Civic Data and Technology Enthusiasts Gather at Data Days Cleveland 2024

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I was scheduled to be out of town, but when my plans changed, I purchased my ticket to attend the Data Days CLE 2024 annual conference. The conference took place on Tuesday, October 22, 2024, at the Cleveland Public Library-Louis Stokes Wing. I have been following the activities of Data Days CLE on social media for years, but I have never been able to attend any of their events. I knew I would be in for an impressive day, and what I got was even more. It ended up also being a reunion with people I had not met in person for a while, and gave me the opportunity to meet new people who were attending or presenting.

Note that this was the third tech event I had attended in three weeks, since I decided to stay in town. Read about the other two tech events in these blog posts:

• Blog Date: October 19, 2024 - NASA International Space Apps Challenge Cleveland 2024

• Blog Date: October 24, 2024 - Eighth Annual Better World Day - Cultivating Gamification for a Better World 2024

I like how the Data Days CLE 2024 organizers make an effort to make it easy for all who are interested to attend their events (see their announcement above mentioning scholarship opportunities). Since I follow Data Days CLE on social media, I had the opportunity to use the social media promo discount they offered to their followers. I recommend you see their current list of social media accounts at the bottom of their DataDaysCLE.org website, and follow those that you are active on, so that you learn about their future events.

(While writing this blog post, I learned that they are on Mastodon Social Media. I wrote about Mastodon in my March 8, 2023, 11th Blogiversary blog post about "Preparing for Twitter's Uncertain Future!" and then added two blog post comments with more details.)

I put together this blog post to share the photos and notes I took during the event. Of most importance is that I want to thank the organizers, sponsors, and presenters for making Data Days CLE possible. I enjoyed learning how our community is now better served after several years of work by the people participating in this annual conference.

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Welcoming Remarks
and
Open Data Wizardry: Cleveland's Potion for Public Records

Peek behind the scenes at Cleveland City Hall's journey to open data success! Join Dr. Liz Crowe, head of Urban Analytics, and Amy Hough, Assistant Director of Law, Public Records as they pull back the curtain on the challenges of making open data a reality. Learn from their candid insights, gain practical takeaways, and discover tools to foster greater collaboration. This engaging conversation, facilitated by Thomas Fisher, head of Cuyahoga County GIS, will leave you inspired and equipped to champion open data in your own corner of Northeast Ohio.

The welcoming remarks were made by Will Skora, who is the Web Administrator at Cleveland Public Library, and April Urban, who is Director of Research + Impact at Signal Cleveland. I have known of Will Skora's great work for years, from attending a few Open Cleveland meetings, and from his work with mapping. (I have always been interested in both paper and online/app maps.) I knew of April Urban's work in the past, when I used to connect with her on Twitter, but I did not know of her current work with Signal Cleveland. I have been very impressed with what I have read from the Cleveland Documenters (founded in 2020), which is now part of Signal Cleveland. Signal Cleveland was launched in November 2022. It was great to have this open data conference kicked off with these two community leaders.

Following the opening, the City of Cleveland Director of Urban Analytics and Innovation, Elizabeth (Liz) Crowe, PhD, was interviewed by Cuyahoga County Enterprise Geospatial Technologies Administrator Thomas Fisher. (Note: The City of Cleveland Assistant Director of Law, Amy Hough, who was to co-present with Liz Crowe, had to cancel due to illness.)

Learn about Liz Crowe's role in the following City of Cleveland news release:

• Mayor Bibb Names Elizabeth Crowe as the City’s next Director of Quality Control and Performance Management
  Wednesday, August 3, 2022.

  The Office of Quality Control and Performance Management is currently being revamped, under the direction of Chief Strategy Officer Bradford Davy, to champion the use of data and modern data analysis, visualizations, and storytelling to provide a much more engaged approach to performance improvement and change management.
  
  “We are moving from a culture of status quo to one where business as usual means daily innovation to solve challenging problems, build a more effective government, and deliver better outcomes for the people who live and work in Cleveland,” Chief Davy said. “Liz’s incredible analytical abilities and sophisticated data know-how, combined with her natural leadership qualities, make her the ideal person to lead the department into the future.”
  
  As the thought leader and public face for the City’s analytics efforts, Director Crowe will oversee deliberate strategic planning to advance Cleveland’s position as a leader in modern, data-informed governance.
  
  . . .
  
  Liz Crowe is an economist and researcher, who is passionate about civic tech, data and the possibilities they hold for Cleveland. An experienced data manager, she has years of experience in economic development, nonprofit management, venture capital, and the private equity industry. . . .

Most of Liz Crowe's presentation discussed historical background and the current realities of the city moving from the "culture of status quo" to an open data city. An open data city provides the information that the citizens and press desire, while at the same time addressing the concerns of internal customers (the city departments), and privacy concerns.

