Web Development And Frontend Practice: Mike Hall Interviews Daniel X. O'Neil
Web Development And Frontend Practice: Mike Hall Interviews Daniel X. O'Neil
🚀 Daniel X. O'Neil, a poet and tech expert, shares his journey from creative pursuits to a focus on technology and data front. 🌐 #WebDevelopment #TechInsights #DataFront #AccessibilityStandards #BootstrapAge
The Interviewer
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
The Guest
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
The Conversation
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Hi it's Mike again with Uptastic. Today I'm sitting down with Daniel X. O'Neill. Well you might know him as a poet and a playwright and a little bit of his work that he's done with the open governments and you know a few little things. He's right now he's the executive director of the Smart Chicago Collaborative and also has been to the White House as a champion of change for the work he's done with open government. Daniel, thanks for taking the time to sit down. Alright, good to see you Mike. So how does a poet and an artist go to become the man in the shirt, in the suit?
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
That's like that spring commercial. We're going to stick it to the man. Yeah, yeah. But you are the man. So I'm sticking it to myself. Right, so I've been sticking it to myself for a while.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
How did I go from being a poet and a playwright to where I am now?
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
I guess I don't see it as crazy and circuitous of a path as it seems. In the late 80's and early 90's I was a part of the spoken word poetry scene in Chicago and around the country. I did a lot of tours and I wrote books and you know my mission, my completely silly mission was to become the worldwide entertainment juggernaut of the 21st century. Hence Juggernaut Co. Hence Juggernaut Co. Hence Juggernaut Co is my handle in a lot of different places although it's too difficult to spell.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
So I moved to Arizona. I mean your degree was English and Anthropology.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
How do you go from being very much creative and expressive to what is now focused on technology?
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
Well, I think that you know I did get a degree in English and Anthropology from the University of Illinois in Chicago and again I don't see it as that wild of a path. Anthropology is, you know, focus on the study of man, the study of human beings and why they do things. And I'm, in English, you know, certainly helped me as a poet but it's just any time you have to communicate with people in any job you do.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
So I don't see it as that goofy. And then also I do continue it through in a number of ways. I'm really interested in the archaeology of technology and the recent history of technology. And even like the current, you know, sort of explication of why websites or technologies are the way they are. Often we'll see... Kind of how did we get here.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah. Why did we make it that way? Right.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
And there's always a reason. There's always a reason for every feature that's in every piece of software. And sometimes it can be a very idiosyncratic thing.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
And even if you look at just something as simple as the style of website design over the last ten years and how it's morphed and changed. And that's, I presume, a very cosmetic level. I think we're in the bootstrap age right now. That's the...
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Oh, for websites? Yeah.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
Oh, we're all bootstrapped.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah. Yeah.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
If you're not bootstrap, you're nowhere.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah. And again, why?
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
Because it has utility. And because, you know, there's so much focus on mobile design. And it's such a great way to do it.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
We used to be in the age of TypePad.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
That was, you know, in the early 2000s, the right-hand nav column was, you know... That was it. That was it. You had to have it. Just like had to have it. And when Blogger first came out, it was, you know, probably the first time that CSS really got a huge bump. And then everybody started using CSS and everything got better. And part of the archeology of that, I used to be a lurker on the W3C accessibility list in the late 90s and early 2000s. And it was all very radical accessibility advocates who were trying to figure out what standards there could be for designing websites that met the needs of people with disabilities. They were just trying to put all this stuff out.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
And it ended up that the output of that was CSS. Oh. They thought they were talking about how to make websites accessible for people with disabilities. In fact, they were making standards for making better websites.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
Period. And also making 3D and shadows and all kinds of stuff that gets abused, like raising down.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
Dropcaps.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
So you went from being kind of having a mind that's trying to understand why things are the way they are.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
How did that lead to you getting involved in the data front?
