Clay Johnson briefly runs through some of the more notable entries from the 'Apps for America II' development contest, all of which utilize information exclusively from Data.gov.
Among the awards offered was a $2500 prize for visualization, which aimed to encourage involvement from the artistic community. The winner of this prize, the Quakespotter Desktop app operates in conjunction with Google Earth and Twitter.com to match the location of an earthquake with mentions of the same earthquake on Twitter.
Johnson argues that this effort shows how over 1000 developers can make helpful, creative and retail use of the data collected wholesale by governments. Additional entries he highlights include usaspending.gov, flyontime.us, thisweknow.org and datamasher.org.
Clay Johnson is the Director of Sunlight Labs. Prior to joining Sunlight Labs, Clay was one of the founders of Blue State Digital, the premier technology and online strategy firm responsible for the creation of My.BarackObama.com. Under his tenure as the organization's Lead Salesperson and Business Development Manager, the organization went from zero to eight million dollars a year in revenue, earning the company the 'Inc 5,000' award in 2008.
In 2004, Johnson was the lead programmer for Howard Dean's presidential campaign, helping to reinvent politics online. Prior to entering politics, Johnson was a technologist at Ask Jeeves (now Ask.com) where he helped to develop the company's web syndication product.
Johnson was also one of Fast Company's 'Fast 50' in 2006, Google and O'Reilly's 'Open Source Community Builder of the Year' for 2009, and one of 2010's Federal Computer Week's 'Fed 100'.
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