I have known about the Data Day CLE event for years, but I did not know the history of how at the time Data Day CLE was founded in 2016, the City of Cleveland was not providing public data online in a usable format. With Mayor Justin Bibb's hiring of Liz Crowe, the groundwork was laid to make open data possible from the City of Cleveland. First, internal departments were brought onboard (the mayor issued a directive to the department heads to make open data a top priority). Next, they identified what data is public and what is private. They also reviewed what other cities are currently doing to provide data to their communities. It was demonstrated that for some departments, providing data online would decrease staff time spent gathering and disseminating the information, and other departments would have information available to the public for the first time. The City of Cleveland's Open Data Portal opened in 2024, and is built on Microsoft Azure technology. Learn more in this Cleveland Scene article:

• Cleveland City Hall Debuts Open Data Portal in Bid to Boost Government Transparency
  And lighten the load on their public records department which handled 33,000 requests last year
  Wednesday, April 3, 2024, at 8:21 am. By Mark Oprea - Cleveland Scene.

  Last year, according to City Hall, the five full-time staff members in its public records department received roughly 33,000 requests—for police body cam footage, for homicide counts, for building permits from the Department of Building & Housing.
  
  . . .
  
  "And they're barely keeping up with those 33,000," Liz Crowe, director of Quality Control at the city's Department of Urban Analytics & Innovation, said.
  
  Crowe joined Mayor Justin Bibb on Tuesday to unveil City Hall's fix for the typhoon of requests burdening its records department: Cleveland's first Open Data Portal, a massive digitized collection of, as Crowe said, "overtime, trend-type, map-type" data and information that, in the past, required a necessary ask to a public records official.
  
  . . .
  
  "Data," Bibb said, "that belongs to the residents of Cleveland."

Explore the City of Cleveland's Open Data Portal at:

• https://Data.ClevelandOhio.Gov/
  "This site is managed by the City of Cleveland Office of Urban Analytics and Innovation (Urban AI). Please contact us at opendata@clevelandohio.gov."

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(3 screenshots from City of Cleveland Open Data Portal)
       

Dr. Crowe reported that her department meets with the law department every week to confirm that public information is released, and any confidential information is redacted. This is the first year for the portal, and every two weeks, new products are being added to it. This is an exciting time in Cleveland for civic transparency as we see an increase in the open release of data for the public's use.

I recommend viewing videos in full screen mode.
Please feel free to pause the video to read the interesting facts that are in the slides!!

 

 

Cleveland GiveCamp - Great News on Current Status

Coffee and Code founder, Jonathan Knapp, sat with me at the opening session and during the second session. Between these sessions, he updated Will Skora and me about current status of Cleveland GiveCamp. Jonathan Knapp is a longtime volunteer and sponsor of Cleveland GiveCamp, and in January 2024, took on the new role of Board Chair. Cleveland GiveCamp tech and design volunteers have been serving the Cleveland and Akron communities for 14 years. It was interesting to learn from Jonathan Knapp about Cleveland GiveCamp's success in bringing new leaders on board as they prepared for 2024 and beyond. I told him that it would make a great case study for a nonprofit management class.

Here is some information from their website about their history, followed by an excellent video I recommend you watch about the engaging way the event was run in 2024:

How did GiveCamp start? The idea to complete tech projects free for nonprofits over a single weekend dates back to 2007, when a Microsoft developer/evangelist in Texas began working to create a 2008 event called We Are Microsoft Charity Challenge Weekend. The first event called GiveCamp took place in Michigan in 2008.

What’s Cleveland GiveCamp’s story? Cleveland GiveCamp launched two years later, and we are now the longest continually operating GiveCamp in the country. Since 2010, our volunteers have worked with more than 200 nonprofits, donating their time and talents to complete projects worth well over $1 million.

Who makes Cleveland GiveCamp happen? From the beginning, Cleveland GiveCamp has been organized and run by an exclusively volunteer board. We raise money, recruit volunteers and our nonprofit partners, plan every facet of the program and make sure each event is a success.

To learn more about Cleveland GiveCamp, please encourage nonprofit leaders and potential volunteers to go to ClevelandGiveCamp.org to subscribe to get future event announcements.

 

 

Environmental Tools to Connect Communities and Government Partners

This session will explore the potential of collaboration and data sharing between non-profit organizations, local CDCs, and key municipal staff, leveraging Trust for Public Land’s existing nature-based solutions mapping tool, Climate Smart Cities. Presenters will discuss lessons learned in developing the software with a government partner, obstacles and successes for resident adoption of the tool, and how future modifications and outreach can overcome low adoption by residents on the ground in Cleveland to address soil contamination.

Speakers
Sean Terry
Director, Trust for Public Land

Krystal Sierra
Director of Neighborhood Sustainability, Slavic Village Development

Sean Terry from the Trust for Public Land opened this session. He shared how the Cleveland Metroparks Red Line Greenway (which "links the Cleveland Foundation Centennial Lake Link Trail to two RTA Red Line Rapid Transit stations") is one of the Trust for Public Land projects. He told the attendees how the Trust for Public Land is focused on communities of need, and then he went on to show us the Trust for Public Land Climate-Smart Cities – Project Gallery website at: https://web.tplgis.org/csc-project-gallery/

Sean Terry also shared the Trust for Public Land's vision as presented in their 10-Minute Walk Program:

Our [10-Minute Walk] mission
Everyone in U.S. cities should have access to a quality park within a 10-minute walk of their home. We call on mayors to accelerate the creation of parks that drive equitable, healthy and thriving communities.

