…and we’re opening a whole can of it.

“This launch is a key milestone in opening County data and increasing citizen participation and engagement in government,” said King County Executive Dow Constantine.  “We’re opening access to the high-value data sets that we’re already using in County government so that others can benefit from and create useful, publicly-available applications with that information.”

What does this mean to all of us “What’s a data set?” folk? It means those that know what a data set is will have the opportunity to build nifty “widgets”, “gadgets” and other hip little online tools to help break down and distribute great amounts of our data into shiny user interfaces that we can download to our iPhones.

It also means that should you ever need a technical question answered you can pop over to www.kingcounty.gov/opendata to fill your brain with all sorts of info.

We’re looking for public input on the website and initial data sets during an event on Oct. 26 from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Developers, media and citizens are invited to learn more about the data project. Register for the event at www.kingcounty.gov/opendata/register/.

Please stop by and provide your feedback, then let’s get started on a really cool King County Parks app that allows us too know the exact location of every bird in the Marymoor Bird Loop.