Internally at Metaweb, we’ve been running an almost-weekly “flash data mob” activity. The idea has been to take 5-10 minutes (or more, if you’ve got the inclination) and fill in some missing data in Freebase. The idea is for a bunch of people to all focus on flushing out one corner of data – the combined power of a bunch of people all doing a little work is really rather impressive.
For an example of one of our first Flash Data Mobs, check out Kevin Bacon.
His entry is very well filled out – not only as an actor but as a person, a director, even a reader of audio books! (Feel free to add more, but keep reading!)
A lot of great things come out of this:
- Unusual issues with the user interfaces – sometimes bugs, and sometimes real problems with the way we present and edit the data.
- Data modelling issues – there was lots of discussion about what it meant for Kevin to play “himself” on Will and Grace some time back
- Data source questions – IMDB is great for verifying movie/tv data, but what about music? books? biographical information? You get the idea
and of course
- even more quality data in Freebase.
This is great for developers because we learn about the data and get inspiration for new mashups.
So I’m going to be running a weekly Flash Data Mob – each week we’ll have some interesting task or topic that we’ll all try to fill out, and we’ll take up the discussion on this list.
Later today I’ll send out our first public Flash Data Mob activity that should give you something fun to do for a lazy friday afternoon.. stay tuned!
