Carl lives in Sebastopol, CA, which is about a 12 minute drive from my place.
Carl is a rockstar. Not a conventional rockstar, but one nonetheless.
What do I mean?
He has been finding innovative ways to get government data and public works online for years and years.
Carl was the person who put the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s EDGAR database online back in the early 1990’s. The EDGAR database being the world’s most important and valuable resource of information on corporate activities.
According to Tim O’Reilly, (another local tech giant from Sebastopol), the story goes that the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) originally told Carl that they couldn’t put EDGAR online because it would be a multi-year multi-million dollar project.
Ha. Guess what Carl did?
Carl turned around and assembled his own small group of volunteers, borrowed some equipment and put the EDGAR database online in only six weeks.
That’s pure rockstar.
Putting the SEC’s EDGAR database online wasn’t what put Carl on the map. He was around much before that doing small things like helping the Internet get off the ground. Seriously. The Internet.
Here is a brief rundown of his rockstar career over on Wikipedia.
What is he doing nowadays?
He keeps his hands full trying to get more government data online and trying to archive and provide access to public works online.
For instance, projects like putting broadcast-quality videos of congressional hearings online, publishing WestLaw’s full text of legal opinions online, and releasing US Copyright Office’s copyright registration database online.
Note: Carl works under the notion that the US public has right to government information. This is why he is so aggressive in digitizing it and putting it into the public domain.
You can go to Carl’s own site public.resource.org that provides links to projects he has completed, is currently working on or is involved with.
His work has definitely helped and influenced new organizations like the OpenCongress guys that I rave about so often (like here and here).
Maybe I’ll stop by Carl’s office over at the O’Reilly Media building in Sebastopol one of these days and see what big project(s) he’s working on.