I first learned about the 10-Minute Walk Program in 2018, when I attended the Cleveland Foundation's Common Ground program at the Trust for Public Land's Cleveland office. It was also mentioned when I attended the Sustainable Cleveland 2019 Summit. Learn about my experiences at these two events in my blog posts:

• Blog Date: July 10, 2018 - Cleveland Foundation's Common Ground 2018 - “Why Does Place Matter?”
  See the section: "1:00 PM - Why Do Parks Matter? - The Trust for Public Land"

• Blog Date: November 19, 2019 - Celebrating 10 Years of Cleveland Growing Toward Becoming a Sustainable City!

The main part of the session included some excellent information given by Slavic Village Development Director of Neighborhood Sustainability Krystal Sierra, and another staff person named Kate, who talked about the first year of the Slavic Village Development Green Team's work to beautify properties by adding trees. Krystal Sierra reported that 77 trees have been planted since March 2024. (Look at my photos from the day to see that future annual goals include planting 250 trees a year!!) Sean Terry talked about phytoremediation -- soil is cleaned if trees are in place for ten years. This process addresses the issue of lead in ground where houses were torn down in the 2000s in Cleveland. 

Phytoremediation technologies use living plants to clean up soil, air and water contaminated with hazardous contaminants.[1] It is defined as "the use of green plants and the associated microorganisms, along with proper soil amendments and agronomic techniques to either contain, remove or render toxic environmental contaminants harmless". . . . Although attractive for its cost, phytoremediation has not been demonstrated to redress any significant environmental challenge to the extent that contaminated space has been reclaimed.

Phytoremediation is proposed as a cost-effective plant-based approach of environmental remediation that takes advantage of the ability of plants to concentrate elements and compounds from the environment and to detoxify various compounds without causing additional pollution . . . Toxic heavy metals cannot be degraded, but organic pollutants can be, and are generally the major targets for phytoremediation. Several field trials confirmed the feasibility of using plants for environmental cleanup.

Poplar trees are good for Cleveland, since they are good for removing lead from the ground. In the future, tests will be performed to see if the properties with poplar trees have cleaner soil than areas with no poplar trees.

Kate talked about the i-Tree Tools. These tools look at tree equity scores for an area like Cleveland.

Krystal Sierra said that they have contracted with lawn-care companies through 2025 to maintain the new tree areas. There is a 10-year scope for the project. Kate said will have training for residents on how to prune trees.

Here are some of the online resources you should check out to learn more:

• https://www.itreetools.org/ - i-Tree delivers current, peer-reviewed tree benefits estimation science from the USDA Forest Service to all types of users with free tools and support.

• http://www.clevelandtrees.org/ - The Cleveland Tree Coalition is a collaborative group of public, private, and community stakeholders that have partnered with the City of Cleveland to rebuild our urban forest. The coalition is striving to create a healthy, vibrant, sustainable, and equitable urban forest by working collaboratively to implement the Cleveland Tree Plan. Together, we’re making Cleveland the Forest City once again.

• https://web.tplgis.org/cleveland_csc/ - Trust for Public Land Planning and GIS - Climate Smart Cities Cleveland

I recommend viewing videos in full screen mode.
Please feel free to pause the video to read the interesting facts that are in the slides!!

 

Application: Cleveland's 15-Minute City Planning Introduction

Of note, similar to Trust for Public Land's idea of a park always being within a 10-minute walk, I found while writing this blog post the following 15-minute walk plan on the City of Cleveland Open Data Portal:

Application: Cleveland's 15-Minute City Planning Introduction
Walkable neighborhoods and development in Cleveland
By Cleveland City Planning
April 20, 2022

A planning framework and model based on an ideal geography where "human needs and desires" are accessible in a 15 minute walk, bike ride, or transit trip.

Here is an article and video about the "15-minute city" plan:

• Can Cleveland become a '15-minute city'? Experts say it's a real possibility
  Instead of a concrete jungle where people work and separate places where people live, in a so-called 15-minute city, everything is closer.
  Author: Sara Shookman
  Published: 9:48 PM EDT April 14, 2022
  Updated: 9:48 PM EDT April 14, 2022

  Making Cleveland a 15-minute city: Experts say it's a real possibility WKYC Channel 3
  . . . Apr 14, 2022
  Imagine a Cleveland where everything you need is less than 15 minutes away.
  
  Mayor Justin Bibb says Cleveland wants to be the first 15-minute city in North America, introducing the concept during his State of the City speech Wednesday. The urban planning model is not brand new; it first took off in Paris, but has gained in popularity during the pandemic.
  
  "The basic concept of a 15-minute city is this ideal planning framework where human needs and desires are accessible within a 15-minute walk, bicycle ride, or transit trip," Matt Moss, a planner with Cleveland City Planning Commission, explained. "That's really what we're striving for in this new planning model."
  
  Instead of a concrete jungle where people work and separate places where people live, in a so-called 15-minute city, everything is closer. Moss says it doesn't have to be a dream.
  
  "It's starting out with the city we have now," he said, "and then asking residents how they might want their community to grow or change in ways that, again, make things accessible or provide them with more opportunities to access the things they want to get to in their day to day lives."
  
  Sara Shookman reports: https://www.wkyc.com/article/news/local/cleveland/cleveland-15-minute-c…

 

 

Lightning Round 1

The Lighting Rounds took place in the Indoor reading garden of the Cleveland Public Library - Louis Stokes Wing. The order of the four presentations was changed from what was listed on the Data Days CLE 2024 Schedule website (https://datadayscle2024.sched.com/grid/#2024-10-22), so I will show them here in the actual order of the presentations.

