Thanks a bunch for sharing your insights, it's really helpful to me. Your newspaper experience is very motivating too :-)
In Aarhus, we do have an open data collection called ODAA (http://www.odaa.dk/) that might be an avenue to pursue. A few developer friends and I have played around with it once, but we quickly discovered that despite it being relatively easy to just "make something", it's much harder to "make something useful to others" and we'd love to have had a government representative in the same room to guide our skills in the right direction.
I completely agree with you on what's the point of all this data if we don't turn it into something people can understand and use in a meaningful way. What I'm missing is that person / people saying "Hey, can someone turn THIS heatmap data into X thing, that would really help!".
A newspaper sounds like a great place to learn deeply about different local issues / problems that could be solved. I have a few journalist friends I could try and contact, see if they have encountered something.
Also, thanks a bunch for those inspirational links. They are bookmarked for sure! If / when I do create something, might I throw it your way for feedback?
- Anders