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About Nik Garkusha

Nik Garkusha is the Open Platforms Lead at Microsoft Canada, responsible for a number of Open Source, Open Data and Open Government innovation programs in Canada. Nik is a founder of Open Halton: a citizen-led Open Gov community in the Halton Region, Ontario. He’s an avid Open Government and Open Data advocate, hacktivist, technology evangelist, consultant, web architect, and a “professional geek”. He is often called the Head of Open Sourcery at Microsoft. Nik’s prior work experience includes launching open source-based solutions at UNISYS corp, and work as a web developer and an IT consultant.
Author Archive | Nik Garkusha
May 3

Three ways to set up a Ruby stack on Azure

By on May 3, 2013 in Geek Speak, Training & Webcasts

Microsoft’s announcement of the Windows Azure SDK for Ruby opens up new alternatives and resources for Ruby developers to publish their apps in the cloud. This first version of the SDK (GitHub) supports working with Azure storage & Azure service bus, and deployment in a Linux VM on Azure IaaS. The 3 options covered below [...]

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April 22

Setting up Ubuntu Linux VM on Windows Azure for Node.js using essential Node & Azure tools on Mac OS X

By on April 22, 2013 in Geek Speak, Training & Webcasts

As of lately I’ve been experimenting with Node.JS and Express for back-ends and REST APIs of web, mobile & Windows 8 apps, such as the Hero & Finder Templates.While Azure Web Sites provide a perfect way to get going fast with Node, because Web Sites aren’t running IIS8 yet, to use Socket.IO with Node I’d [...]

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February 23

Hacking Open Data with the Finder Template and a Sandwich: Citizen-Ready Apps in Minutes

By on February 23, 2013 in Geek Speak, Training & Webcasts

This weekend I had family visiting, so I wasn’t able to attend any of the OpenDataDay events. However, I decided to do my own “mini-hackathon” during my Saturday lunch break using the new Finder & Hero templates for Windows 8.   UPDATE: Use my Finder template updated with a couple of small fixes. I said [...]

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February 20

Open Data in Your App: 2 events, 2 days, 2 speakers, 2 templates!

By on February 20, 2013 in Events

This Saturday, February 23rd is the international Open Data day, and the teams at Québec Ouvert, Montréal Ouvert & OpenNorth are organizing an event – focused on open data. Just 2 days later on Monday 25th, one of the organizers Stéphane Guidoin from OpenNorth is speaking  at our WebNotWar / HTLM5mtl 2-day Hackathon in Montreal, where [...]

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February 15

Finder & Hero Templates: The Fastest Way to Get Started with Location-Based Windows 8 Apps

By on February 15, 2013 in Featured

Today our team is sharing in the excitement of revealing two new Windows 8 templates : “Finder” & “Hero”. Finder Template: user can locate points of interest on a map (e.g. buildings, historic places, etc.), with a sortable menu a “Details” and “Directions” options for each point. Hero Template: users can crowd-source location-based data (e.g. [...]

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March 5

Pushing for Open Data? 3 Steps to Consider

By on March 5, 2012 in Events, Featured

Open Data is fast becoming a ‘hot topic’ in government. I’m proud to see my colleagues & fellow open gov supporters helping governments around the world launch their cloud-powered open data catalogues: from the Government of Columbia and the European Union, to the Canadian cities of Regina, SK and Medicine Hat, AB. But it’s not [...]

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January 3

Drupal & Bhangra.me

By on January 3, 2012 in Events

January 1, 2012 marked the close of the Bhangra.me: Vancouver’s Bhangra Story exhibition at the Museum of Vancouver. The web portion of the exhibit was powered by the Drupal framework happily running on IIS 7.5 / Windows Sever 2008, which served as a repository of interactive stories accessible from: WebSite for adding & browsing interactive [...]

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November 24

OpenGouv by Any Other Name…

By on November 24, 2011 in Events, Uncategorized

Last week I had the pleasure of speaking at the Webcom conference in the OpenGouv track, which is of course French for Open Gov In my session: Building Open Government Platforms of the Future I shared my thoughts on the the trends in the Open Government space in Canada and what properties ANY open gov [...]

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August 25

3 Quick Wins for your Open Gov Initiative

By on August 25, 2011 in Uncategorized

[ this article first published on OpenHalton.ca ] If you’re a government agency evaluating ways to get started with your Gov 2.0 / Open Gov / Open Data initiatives, keep in mind these 3 simple strategies for a quick win: 1. Review the terms of use Even if your agency doesn’t have an Open Data [...]

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July 26

Open Data is Cool

By on July 26, 2011 in Uncategorized

a Case Study for Municipal Open Data [ the original article posted on OpenHalton.ca ] The heat is scorching! Residents across Ontario, Quebec and part of the US are trying to stay cool. Many seek out public swimming pools and splash-pads, and turn to their municipalities for information. Others, like Joey Coleman of OpenHamilton and [...]

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