 

1 of 4

Lightning Round 1: Accessing Great Lakes Data – Should I Drink the Water or Go Boating?
Public data regarding the Great Lakes and its watersheds is available from a number of websites that can inform us about the quality of our water as well as the weather and boating conditions on the lake. This presentation will demonstrate how citizens can access data from the Great Lakes Observing System, National Data Buoy Center, U.S. Geologic Survey and Great Lakes Data Watershed. Participants are encouraged to bring a computer and follow this data journey.

Speakers
Mark App
Founder, Great Lakes Data Watershed
I started my career as a high school chemistry teacher at Bay High School on Cleveland’s west side.After earning a master's degree in analytical chemistry, I managed a water quality lab and became a specialist in laboratory automation. Following this interest, I developed automation. ...

Mark App shared many resources during his lighting talk (QR codes are available in my photos) that provided answers to where to find data regarding waterways and weather:

• Great Lakes Data Watershed - https://gldw.org

• Great Lakes Observing System - https://seagull.glos.org

• National Data Buoy Center - https://ndbc.noaa.gov

• National Weather Service - https://weather.gov

• United States Geologic Survey Water Watch - https://waterwatch.usgs.gov

 

 

2 of 4

Lightning Round 1: Using FCC Tools to Target Digital Redlining by Broadband Providers
A presentation followed by discussion covering: 1) the detailed broadband service datasets associated with the Federal Communications Commission's new broadband map; 2) the FCC's newly adopted Digital Discrimination process; and 3) how these new tools, in combination, can be used by communities to push back effectively against "digital redlining" by internet service providers. The presentation will use December 2023 Cleveland neighborhood data.

Speakers
Bill Callahan
Director, Connect Your Community Institute
He/him. Director of Connect Your Community Institute (CYC) in Cleveland and Ashtabula, Ohio. Started working on neighborhood initiatives for digital inclusion in Cleveland in 1996. Former Research and Policy Director (2016-2020) and now Senior Policy Advisor for NDIA. Talk to me...

The subject of Bill Callahan's talk greatly interests me: digital redlining. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requires that the rollout of Internet access in a a community not discriminate based on race or income. He reported that most people have access to fiber-optic connection in Cuyahoga County if they have AT&T. He showed on a map that the east side of Cuyahoga County has slower Internet access speeds. 

• See the FCC National Broadband Map at https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov/home from which you can download a zip file with data.

• https://connectyourcommunity.org/ - Connect Your Community - "Digital literacy and access for all our neighbors and neighborhoods"

 

Bill Callahan mentioned in his presentaion the good work of DigitalC and the Cleveland Public Library (The People's University) regarding the issue of the digital divide. I agree! I have written many blog posts about the work of our northeast Ohio libraries (Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, Akron), and most of my library blog posts are focused on providing access to learning about technology. I was fortunate to be invited to attend the Friday, January 26, 2024, SOLD OUT DigitalC Citywide Network Launch Party.

I want to invite you to learn more about DigitalC in my blog post about the launch party. I also included here my video of DigitalC MidTown Tech Hive Assistant Director Jonathan Stone announcing the goal to connect the whole City of Cleveland. This is the beginning of an exciting future for the city's residents:

• Blog Date: February 1, 2024 - DigitalC's Launch Party: Committing to Cleveland's Digitally Equitable Future

  I recommend viewing videos in full screen mode!

 

 

3 of 4

Lightning Round 1: Cuyahoga County Greenprint Explorer
The Cuyahoga County Greenprint is a collection of web-based tools intended to help planners, environmentalists and community leaders make good nature- and land-use decisions by visualizing information about their natural and community assets in a map format. The interactive platform allows users to customize their views and extract data they need for grant applications, reports and community engagement events. We hope these Greenprint tools help you do your job and feed your passions for making Cuyahoga County a more sustainable and natural place.

Speakers
Liam Leveto
GIS Technician, Cuyahoga County Planning Commission

The term "GIS" has already appeared at least twice in this blog, so as I write about Cuyahoga County Planning Commission GIS Technician Liam Leveto, I want to include the following definition and description from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) website:

A Geographic Information System (GIS) is a computer system that analyzes and displays geographically referenced information. It uses data that is attached to a unique location.

Most of the information we have about our world contains a location reference: Where are USGS streamgages located? Where was a rock sample collected? Exactly where are all of a city's fire hydrants?

If, for example, a rare plant is observed in three different places, GIS analysis might show that the plants are all on north-facing slopes that are above an elevation of 1,000 feet and that get more than ten inches of rain per year. GIS maps can then display all locations in the area that have similar conditions, so researchers know where to look for more of the rare plants.

By knowing the geographic location of farms using a specific fertilizer, GIS analysis of farm locations, stream locations, elevations, and rainfall will show which streams are likely to carry that fertilizer downstream.

These are just a few examples of the many uses of GIS in earth sciences, biology, resource management, and many other fields.

Liam Leveto, recommended exploring the Cuyahoga County website for Greenprint Explorer. He said that it is a great tool for educators and students to make maps, but of course can also be used by other community leaders.

