16. “How Open Data even
makes Garbage
collection sexier, easier
and cheaper”
17.
18. A side-note:
• Vancouver has confusing garbage schedules
• Everyone’s 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 files 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 notifications
• 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 Gov’t, Business what nice, simple APIs look like
• Help our neighbors
• Learn, take a project start-to-finish
• 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
• It’s genuinely useful!
63. The Book
• Business Model Generation
• (It’s 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
• “Freemium”
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 “Freemium”
• 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 profit 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. Recollect’s 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 $$$
80. Initially …
• Fuck the gov’t, they’re too slow!
• Citizens can sustain us!
82. Later …
• We gotta get municipalities onside
• Make it “no-brainer cheap”
• They advertise it to their citizens
• Some citizens pay for extra services
83. Finding Balance
• Knowing the models we can evaluate the
tradeoffs
• Listen to your customers
• Try things, don’t be in a rush
• Need to be lean to not be rushed
85. SeeClickFix
• Bugzilla for Cities
• “Sustained by Municipalities”
• Charge cities for admin features, branding,
customization
• Around $100 / 100K citizens / month
86. Morningstar
• Started out scraping printed SEC reports
• Figured out how to use that public resource
better than anyone else
• Started rating Mutual funds for 401ks
• Now they are a huge company
88. How to do it.
• Hack cool things with open data
89. How to do it.
• Hack cool things with open data
• Let people use them, be patient
90. How to do it.
• Hack cool things with open data
• Let people use them, be patient
• See what has value
91. How to do it.
• Hack cool things with open data
• Let people use them, be patient
• See what has value
• … Value to citizens
92. How to do it.
• Hack cool things with open data
• Let people use them, be patient
• See what has value
• … Value to citizens
• … Value to governments
93. How to do it.
• Hack cool things with open data
• Let people use them, be patient
• See what has value
• … Value to citizens
• … Value to governments
• … Value to organizations
98. Lessons Learned
• Municipalities are slow
• Municipalities don’t want to be first
• It’s not cheap to accept money on the internets.
99. Lessons Learned
• Municipalities are slow
• Municipalities don’t want to be first
• It’s not cheap to accept money on the internets.
• When you don’t have VC, you can run on your
own (slow) schedule.
100. Breaking Dependencies
• Turned off vantrash.ca, redirects to Recollect
• Got email yesterday from City 311 staff! ZOMG!
• But we use your site!
• OK, we can help you! ($$)
• 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 specific experiments
105. … In Conclusion
• Brainstorm about how to charge for that value
• Given your skills, time, capabilities
• Narrow down to specific experiments
• Try them out.
106. Thank You!
• Contact me - lets talk about open data ideas!
• Twitter - @lukec
• luke@recollect.net
• http://www.BusinessModelGeneration.com/