Meet ‘the godfather of open data’ in Philadelphia

Robert Cheetham is the godfather of open data in Philadelphia, at least according to the city’s Chief Data Officer Mark Headd. (Find years of our coverage of the local GIS legend here.)

It was Cheetham, founder of the Callowhill-based mapping firm Azavea, who led the effort to build OpenDataPhilly, now the city’s open data catalog.

Read more about Cheetham in this AxisPhilly profile.

For more on Cheetham’s background, see:

• Our profile on former deputy police commissioner Charles Brennan, who hired Cheetham to work in the Police Department‘s first crime mapping unit
• This story about how Philadelphia Police are the first big city cops to use Azavea’s crime prediction software HunchLab
• These stories about the early days of Azavea, when it was called Avencia