Derek Eder
Derek Eder is an entrepreneur, developer and a leader of the civic technology community in Chicago. He uses data, builds tools, and organizes people in Chicago to democratize power.
Derek is Founder and Partner at DataMade, Co-Founder of Dedupe.io, a machine learning service that de-duplicates and find matches in spreadsheets and databases, and Co-Founder and President Emeritus of Chi Hack Night, a free, weekly event in Chicago to build, share and learn about civic technology.
He has built and collaborated on dozens of civic and data applications including 2nd City Zoning, Chicago's Million Dollar Blocks, Councilmatic, Decarb My State and Dedupe.io.
Posts by Derek
Modernizing our mapping stack with Maplibre
A significant reason for website failures is their reliance on external platforms, which frequently change or may even be shut down. However, a promising development in the past few years has been the emergence of GL-powered maps that operate entirely in the front-end browser. As a result, we have adopted Maplibre-gl as our preferred choice for data-rich maps and are in the process of transitioning many of our projects to this technology.
Working against systems of oppression
Last summer, DataMade made a commitment to examine the ways in which our work has supported systems that destroy Black lives, particularly policing and incarceration. As we wrote then, this is slow work, and much of it is quiet work rooted in reflection, study, and relationship building. A year later, we’d like to share an update on the steps we have taken so far and reaffirm our commitment to continue working to redirect power from oppressive systems to those that support democracy, justice, and equity for all.
Hannah Cushman Garland is now a Partner at DataMade
Today we’re happy to announce that Hannah Cushman Garland has joined Derek Eder and Forest Gregg as a Partner and co-owner of DataMade. Hannah joined the DataMade team as a Developer in 2016. An alumna of the Missouri School of Journalism and a veteran of the Associated Press, she remains deeply interested in people, systems, and power. She brings a healthy skepticism to technology, believing that it can alleviate specific pain points but is rarely a solution in and of itself.
Accounting for our part in supporting systems of oppression
In this time of grief and uprising, we have been examining the ways that we, as a company, have supported systems that destroy Black lives, and what we can do to meet this moment of possibility. It is slow work and much of it should be quiet work. Over the past ten years, we have come to know that policing in America is not compatible with a healthy, equitable democracy; that policing in America destroys precious Black lives like George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Rekia Boyd, Quintonio LeGrier, Bettie Jones, Harith Augustus, and Laquan McDonald.
DataMade’s response to COVID-19
In response to the COVID-19 outbreak, the DataMade team is now 100% remote and practicing social distancing. We plan on maintaining this setup for the duration of the outbreak and will keep our office operating at full capacity. Here are a few resources for transitioning to remote teams and resources and actions to slow the spread of COVID-19.
Introducing Civic Exchange Chicago
Today, I am proud to announce the founding of a new civic venture! Civic Exchange Chicago is a coworking space and learning community centered on how news, information and technology can increase democracy and freedom.
Following the money in New Mexico politics just got a whole lot easier
We’re happy to announce the launch of The Openness Project with our partners New Mexico In Depth. Based on campaign finance reports collected by the New Mexico Secretary of State, The Openness Project lets you search and browse all political contributions, expenditures, and candidates in statewide and local New Mexico races.
We find your reps so you don’t have to
My Reps is a tool for looking up your elected representatives across the United States. Based on your address, we can find all the federal, state, county, and local officials who represent you in government. We built it to be completely open source, easy to repurpose, and easy to customize by political organizations.
Today, DataMade is launching something new. It’s not a map, or an app. It’s a product called dedupe.io. And it will transform your messy data into something much more useful.
This week, DataMade will be in Denver for NICAR 2016, a yearly conference hosted by Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) on data journalism. We’ll be presenting on the work we’ve been doing and sharing our open source tools for working with, cleaning up and visualizing data. News nerds, look for us in Denver! We’d love to talk to you!
Civic Tech Done Right – Community Driven, Community Responsive, Community Friendly
Neighborhood organizers and software developers don’t ordinarily move in the same circles. But in Chicago, thanks to some tool-hungry community organizers and neighborhood-oriented software developers, a couple of computer applications have emerged that are enabling neighborhood residents to play a greater role in improving their communities. This is a story, told from the perspective of three people, of how and why those applications were developed.
Demystifying Chicago politics with Councilmatic
Thanks to the support of the Sunlight Foundation, I am proud to announce that DataMade is launching a brand-new version Chicago Councilmatic. Track all things related to Chicago City Council.
Introducing: Illinois Sunshine
We teamed up with the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform to build Illinois Sunshine, a tool for browsing candidates, political committees, donations to campaigns and expenditures by campaigns in Illinois going back to 1994. Campaign finance data in Illinois has never been more accessible.
DataMade at the Code for America Summit
The Code for America Summit, a yearly open government and civic tech conference, was held in San Francisco last week. DataMade was able to share two of our client’s stories to this international community of government leaders, funders, policy experts, and technologists.
DataMade and the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform (ICPR) are launching a new app today called Election Money. It provies bulk downloads of campaign finance data from the Illinois State Board of Elections.
LargeLots.org is back, this time in East Garfield Park! If you own land in this west side Chicago neighborhood, you can buy up two vacant lots from the City of Chicago for $1 each.
The City of Chicago is selling empty lots to South Side residents for $1 until April 21st, 2014 as part of their neighborhood stabilization initiative. To lower the barrier to apply for one of these ~4,000 lots and increase the number of potential applicants, we made an app to help residents find eligible lots and navigate this process - largelots.org.
Introducing Spreadsheet Deduper
DataMade is launching a free online tool for de-duplicating spreadsheets.
In November, we got an e-mail from Triway International Group asking DataMade to share our open data work and what’s been going on with the Chicago Open Government community with 17 delegates from the National Bureau of Statistics of the People’s Republic of China.
Making a Living with Civic Tech
For the open government movement to sustain itself and continue to grow, we need to build businesses off of projects that emerge from our civic technology community.