16. âHow Open Data even
makes Garbage
collection sexier, easier
and cheaperâ
17.
18. A side-note:
⢠Vancouver has confusing garbage schedules
⢠Everyoneâs day moves forward every holiday
⢠Canada has lots of holidays
⢠Every other week is green bins
31. Fast forward a few months
Make it work in Internet Explorer (ugh)
...
Add logging, backups, metrics, feedback, error reporting, email system,
administration features
...
347 commits later
142 ďŹles changed, 19624 insertions(+), 644 deletions(-)
32.
33.
34. VanTrash API
⢠Leave the data better than you found it
⢠HTTP (REST) interface
⢠Provide garbage API for other projects
35. VanTrash SMS
(Text Messages)
⢠Wanted to add SMS notiďŹcations
⢠BUT
⢠We do not wish to support incumbent mobility
companies in any way.
⢠Decision: Focus on Twitter instead
36. Technologies
⢠Perl - all server-side development is in Perl
⢠CPAN++ (Geo, ICal, Polygons, Scraping)
⢠Javascript - frontend is all in the browser
⢠Uses REST/HTTP to talk to the server
⢠Android - mobile platform of choice
37. Licensing
⢠Server-side code is completely open
⢠Perl Artistic License or GPLv2
⢠Javascript and Images are Copyright
⢠We could prevent garbageday.ca from taking our work
w/o permission
⢠OK initial balance, would change long term
38. Motivations
⢠Be a good citizen, leadership by example
⢠Show Govât, Business what nice, simple APIs look like
⢠Help our neighbors
⢠Learn, take a project start-to-ďŹnish
⢠Have fun
39. Epilogue
⢠Vantrash ran for ~20 months with no problems.
Ideal!
⢠Thousands of users, word of mouth marketing
only.
⢠Receive LOTS of praise from friends, family &
strangers
⢠Itâs genuinely useful!
63. The Book
⢠Business Model Generation
⢠(Itâs visually beautiful)
⢠Techniques for brainstorming, analyzing, testing
business models.
⢠Buy it!
⢠businessmodelgeneration.com
65. My BM Gen Process
⢠Brainstorm every possible detail/idea
⢠Stare at it
⢠Split into distinct business models
⢠Compare / Contrast
⢠Try, blend, iterate!
66. VanTrash Models
⢠We came up with these options:
⢠Sustained by citizens
⢠Sustained by municipalities
⢠Infrastructure as a Service
⢠Public Open Source Service
67. Sustained by Citizens
⢠Provide basic service for free, charge for
enhanced services (SMS / Voice)
⢠Citizen not willing to pay too much
⢠âFreemiumâ
68. Characteristics
⢠Requires marketing, but no sales team
⢠Requires many paying citizens
⢠Hard to market to target customers
⢠Non-techie citizens
⢠Easy to execute, few barriers
69. Sustained by Municipalities
⢠Provide services to citizens for free, city pays for
infrastructure costs
⢠Not incompatible with âFreemiumâ
⢠Value is more towards reducing costs
⢠Municipal ads & admin features
70. Characteristics
⢠Sell to Municipal decision makers
⢠Looong (long) sales process
⢠Administration features needed
⢠City handles marketing to citizens
⢠Too cheap for cities to buy
71. Infrastructure as a Service
(IaaS)
⢠Offer tools to run VanTrash as a service to
others
⢠Let hackers in other cities easily create their
own
⢠Common infrastructure saves time
72. Characteristics
⢠Very little marketing / sales needed
⢠Hackers localize the service for their area,
market it to their citizens
⢠Money from any party that wants to set it up
⢠Too niche?
73. Public Open Source Service
(POSS)
⢠Idea: poss.gliderlab.com @progrium
⢠No proďŹt incentive
⢠Citizens collectively pitch in to cover costs as
needed
⢠Donations => Account => Hosting fees
⢠$$ / run rate = months of service
74. Characteristics
⢠Content to be small
⢠No $$ motive to expand, enhance
⢠Good model for established infrastructure that
can be run cheaply & is hard to accept money
for
79. Recollectâs B-Model
⢠Free for web/email/twitter/ical
⢠Citizens pay for SMS & Voice reminders
⢠Municipalities pay for ad space, administration,
extra features
⢠Custom features for $$$
82. Later âŚ
⢠We gotta get municipalities onside
⢠Make it âno-brainer cheapâ
⢠They advertise it to their citizens
⢠Some citizens pay for extra services
83. Finding Balance
⢠Knowing the models we can evaluate the
tradeoffs
⢠Listen to your customers
⢠Try things, donât be in a rush
⢠Need to be lean to not be rushed
85. SeeClickFix
⢠Bugzilla for Cities
⢠âSustained by Municipalitiesâ
⢠Charge cities for admin features, branding,
customization
⢠Around $100 / 100K citizens / month
86. Morningstar
⢠Started out scraping printed SEC reports
⢠Figured out how to use that public resource
better than anyone else
⢠Started rating Mutual funds for 401ks
⢠Now they are a huge company
88. How to do it.
⢠Hack cool things with open data
89. How to do it.
⢠Hack cool things with open data
⢠Let people use them, be patient
90. How to do it.
⢠Hack cool things with open data
⢠Let people use them, be patient
⢠See what has value
91. How to do it.
⢠Hack cool things with open data
⢠Let people use them, be patient
⢠See what has value
⢠⌠Value to citizens
92. How to do it.
⢠Hack cool things with open data
⢠Let people use them, be patient
⢠See what has value
⢠⌠Value to citizens
⢠⌠Value to governments
93. How to do it.
⢠Hack cool things with open data
⢠Let people use them, be patient
⢠See what has value
⢠⌠Value to citizens
⢠⌠Value to governments
⢠âŚÂ Value to organizations
98. Lessons Learned
⢠Municipalities are slow
⢠Municipalities donât want to be ďŹrst
⢠Itâs not cheap to accept money on the internets.
99. Lessons Learned
⢠Municipalities are slow
⢠Municipalities donât want to be ďŹrst
⢠Itâs not cheap to accept money on the internets.
⢠When you donât have VC, you can run on your
own (slow) schedule.
100. Breaking Dependencies
⢠Turned off vantrash.ca, redirects to Recollect
⢠Got email yesterday from City 311 staff! ZOMG!
⢠But we use your site!
⢠OK, we can help you! ($$)
⢠Unintentional catalyst!
103. ⌠In Conclusion
⢠Brainstorm about how to charge for that value
⢠Given your skills, time, capabilities
104. ⌠In Conclusion
⢠Brainstorm about how to charge for that value
⢠Given your skills, time, capabilities
⢠Narrow down to speciďŹc experiments
105. ⌠In Conclusion
⢠Brainstorm about how to charge for that value
⢠Given your skills, time, capabilities
⢠Narrow down to speciďŹc experiments
⢠Try them out.
106. Thank You!
⢠Contact me - lets talk about open data ideas!
⢠Twitter - @lukec
⢠luke@recollect.net
⢠http://www.BusinessModelGeneration.com/