The next presentation was from Joshua Hatch, the online content manager at Sunlight Live, a part of the Sunlight Foundation, and which uses cutting-edge technology and ideas to make government transparent and accountable. He talked about the importance of data and what can be done with it when creative thinking is applied, especially when it is freed.

Hatch ran through numerous examples of use of data sets online to demonstrate interesting trends.

“Data are also highly personal,” Hatch said, demonstrating a site that shows all of the American deaths in the Iraq wars – enabling people to search by age, location, name, and other data points. Some of the uses are also trivial, such as the New York Times idea that got hold of data from Netflix to show which movies were most popular in what areas.

His underlying message was that as more data becomes more machine-readable, it also becomes more useful, enabling us to create more mash-ups and compare more and more data points to make better decisions.

“People constantly are trying to answer questions and respond to their immediate situation,” Hatch said.