, in all its lofty-worded glory:

I am the crucible of the future.
I am where humanity will either flourish or fade.
I am being built and rebuilt every day.
I am inevitable. But I am not yet determined.
I wish to be inclusive, innovative, healthy, soulful, thriving. But my potential can only be reached through you.

You can forge a new urban outlook. Begin by connecting. Imagine a platform that brings you together, locally and globally. Combine the reach of the cloud with the power of the crowd. Connect leaders, experts, companies, organizations and citizens. Share your tools, data, designs, successes, and ideas. Turn them into action.

Together you can:

  • Bridge the gap between poor and rich communities.
  • Spectacularly reduce your carbon footprint.
  • Make nature part of daily life.
  • Empower entrepreneurship.
  • Re-imagine education.
  • Nurture health.

I am the City 2.0. Dream me. Build me. Make me real.

Whew! What a lot of indistinct goals. But it does provide some roadmap for areas that city innovation can help improve society. I’m very glad education made the bullet list: It’s an area where there is so much discussion about state v. federal control, but it’s cities that make real on-the-ground breakthroughs. TED has put together a new website—www.thecity2.org—where people can share ideas and tag their location, to encourage collaboration. Pretty neat. I tried to register for the site, but got this message: “Due to a high volume of submissions, we are experiencing technical difficulties.” So, that’s good news: Lots of people want to help our cities create future.  I encourage you to check out the project.

How cities can cultivate genius

 Posted by at 8:15 am  2 Responses »
Feb 232012
 

I just got the new Wired magazine in the mail (March 2012), and it has an interesting article called “Cultivating Genius” by Jonah Lehrer. (Sorry, no online link yet.) The article starts by essentially making the same point that Edward Glaeser makes in Triumph of the City about how innovators and creators tend to congregate, especially in cities, which allow for the quick spread of ideas.

But not all places attract and cultivate geniuses. Lehrer points to three “meta-ideas” places adopt that seem to encourage genius:

  1. Human mixing, i.e., diversity. I see three areas where this point is important. First, the debate about immigration, because, as Lehrer points out, “in the overall population, a 1 percent increase in the number of immigrants with college degrees leads to a 9 to 18 percent rise in patent production.” Second, to me, it is also important to affirmative-action policies, which the Supreme Court recently agreed to revisit, because colleges and universities are where many of our new ideas are generated. Third, it may have implications for general diversity in the US. For more on that, see this 2000 diversity-index map from the Census Bureau (the trends haven’t shifted too much in the past decade, according to this USAToday map):diversity in the US
  2. Education. Lehrer believes that effectively educating the lower and middle class will waste less genius. I agree. For an interesting visual on education in the US, see this graphic from Good Magazine comparing education levels to salary:
  3. Risk taking. Lehrer suggests that we do a better job developing institutions that encourage risk taking. He makes the point that we develop great athletes because we have institutions that take risks to develop them, with the result that even small towns often produce at least one or two great athletes once in awhile. We should do the same with other types of genius, he says.

It is this third point that I think deserves the most attention from cities. As I’ve previously said, cities may be the best place for government innovation and risk-taking, for four reasons:

  1. Cities tend to be more pragmatic and less ideological than other levels of government.
  2. Density of human potential that hastens the spread of ideas.
  3. Less bureaucracy (smaller government) lets cities respond more quickly.
  4. There is less aftermath if a new innovation fails in one city than in a whole state or country.

Lehrer’s article is thought provoking (and short), so I encourage you to check it out (I’d add a link when it’s up).

How federalism might encourage local innovation

 Video  No Responses »
Feb 222012
 

Here’s a great video by Bruce Katz, director of Brookings’s Metropolitan Policy Program, on reimagining federalism as a mechanism to spur state and local innovation. For my thoughts on related topics, see my posts on why cities are American’s greatest laboratories of innovation and why federalism is a useful concept for state and local interactions. See the video after the jump. Continue reading »

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