What I Do
I am an entrepreneur, philanthropist, technologist and data analyst, focusing on how to make data easier for nonprofits, journalists, governments and socially oriented companies to use. I run a company, Civic Knowledge, have a non profit project, The San Diego Regional Data Library, and build open source software, Metatab. I’m currently the board President at The League of Amazing Programmers, and was formally the founding board President at San Diego Canyonlands.
My Work
My passion project is the San Diego Regional Data Library, where I run socially significant data projects, such as:
- Developing a data set of homeless sleeper counts for the Downtown San Diego Partnership, analyzing the data, and helping students and citizens learn how to analyze it themselves.
- Building and maintaining a large collection of public data related to San Diego County, some of which, such as our crime datasets, are frequently used in research.
- Providing research data collections to the San Diego Hunger Coalition to support their free meals advocacy programs.
I work with commercial organizations to :
- Build data oriented websites.
- Provide data analysis training and support.
- Improve and maintain data pipelines.
I’m also an Open Source programmer with extensive contributions including:
Organizations
Each summer I host 1 to 3 students to work on refurbishing a 6 axis laboratory robot arm, giving them practical experience with programming, electronics and industrial engineering.
San Diego Canyonlands protects and restores San Diego’s many canyons, one of the regions most distinctive features. I was the founding board President, and am occasionally involved in special projects.
Metatab is an open source project that develop tools for data wrangling and packaging, making data easier for analysts to use.
The League of Amazing Programmers teaches kids to code, preparing them for working as professional programmers before they’ve graduated from High School. I am the board President.
The San Diego Regional Data Library runs volunteer, pro-bono data projects
Civic Knowledge provides commercial data services for companies, governments and nonprofits.
Press
“In recent months, the Data Library has worked to digitize the maps of homeless person counts for the last five years collected by the Downtown San Diego Partnership. The data conversion got underway earlier this year with the assistance of Kearny High School students and more progress is expected this fall.” - UCSD Extension, September 2019
A lot of the issues we have now are so fine-grain that you have to have good data to solve them,” Busboom says. “Our nonprofits and governments often don’t have access to the skills that are required to do that. The goal is to find volunteers and make connections.” - San Diego Magazine, 2014
"But in January, Busboom founded the San Diego Regional Data Library, to “make our social programs, civic groups, and government organizations more effective; our citizens better informed; and our policy makers able to make better decisions,” according to the library’s website." - Voice of San Diego, October 2013