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
Well, like most things, it's a goofy path. So as a writer and graduating with a degree in English and Anthropology, the most natural path would be to be a copywriter for ad firms. Which would have been death for me because that's a disastrous path, at least as far as I'm concerned. No offense. Even though I just said something offensive. Anyway. But for you, it would have been. For me. Some other people find joy in it.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Exactly. Exactly.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
Maybe. I don't know. So what I did was I became a paralegal when I got out of college.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
And I spent 6 years as a litigation paralegal and I learned a lot about business that way.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
Because you can learn a lot about -- it's like a long internship around how -- what happens when everything gets all fucked up and goes to hell.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
Because things tend to -- they can go to hell. And I've learned that they go to hell when you don't communicate. Because I was the person, I was the paralegal going through hundreds of thousands of documents trying to figure out, you know, how the personnel matter got completely screwed up and how a person was discriminated against. When you say they didn't communicate, I just have to wonder, did it ever feel like when you're watching a movie and you want to say, "Why didn't the actor just say that thing to the other person? " And it would have just saved the entire two hours of -- And then there wouldn't have been any drama.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
Then there would have been no volcanoes or giant robots or anything.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
Or lawsuits of people messing other people up. So -- and I guess the reason is because of -- you know, humans are pretty deeply flawed creatures. So, I did that. And then to make more money, I did copywriting on the side. I did, you know, marketing, brochure type copywriting. I did a brochure for the world book CD-ROM in 1995. And -- I think I probably had that. It was -- it was -- it was blockbuster. If it came bundled with a Peckard Bell, then I had it. Oh, it was a blockbuster.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
You know, click on to discovery or something along those lines.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
And it had video, I bet. It did.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
It did. And that was the first time I did anything -- I remember back then, it was the age of interactive. It was not about websites.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
Or the world wide web. It was about interactive experiences. So -- and I ended up just doing a lot of copywriting for marketing firms, design firms. And then I sort of became a project manager for those things. Because you end up writing the copy. And then designers can tend to be a little flaky. Kind of focused on the art. Pretty.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
And then it'd be like, okay, cool.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
So you're going to print this, right?
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
And they're like, oh, no. You should find a printer.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
And then, so I started doing like, you know, management and project management for those kinds of places.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
And then broke into -- and just naturally, I mean, 1998-ish, just got into the web because that's where, you know, it was an incredibly growing field. So I've been working in the web and technology since the middle of 1998. Did you -- you didn't get started with like GeoCities or did you go straight to the -- I was not a practitioner. I have to say. Until maybe about 2001. Because after a couple of years of doing the project management, I realized that, you know, really smart programmers and really good designers, they'll snow you.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
You know, when you try to say as a project manager, you're like, listen, can you do this? Can you put this here?
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
Oh, no. It's impossible. You can't do that with this technology.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
So I wanted to find out, you know -- What can you do?
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
-- what I could do. So I started messing around with salon blogs. That was my first blog. That was the same time that the Julie Julia blog was going on that ended up being the movie.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
I don't recall that one, but -- Yeah, it was this woman, Julie, who was blogging about doing one recipe every day. Oh, with the Julia Child. Yes. Yes. Julie Julia project.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
And she was one of the blogs on salon.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
And I had another blog on salon called Google Bits that took -- what I did was I copy pasted the obituaries, interesting obituaries from the New York Times. And then I would do links.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
I would just hyperlink tons of phrases in the obituaries and do research on the person who died.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
And I call that hypertext enjambment where you, you know, you take a phrase like perhaps served as education secretary for President Clinton.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
And you take, you know, the phrase President Clinton and link it to, you know, some sideways experience.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
Or, you know, President Nixon and send it to, you know, a page about his scandals or something along those lines.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
So you have sort of editorial content in the links. So the VH1 bubbles before there were bubbles. Yes. Actually, it was after the VH1 bubbles. Oh, okay. But it was exactly the same thing. Because I think -- and we still -- the hyperlink is one of the most underused tools on the web, especially the title tag. So I would do things that -- so there's the word -- the phrase itself that means something. Then there's the hover, the title tag.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
That can give you different meaning or it can give you a layered, right, a layered experience on top of it. And then the actual href where you go -- and a lot of times I would link to Google searches.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
So you link to a Google search that is tangential or off the inside.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
And then it can have a ton of context that is constantly changing. Constantly updated.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah. Isn't that cool? Yeah.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
So, yeah, that was the idea of Google Bits. And I had that on salon. com at that time. So that's when I started getting into creating my own content. So you were starting to dig in and you were looking at ways already then of finding new, fresh content and pulling it in without having to just generate your own content. You could just link to that search. And that was almost like a form of data mining.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
Because you were already saying, okay, I'm going to pass this query and you're going to get these results. That's exactly right. And it's just data. And it changes and the context changes. So even two years later it's still. Based on the user being logged in or not.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
It's poetry.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
It's kind of a, it's a. It's alive. A form of poetry. That's the way I looked at it.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
So you went from there and how did you get introduced to pulling data? I mean, how did you go to the next step?
