Toronto, we have lift-off!

The City is hosting an “Open Data Lab” on Nov 2 to kick off their community engagement on open data.

The Open Data Lab is an opportunity to explore the innovation possibilities of open civic data in Toronto. Join City subject matter and technology experts, community stakeholders and talented members of Toronto’s vibrant technology and design communities in an interactive and collaborative afternoon imagining commercial, social and civic applications of the City’s newly launched open data program.

Let’s get started.

Mint.com CEO Aaron Patzer recently did a great presentation called “Everything you wanted to know about startup building, but were afraid to ask“. In it he chronicles the development of Mint.com from the germ of an idea all the way to exit. (Mint sold to Intuit for $170M.)

It’s not just an interesting story. He talks in fine detail about costs, salaries he paid himself and employees, equity, business model… all the things you’d need to know if you wanted to build your own company. This sort of detail is usually kept hush-hush.

The accompanying slides are here.

Every startup founder should watch this.

With an apps competition, no less.

The New York Times says:

Contestants will have access to more than 170 data sets supplied by over 30 city agencies, including weekly traffic updates, schedules of citywide events, property sales, restaurant inspections and mappable data around school and voting districts.

Exciting!

We ought to do something of similar spirit in Toronto, once people have had a chance to dogfood a version 1 “sandbox” release of open data.

See also: Open Data: What’s on Your Wish List?, Open Data: Making Toronto a Better Place to Live