Editor’s Note: TechCrunch columnist Semil Shah currently works at Votizen and is based in Palo Alto. You can follow him on Twitter @semil
If you feel there’s been too much hype about “big data” recently, check this out: the Chief Technology Officer of the United States of America — Todd Park — wants developers and entrepreneurs to build new products, services, and companies using free data provided by the federal government. In this brief discussion backstage at Disrupt, Park emphasizes that he, his team, and the President of the United States have all fully endorsed the idea that key datasets be made available to the public, and there have even been examples of entrepreneurs forming companies around free datasets, one that’s even hired over 70 employees. (For entrepreneurs interested in health data specifically, Park’s group is helping organize an entire symposium on the topic in early June in Washington DC; click here for more details.) For developers interested in big data sets, this brief discussion with Park would be quite relevant.