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
So I worked for, for this company called Dunn Solutions Group. And they, they purchased the design firm I worked for. I worked for one of the early design firm, web design firms in Chicago called Streams. That was started by Dave Skorzyk. And so I was a project manager person there and we did pretty well. And, and Dave sold the company to Dunn Solutions Group.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
And it was more of a technical place. They were more into, you know, more. They wanted to do like web design and. More like heavy duty systems.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
They were into like, you know, business intelligence.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
So they weren't like a consultant. They were, it was about a hundred person firm that did a lot of business intelligence.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
And, you know. They weren't doing some, some company storefront website.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
Timekeeping systems, stuff like that. So we were sort of a division that did web design. And then everything went to hell.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
Because it was, you know, 2001. People. And everything, yeah. It just, you know, the, the, the web technology world kind of went crazy.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
And, and collapse and, you know, the bubble at least. It, although there was plenty of work. And so I got more involved in more technical projects. So I became more astute and more learned about, you know, heavier duty content management systems, things along those lines. And I was continually frustrated by them. Because, I mean, at that time it was like the age of vignette. Vignette was a, a CMS content management system.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
That cost like a million dollars. To install.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Was that IBM? Vignette?
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
I don't know. That sounds like an idea. I think it probably was. Sweet. But there were a couple other players in this space. And it was ludicrous.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
That it would cost them much money. And it didn't have that many features. And when I first, like Radio Userland, that was what the salon blogs were based on. Radio Userland was the first blog platform that I came in contact with. Oh, okay. And it was incredibly powerful. And it had RSS built in. Very early RSS. And the idea of being able to ping and make constant updates was incredibly appealing. And just the ability to democratize and push down the ability to publish was really appealing to me. And obviously it was appealing to everybody.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah. Because this is the history of the web, right? Yeah.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
Blogs took off. So this is your sliver. This is my own personal realization. And so I had at that time, so it's maybe 2004, 2005, pretty good technical project manager to the point where developers couldn't snow me anymore. And I could actually be more effective at my job. And then learned about these powerful, very low cost tools. And so I started doing websites on the side by myself for, you know, churches, schools, community groups, things like that. I started doing community technology training. I took TypePad.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
I like doing crazy things that you're not supposed to do with tools, right? Right.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
So TypePad is incredibly powerful. Because for one account with $15, you could set up an infinite number of blogs.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
So I had, you know, juggernautco. typepad. com. And they had domain mapping, too.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
So you could have them at whatever URL you wanted. So I made a website for my church, Queen of Angels Parish in Chicago, on the north side.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
And then we could have sub-blogs for different ministries, right? Right. So it's like you're into the Feeding the Homeless or you're into, you know, the, what other ministries?
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
You know, peace and justice. And then they could have their own separate. So you could have this whole hierarchy of content under one TypePad account. Fifteen bucks. Fifteen bucks. Mind-blowing.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah. It's 2005, right? Right.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
You could have an infinite amount of content in a really simple SAS, you know, content management system that anybody could use. So I started doing that. And then, you know, we have a lot of Spanish-speaking people in the parish. And they were like, "Wow, this is awesome. " Of course, they would say it in Spanish. But I don't, you know, know how to do this. Because I did all this training in English.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
So I did bilingual computer training. And it was just amazing.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
So you taught yourself Spanish so you could translate?
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
No, I just know some Spanish. I'm pretty good with, I'm pretty, you know, I can get along. Pick it up. I used to work in construction with a lot of Mexican drywallers. So I went to, I got it in high school and then college. And then right after college, I was able to talk in normal. So I have a, I could get along. And we had other Spanish, bilingual Spanish and English speakers at the training. And did a lot of other, you know, community-based stuff. Like in Rogers Park, did computer training for DevCorp North, which was the community development organization up there. And then add to that, around 2005 I was doing stuff for the mayor's office here in Chicago.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
And that was when I first really got into civic data. And the idea was that we were going to take, basically, ChicagoCrime. org, which was created by Adrian Holobody here in Chicago.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay. Yeah.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
Django.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
Who the benevolent dictator for life for Django.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
And I, that's an amazing title, isn't it? Yeah.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
So Adrian came up with ChicagoCrime. org, which was just a singular, mind-blowing thing because he reverse engineered the Google Maps before there was even an API. And, yeah, he would be able to show where crimes were happening. He was able to put dots on that.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Was it real-time or delayed?