Greenprint Explorer
The Cuyahoga County Greenprint is a collection of web-based tools intended to help planners, environmentalists, and community leaders make good nature- and land-use decisions by visualizing information about their natural and community assets in a map format.

The Data Day CLE "Introduction to the Cuyahoga County Greenprint Explorer" presentation slides are available in the "Activity" section of Liam Leveto's LinkedIn profile. There you will also see that he has a Master of Geographic Information Science degree.

Here are some Cuyahoga County Greenprint Explorer website resources I found:

• The Greenprint Explorer web map application is accessed at: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/70b82141d3fb4b9e84057a482362fe7b

• Cuyahoga County Greenprint Explorer
  A how-to manual for the Greenprint Explorer application
  June 28, 2024

• Cuyahoga County Greenprint Training YouTube Playlist (9 videos)

• Cuyahoga County Greenprint Technical Guide

• Cuyahoga County Greenprint Project

• Cuyahoga County Planning Commission - County Planning Data Catalog & Basemap Gallery

• While writing this blog post, I also found the CuyahogaGIS Hub
  The Cuyahoga County Enterprise Geographic Information Systems Department (CuyahogaGIS) provides world-class mapping expertise, data, and applications for those who live and work in Cuyahoga County.

From my notes about the Cuyahoga County Planning Commission's history, I wrote that starting in 2004, Cuyahoga County was only able to provide environmental PDF maps. The county had to use third-party access to provide their data, but now the county has direct access. You can either pull data into your computer's spreadsheet program, or work directly with the data online. It is so great to learn about the progress made by the county to provide access to this information.

Since I do a lot of hiking (28 "hike" blog posts) and some bike riding (25 "bike" blog posts), I liked the example that Liam Leveto gave of using the data to create an elevation plan before going out to bike or hike.

 

 

4 of 4

Lightning Round 1: Lightning Intro to Congressional Data Sources
Local government gets most of the love in civic tech and data — but what about the First Branch? This session aims to inspire civic data enthusiasts to explore Congressional data, including:


- "Earmarks" data on local federal spending
- Statement of Disbursement data on member office budgets
- The Congress.gov API on legislative data
- Questions to ask yourself when reading member year-end data reports

Speakers
Anne Meeker
Deputy Director, POPVOX Foundation
Let's talk about Congress, constituent services, constituent engagement, and the heartbreak of the Guardians' postseason.

The morning Lightning Round 1 talks ended with Anne Meeker from the POPVOX Foundation. I was fortunate to not only see her presentation, but also talk briefly to her at the end of the day. We discussed her idea of going beyond talking to city and county government, to also look to how your Congressional representatives' decisions have a local impact.

Anne [Meeker] is Deputy Director of POPVOX Foundation, and a former House caseworker. She was a founding member of the POPVOX Foundation team as Director of Special Initiatives. She previously served as Director of Constituent Services for Congressman Seth Moulton, where she worked to use data and technology to deliver smarter casework services to residents of the MA06. Anne holds a bachelor's degree in Anthropology from the University of Oxford (St. Hugh's College), and an MSc in History from the London School of Economics. She is also a proud Clevelander, and will take any opportunity to talk up the Rust Belt.

Not only had I not heard of the POPVOX Foundation, but I also had never thought about a nonprofit taking on the role outlined in the following parts of their mission:

With a mission to inform and empower people and make government work better for everyone, POPVOX Foundation is focused on ensuring that democratic institutions are equipped to address the “pacing problem” — the gap between emerging technologies and governance.
. . .
Efforts include developing technology, tools, and resources and supporting the public sector in recruiting, training, and retaining a modern, diverse workforce.
. . .
POPVOX Foundation works to help governing institutions update their processes and leverage emerging technology.
. . .
The Foundation supports research and the development of new methods and tools for more effective public engagement that is legitimately connected to governing processes and decision-making.

In her presentation, Anne Meeker stated that Congress is not required to provide data to the public about their inner workings, but she did not acknowledge that the House of Representatives does better than the Senate in providing data. She says that people need to ask for Congress to provide data. For example, it would be useful to see data that shows what purchases are being made by representatives with their discretionary funds for community projects. What are they buying? While earmarks within bills had been banned for ten years, but they have been brought back in a different form (community project funding) that limits support only to nonprofits and government agencies. We must demand more transparency in how these public project funds are distributed . 

If you look at the POPVOX Foundation website (popvox.org), they list the following 12 project areas:

1. Artificial Intelligence
2. Casework Resources
3. Congressionally-Directed Spending (Earmarks)
4. Cyber Policy Leadership Institute
5. Effective Government Fellowship
6. Future of Constituent Engagement
7. Future-Proofing Congress
8. Legislative Technology
9. Modern Parliament
10. Post-Chevron Resources
11. Supporting Congressional Internships
12. Tech, Science, and Data

The POPVOX Foundation YouTube Channel has 97 videos with information to help "inform and empower people and make government work better for everyone" - https://www.youtube.com/@popvoxfoundation/videos

 

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Here are my photos from the four Lightning Round 1 talks:

I recommend viewing videos in full screen mode.
Please feel free to pause the video to read the interesting facts and scan the QR codes that are in the slides!!

 

 

Keynote: Yeshimabeit Milner, Founder & CEO of Data for Black Lives

Keynote address by Yeshimabeit Milner, Founder & CEO of Data for Black Lives.

