It’s been a while since I posted a more personal update here. But, as I announced this morning, I’ve got a new job! I thought I’d write a quick overview of what I’ll be doing and what I hope to achieve.
I’ve been considering giving up freelancing for a while now. I’ve been doing it on and off since 2012 when I left Talis. Freelancing has given me a huge amount of flexibility to take on a mixture of different projects. Looking back, there’s a lot of projects I’m really proud of. I’ve worked with the Ordnance Survey, the British Library and the Barbican. I helped launch a startup which is now celebrating its fifth birthday. And I’ve had far too much fun working with the ONS Digital team.
I’ve also been able to devote time to helping lead a plucky band of civic hackers in Bath. We’ve run free training courses, built an energy-saving application for schools and mapped the city. Amongst many other things.
I’ve spent a significant amount of time over the last few years working with the Open Data Institute. The ODI is five and I think I’ve been involved with the organisation for around 4.5 years. Mostly as a part-time associate, but also for a year or so as a consultant. It turned out that wasn’t quite the right role for me, hence the recent dive back into freelancing.
But over that time, I’ve had the opportunity to work on a similarly wide-ranging set of projects. I’ve researched how election data is collected and used and learnt about weather data. I’ve helped to create guidance around open identifiers, licensing, and open data policies. And explored ways to direct organisations on their open data journey. I’ve also provided advice and support to startups, government and multi-national organisations. That’s pretty cool.
I’ve also worked with an amazing set of people. Some of those people are still at the ODI and others have now moved on. I’ve learnt loads from all of them.
I was pretty clear what type of work I wanted to do in a more permanent role. Firstly, I wanted to take on bigger projects. There’s only so much you can do as an independent freelancer. Secondly, I wanted to work on “data infrastructure”. While collectively we’ve only just begun thinking through the idea of data as infrastructure, looking back over my career it’s a useful label for the types of work I’ve been doing. The majority of which has involved looking at applications of data, technology, standards and processes.
I realised that the best place for me to do all of that was at the ODI. So I’ve seized the opportunity to jump back into the organisation.
My new job title is “Data Infrastructure Programme Lead”. In practice this means that I’m going to be:
- helping to develop the ODI’s programme of work around data infrastructure, including the creation of research, standards, guidance and tools that will support the creation of good data infrastructure
- taking on product ownership for certificates and pathway, so we’ve got a way to measure good data infrastructure
- working with the ODI’s partners and network to support them in building stronger data infrastructure
- building relationships with others who are working on building data infrastructure in public and private sector, so we can learn from one another
And no doubt, a whole lot of other things besides!
I’ll be working closely with Peter and Olivier, as my role should complement theirs. And I’m looking forward to spending more time with the rest of the ODI team, so I can find ways to support and learn more from them all.
My immediate priorities will be are working on standards and tools to help build data infrastructure in the physical activity sector, through the OpenActive project. And leading on projects looking at how to build better standards and how to develop collaborative registers.
I’m genuinely excited about the opportunities we have for improving the publication and use of data on the web. It’s a topic that continues to occupy a lot of my attention. For example, I’m keen to see whether we can build a design manual for data infrastructure. Or improve governance around data through analysing existing sources. Or whether mapping data ecosystems and diagramming data flows can help us understand what makes a good data infrastructure. And a million other things. It’s also probably time we started to recognise and invest in the building blocks for data infrastructure that we’ve already built.
If you’re interesting in talking about data infrastructure, then I’d love to hear from you. You can reach me on twitter or email.
Lost Boy 