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
It was always nine days delayed. Oh, nine days. So nine days real-time. Real-time in terms of when the data was published.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
Let's put it that way.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
So new data would get published and it would be out there.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
So, you know, just like anybody else on the internet who saw it when he first published it, I was like, whoa, whoa, that's, you know, it was amazing. Crazy.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
And then I had some work with the city of Chicago at that time. And they were like, you know, we would like to send a, we do all these 311 service requests. And we get a lot of stuff done. And then we have a list of email addresses for community people. And I want to send an email with a PDF attachment of all the 311 service requests that we've completed. And I was like, wow, let me show you the site this one dude did.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah. And I said, what if this wasn't crime if it was 311 service requests?
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
It was building permits and restaurant inspections and all the other great things that the city does for people. And what if you never sent an email or never made an, you know, it was available to everybody. And you never sent a PDF. So they bought into it. And then we did a project called ChicagoWorksForYou. com. ChicagoWorksForYou. Yep. ChicagoWorksForYou. com. And to make a long story short, it was kiboshed.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
And never saw the light of day.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Oh, really? Yeah.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
But through that I met Adrian. And then when Adrian got the grant to start EveryBlock. com, which is local news and community website, I joined him and a couple others as co-founder. He was the founder and we had some other co-founders and got into open data and the civic data world that way.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
So now fast forward from there, you've created, you've helped to create these tools and have been involved in the formation of these concepts. Open Government Chicago and some of the community groups, now you're starting to spread out to get other people involved and how they can contribute to this. Yep.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
How did that come about?
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
So in my role at EveryBlock, I was responsible for getting civic data from 16 cities. So cold calling Mayor Michael Bloomberg in New York and asking him, you know, "Hey, can I talk to the mayor? " You'll be stunned to hear that he was in a meeting every time I call him. Oh yeah, he was in a meeting here. So I ended up just talking to people about, you know, our project, which we wanted, you know, like every building permit, every restaurant inspection, every crime report. And they'd end up sending me to whatever goofball in the mayor's office or department was interested in stuff like that.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
And the people they usually transferred me to now are actually some of the leaders of the Open Government Movement.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Oh really?
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
In each of the cities.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
It's kind of funny how it worked out. Pull them out of the shadows. They were, you know, just like any good idea, there's always someone else who's thinking about it too.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
So, you know, these are people who are fighting a good fight about open data and open government and using new tools to make government more efficient and effective. And speaking of using new tools, do you have a new project you're getting, you're percolating or you're looking to launch? Yep. So we did launch it. So the Civic User Testing Group. Civic User Testing Group. So the CUT Group, the Civic User Testing Group, is a set of regular Chicago residents who get paid to test out civic apps.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
So civic apps are the things. So they're doing the QA and they're providing feedback on the apps. They're saying, oh, this crash or it doesn't work here. It ends up being a QA function. But the idea is that, you know, we've been pretty successful at getting the city to publish a lot of data and working directly with them and working directly with the mayor as a candidate and as the mayor in forming policy that allows for the publication of data. And the city, the city of Chicago is a great leader in this respect. And, you know, Brett Goldstein, the chief data officer for the city, and John Tolva, the chief technology officer for the city. And the mayor's office have been just great leaders in this respect. So, and then, you know, OpenGov Chicago, you mentioned that Joe Gamuska started that group.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
In 2009. And I helped him to start it. And we, you know, try to focus on developers and people who are interested in data.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
Trying to get them interested in civic data. And I know you did an interview with Paul Baker. Who, you know, he hosted a lot of those meetings over web attacks.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
So, there's just a lot of people who are already interested in this stuff.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
And Joe just had the idea to, you know, try to organize those people. So, that's been pretty successful. And we have, you know, OpenGov hack nights that were started by Derek Eder and Juan Pablo Velez. And, I mean, there's been a few projects that have come out of those as well. Oh, absolutely.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah. The Chicago, or was it the lobby data?