Yeshimabeit “Yeshi” Milner has worked since she was 17 as a movement builder, technologist and data scientist. She started Data for Black Lives because for too long she straddled the worlds of data and organizing and was determined to break down the silos to harness the power of data to make change in the lives of Black people. In five years, Data for Black Lives has changed the conversation around big data and technology across the United States and globally.

Milner has received much recognition for her work. She is an Echoing Green Fellow, an Ashoka Fellow and, in 2019, became a Forbes Under 30 social entrepreneur. In 2020 she received a New York Times Good Tech Award for Data for Black Lives’ COVID-19 database, and in 2021 was awarded the John F. Kennedy New Frontier Award, which recognizes leaders under 40 who have made significant contributions to politics and public service.

Signal Cleveland Director of Research + Impact April Urban introduced Yeshimabeit “Yeshi” Milner, who is the Founder amd CEO of Data for Black Lives. This was Yeshimabeit Milner's first visit to Cleveland, and she was glad to see the leaders and attendees of Data Days Cleveland 2024 working to here to fix inequities in our community. Find tools and ideas on the Data for Black Lives website at: d4bl.org

Data for Black Lives is a movement of activists, organizers, and scientists committed to the mission of using data to create concrete and measurable change in the lives of Black people.

Since the advent of computing, big data and algorithms have penetrated virtually every aspect of our social and economic lives. These new data systems have tremendous potential to empower communities of color. Tools like statistical modeling, data visualization, and crowd-sourcing, in the right hands, are powerful instruments for fighting bias, building progressive movements, and promoting civic engagement.

But history tells a different story, one in which data is too often wielded as an instrument of oppression, reinforcing inequality and perpetuating injustice. Redlining was a data-driven enterprise that resulted in the systematic exclusion of Black communities from key financial services. More recent trends like predictive policing, risk-based sentencing, and predatory lending are troubling variations on the same theme. Today, discrimination is a high-tech enterprise.

Through research, advocacy, and movement-building, we are working to support the vital work of grassroots racial justice organizations to challenge discriminatory uses of data and algorithms across systems. With our national network of over 20,000 scientists and activists, we are building a future in which data and technology are forces for good, rather than the instruments of oppression, in Black communities.

The presentation started with some historical examples of data showing discriminative practices. Yeshimabeit Milner showed a Cuyahoga County map that shows redlining where financial resources were withheld based on the race or ethnic makeup of the community. My notes say it was a 1930s map, but I know that historic redlining areas still today lack resources that are available in other communities in Cuyahoga County. See the photos I took during the morning Lightning Round 1 of Bill Callahan's talk about digital redlining. I keep seeing maps today showing the same areas lacking resources (tech access, food, healthcare) that mirror the older Cuyahoga County redlining map that Yeshimabeit Milner shared as part of her presentation. She went on to state and show a slide: “Apartheid is an algorithm - one that we can and must reverse engineer.” 

Redlining is a discriminatory practice in which financial services are withheld from neighborhoods that have significant numbers of racial and ethnic minorities.[2] Redlining has been most prominent in the United States, and has mostly been directed against African-Americans. The most common examples involve denial of credit and insurance, denial of healthcare, and the development of food deserts in minority neighborhoods.[3][4]
. . .
In the 1960s, sociologist John McKnight originally coined the term to describe the discriminatory practice in the United States, Chicago, of banks classifying certain neighborhoods as "hazardous," or not worthy of investment due to the racial makeup of their residents.[8] In the 1980s, a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of articles[9] by investigative reporter Bill Dedman demonstrated how Atlanta banks would often lend in lower-income white neighborhoods but not in middle-income or even upper-income Black neighborhoods. . . .
. . .
In 1935, the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB) asked the Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) to look at 239 cities and create "residential security maps" to indicate the level of security for real-estate investments in each surveyed city. On the maps, the newest areas—those considered desirable for lending purposes—were outlined in green and known as "Type A". These were typically affluent suburbs on the outskirts of cities. "Type B" neighborhoods, outlined in blue, were considered "Still Desirable", whereas older "Type C" were labeled "Declining" and outlined in yellow. "Type D" neighborhoods were outlined in red and were considered the most risky for mortgage support. . . . Urban planning historians theorize that the maps were used by private and public entities for years afterward to deny loans to people in black communities, . . .

As part of Yeshimabeit Milner's presentation, she talked about the work of Power U Center for Social Change and Advancement Project regarding the dismantling of the School-to-Prison pipeline. Please see and share the Telling It Like It Is report and Florida Students Caught in School-to-Prison Pipeline video that I have embedded here:

Open Telling It Like It Is report PDF file (2.2MB) in new browser window.

Telling It Like It Is
This report, presented in comic book format, was developed by Power U with the help of Advancement Project. It breaks down the Miami School-to-Prison Pipeline using national statistics and student survey data collected by Power U Youth.

Florida Students Caught in the School-to-Prison Pipeline
This video on School-to-Prison Pipeline features Power U Youth and was produced by Advancement Project.