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
I can't remember the exact name of the site, but there was... Chicago Lobby and Settler. Chicago Lobby and Settler.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
So, and that was able to show where lobbying money was going. Correct. So, they were able to say, this group donated this amount of money for this cause. Yep. And Paul kind of described that there was something interesting that it wasn't the data. It wasn't what he expected. Some people thought, oh, it was going to be the cigarette groups trying to get, you know, the smoking ban lifted. And it actually turned out to be trying to build hospitals and things like that.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
It was interesting to find out that the government wasn't just spending money on evil.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
It was actually trying to do something good.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
And that was... Has there been any surprises for you over the years of looking at data and being like, wow, this really changed my perspective on how things are for the better or for the worse? Well, I think in general, you know, there's a lot of uninformed thought around the delivery of services in the city that, you know, maybe some areas get more services than others. And I've worked in 16 cities now. I've never seen that.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Really?
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
And in fact, services are delivered in a really equal way across cities and across inside cities. That's what I've learned. And I just have a lot of respect for the municipal government all over because there's so many city employees that just do really great work.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
And there's nothing... None of us sitting on the side in the civic hacker industry, if you want to call it that. I do want to call it that, the civic hacking sector, civic innovation sector of the technology industry, we wouldn't be doing anything if it weren't for the hard work of the GIS professionals that actually drew every polygon in the cities.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
If, you know, they didn't publish the street sections for every road. And, you know, we wouldn't be doing anything if it weren't for them.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
They're really unsung heroes of this movement because I think we tend to give attention to the shiny new thing in the app that came out.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
But, you know... The thing that comes out in our face right away. Not all of the infrastructure that went behind it to make it possible. Even something like Plow Tracker, the city publishes, that shows the plows in real time. That's really slick and it's fun to watch it, but it's important to remember...
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
It's important to remember that there's human beings who are paid to get into trucks and drive them safely across the city. So that dot that's moving around is a person. It's a human being who's busting his ass for us. So, there's that concept. And then, I think that what we're trying to do with the civic user testing group is to inject and build a culture of testing and a culture of collaboration and co-creation with residents. So, even if you're not writing this stuff, you're part of the possibility of this working and sharing this information. Even if you're just a person out there with it in your hand using it. You're the most important person in the world, obviously.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
In any technology company, any system... Oh, yeah. If nobody's using it, then it's just... So, the motto that we have at the Cut Group is, "If it doesn't work for me, it doesn't work. " Okay. So, that's the general concept is that we need everybody. We need the government to publish data. We need government workers to do their work. We need developers to care. And we need them to develop high quality software. And I think we've really got that in Chicago. And we're a leader in this space. And everybody deserves a ton of credit. What we need now is true engagement with real residents who help us do our work. And help us decide what to make. And what will be of use to them to improve their lives. And to provide meaningful opportunity to expand the economy here in Chicago. And bring, you know, and reduce poverty.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
And bring it full circle. They consume it. They give feedback. And then you're able to make better decisions. And then give them new stuff. And then your feedback goes back to the people who are using your, whose services you're using. That's right. And even more that, again, there's a spirit of co-creation.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
They say, "You know what?
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
You made something. It works really nice. It's completely irrelevant to my life. It would be better if you made this. " Right. So, going all the way back to the creation process. And also, you do consulting for the government as well, the Chicago City. So, that information, you know, helps you get better information. Helps the city make better plans. That's right. So, that way they can deliver. So, that's actually the real full cycle.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah. Right.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
And that's the role that we can play here at the Smart Chicago Collaborative. Because we're founded by the City of Chicago, the Chicago Community Trust, and the MacArthur Foundation. So, I work here at the Trust. And MacArthur provides significant funding. And we get funding from, you know, on a project basis from all sorts of funders here in Chicago. And people who need to get things done. So, we do some specific projects for the mayor's office. Whether it's hosting the Adopt-A-Sidewalk program. Or coming up with ChicagoEarlyLearning. org that shows where you can find early childhood pre-K locations and programs. And, you know, we have a texting function on that. So, we're creating open source code that allows us and allows everybody to build on it.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
There's the, I forgot about this until you just mentioned, but there is the open source group here in Chicago.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
What are the, the name of the people doing the open source tools?
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
It's like Sunshine or something like that. That's news to me. Okay, I'm, I might be saying totally the wrong thing right now. But, I know there's a group that's working on tools to help make sharing data more feasible. Paul would know more about that.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay. Yeah.
Daniel X. O'Neil
web development and frontend practice
So, sorry for the tangent here.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
But, anyway, thank you very much for taking the time to sit down with me. I really appreciate it. Thanks, Mike. Thank you.