Florida Students Caught in School-to-Prison Pipeline
Advancement Project
. . . Mar 21, 2012
Advancement Project and Power U Center for Social Change are proud to announce the release of this video documenting the school discipline crisis in the State of Florida. We hope this video serves as a conversation starter in the efforts to dismantle the School-to-Prison Pipeline, push for common sense discipline and ensure that every student receives a high quality education

During the presentation, examples were shown of ideas that were reported as facts, but were not true (Examples: super predators myth, crack babies epidemic myth). Yeshimabeit Milner says that these myths will continue unless we have data to disprove them. This part of her talk reminded me of a presentation I attended on October 2, 2024, with a panel of University of Akron professors discussing misinformation/disinformation. Powerful misinformation is changing people's views of what is real. We need data that is based on truth. I included a video of the full panel discussion in my blog post:

• Blog Date: October 7, 2024 - Disinformation Panel Discussion - Human Science Institute - Psychology Museum

I like how, as I put in my notes from the day, "she ends her keynote asking: 'WHAT ARE WE OPTIMIZING?'" We need to use data to better the world, and not let misinformation be used to destroy people.

I recommend viewing videos in full screen mode.
Please feel free to pause the video to read the interesting facts that are in the slides!!

 

 

Lunch & Unconference

We devote an hour of our day to the "unconference." The unconference is a way to let conference attendees set the agenda and have discussions that are current and relevant to those here in the room. Anyone can host a conversation to tap different experiences, views, resources and connections on an issue or opportunity they are facing.

If you ask a question, you’ll be the host for that unconference session. That doesn’t mean you do most of the talking. “The question you bring is in charge!” And you’re the chief listener for what to glean from it.

Throughout the morning, add questions to the unconference “wall.” Vote for the questions you’re most interested in. Unconference questions and discussion locations will be announced at 1pm.

I recommend viewing videos in full screen mode.
Please feel free to pause the video to read the interesting facts that are in the slides!!

 

I was so pleased that, while I was eating lunch, Steven Litt joined me. On August 16, 2024, I happened to see his social media post that after 44 years he had retired from Cleveland.com/The Plain Dealer newspaper, and I sent him the following private message:

. . . I did see your post. I just want to say how much I enjoyed your articles over the years— you develop stories that are of interest to me. I am wishing you all the best in your future endeavors. Take care.

I would often see Steven Litt at art and environmental events that we both were attending. FYI, if you search my sosAssociates.com website for "Steven Litt," you will find 43 past blog posts. Normally, when we see each other, we are both focused on what is happening at the events we are attending. It was great to take time at Data Days CLE 2024 for the two of us to talk about his future plans as an "Independent writer specializing in art, architecture, city planning" and for him to learn about how I enjoy writing my sosAssociates.com blog posts.

After Steven Litt left, I was joined by Sue Marrone, who I have known for years from her attendance at my Web Development SIG (Special Interest Group), WebSIGCleveland.org, that I ran for 10 years, and from her volunteer work as a project manager at Cleveland GiveCamp. She updated me on her current endeavors with developing distressed houses, and her volunteer work at SCORE.org (SCORE provides free business mentorship for entrepreneurs).

I am so glad that I attended Data Day CLE. In addition to the great presentations, it was an opportunity to catch up both during the morning break and at lunch (and later at the evening Happy Hour) with people I have known for years. It was like a reunion where I was able to catch up with talented people who make a difference in Greater Cleveland.

 

 

Survey We Go! Understanding the Community Survey Process

This session will provide an overview of survey methodology at the community level. We will discuss two recent examples of community-wide online surveys, as well as, outline public outreach, marketing tools, and analyses that helped make them successful. Then, let's chat about your community surveys: what has worked well for you when conducting surveys? Where have you seen common issues arise? Please bring any survey questions you are currently working on or ideas for community surveys and let’s work through them together!

Speakers
Paul Triolo
Planner, Cuyahoga County Planning Commission

Rachel Novak
[Senior Planner, Cuyahoga County Planning Commission]

In the afternoon, I first attended an excellent presentation by Rachel Novak and Paul Triolo, who are planners at the Cuyahoga County Planning Commission, about how to implement a community survey.

It was funny to hear that one of the case studies they would present was about the community of Pepper Pike and its work to open a community bike path. I happened to be familiar with work done in 1998 on this subject, since I know someone who was directly involved. At that time, 26 years ago, people working to develop a community recreational bike path were verbally attacked by the people who stated that they did not want the path. The people that did not want the proposed path feared that users of the path would be urinating in their yards and make noise with loud boom boxes. The Pepper Pike bike path was not developed in 1998, which made it even more interesting to learn how community involvement surveys, and a vote on election day, made the creation of a bike path in 2024 possible. In addition to presenting a case study about Pepper Pike, they also talked about their work with Orange Village.

I enjoyed learning from Rachel Novak how they used SurveyMonkey tools to get feedback from the communities. I had used SurveyMonkey many, many years ago when I was chair of my alumni association strategic planning committee, as we were surveying graduates on what programs the newly formed CWRU alumni association would provide. It was great to learn how this tool was used to serve local communities. I learned that SurveyMonkey offers multiple language options. Note that SurveyMonkey offers a free level of service if you or your organization just needs a very basic survey. See the SurveyMonkey Academy videos on the YouTube channel: YouTube.com/@SurveyMonkey

Paul Triolo talked about how to use filtering to clean data. It is interesting how they use Word Clouds (visual representation of text data . . .the importance of each tag is shown with font size or color) to show the words people used the most in the surveys. They also check the IP address (Internet Protocol address assigned to a device connected to a computer network) of the people who fill out the survey to confirm that no more than four surveys have been filled out by the same person.

Here are the links to redirect to the survey results that were talked about during the presentation:

• 2024 Orange Village Community-Wide Survey: www.CountyPlanning.us/OrangeSurvey

• County Planning presented the results of the Pepper Pike Community Survey to Pepper Pike City Council in April 2023: www.CountyPlanning.us/PepperPikeSurvey

I recommend viewing videos in full screen mode.
Please feel free to pause the video to read the interesting facts that are in the slides!!

As I was writing this blog post, and sharing some of what I learned on social media, I received the following on November 2, 2024, from the Cuyahoga County Planning Commission as a reply to my post with information on where to get the slide deck for this presentation:

Cuyahoga County Planning Commission
Thanks for attending the session and sharing the surveys! We also posted the slide deck on LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/company/countyplanning

 

 

Documenters Have Questions; Let's Look at Them Together

Each time a Documenter covers a government meeting in Cleveland or Cuyahoga County, they write down up to three questions they have about what happened at the meeting or the broader issues discussed. We collect these questions, aiming to provide answers. In this session, participants will navigate the questions in small groups and discuss whether/how the questions can be useful to their work, what information can come from them, and how to interpret them. We'll listen.

Speakers
Lawrence Caswell
Managing Editor, Documenters, Signal Cleveland


April Urban
Director of Research + Impact, Signal Cleveland April has a passion for weaving together data and community voices. Talk to me about what civic data you'd like to see.


Danny McLaughlin
Signal Cleveland

In my last session of the day, I heard from Signal Cleveland Managing Editor Lawrence Caswell about how people are being paid to attend political meetings as Documenters.  I used to actively read and share Documenters' tweets before the the owner of Twitter killed its social media service. (See my blog post: RIP Twitter Bird 2010 - 2023.) Today, briefs of the Documenters' reports are also published in the Signal Cleveland online newspaper.

[Signal Cleveland] Your Cleveland government meetings, documented

Each week we create short and easy-to-read briefs on local government meetings based on Documenters’ coverage so you can stay informed. For residents. By residents.

The session consisted of reviewing and rating some of the many questions generated in the following process: "Documenters record follow-up questions they have about the meeting. They've written over 2,000 questions to-date."

I recommend viewing videos in full screen mode.
Please feel free to pause the video to read the interesting facts that are in the slides!!

 

 

Happy Hour Reception at Butcher & the Brewer

I met interesting new people at the Happy Hour. I also took the opportunity to thank Will Skora and April Urban for the day's program. I also asked them to express my appreciation to the other Data Days CLE 2024 organizers.

Will Tarter, Jr., who I have not talked to in person for years, joined me near the end of the Happy Hour. It was so good to see him again. He is currently Director of Advocacy for Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry, and I let him know that I had heard of their services. When he gave me his business card, I said to him that I recognized the Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry logo. During the time I was writing this blog post, I also noticed that I had the Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry logo on the shirt I was wearing from the Cleveland Foundation's Common Ground 2018 - “Why Does Place Matter?” event I attended. Will Tarter, Jr., is also the 1st Vice President of the NAACP, Cleveland Branch. I remembered that I had met him over ten years ago, when I wrote about him opening a Tech Town Hall in 2014.

I recommend viewing videos in full screen mode.

 

 

Related Blog Posts

I always like to include a list of related blog posts that may be of interest to the readers of this blog post:

• Blog Date: October 24, 2024 - Eighth Annual Better World Day - Cultivating Gamification for a Better World 2024

• Blog Date: October 19, 2024 - NASA International Space Apps Challenge Cleveland 2024

• Blog Date: October 7, 2024 - Disinformation Panel Discussion - Human Science Institute - Psychology Museum

• Blog Date: October 31, 2023, with updated comment, October 1, 2024- 2023 [2024] Twitterversary Canceled - Twitter Bird Killed by Its Owner

• Here are two blog posts about "Digital Equity:"

   

  ● Blog Date: February 1, 2024 - DigitalC's Launch Party: Committing to Cleveland's Digitally Equitable Future

  ● Blog Date: November 11, 2018 - Cleveland Foundation #CtrlAltCLE Convenes: Tech & Digital Equity/Blockchain for Social Good

   

• Blog Date: November 19, 2019 - Celebrating 10 Years of Cleveland Growing Toward Becoming a Sustainable City!

• Blog Date: July 10, 2018 - Cleveland Foundation's Common Ground 2018 - “Why Does Place Matter?”

• Blog Date: October 27, 2014 -Cleveland Amplify Panel & Tech Town Hall

 

You can also find blog posts that may interest you using the following topic areas:

• I have a total of 36 blog posts about the "Cleveland Foundation" or programs they support.

• I have 23 blog posts about our local "Library" systems (Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, Akron)

• I have 18 blog posts that have information for and about nonprofits: "Nonprofit"

• See my 14 "Cleveland GiveCamp" blog posts to learn about how nonprofits can receive FREE tech solutions.

• I have 199 blog posts about "Technology."

 

I want to end this blog post with a thank-you to all who made this Data Days CLE 2024 possible, and to encourage everyone to attend their future events if you are interested in data being used for social good.