This seems interesting. Are you consuming data directly through CKAN APIs or what? I work a lot with both CKAN and Socrata APIs. I'm curious what niche you're trying to fill: is it a one-stop-shop for open data?
We found the APIs a bit slow when dataset is large, so for now we download the file in any format and upload it with our tool. We have another service that sells business listing (bizrake.com), regular folks have hard time dealing with large dataset, so we are building a service where people can search and download specific data.
This is controversial but it is my personal experience: As a non-white, living in Germany is hard; the level of bigotry and racism in my opinion makes the nuisance of the US visa system negligible. Most tech immigrants are non-whites so I think a debate over immigration should take into account the quality of life for the techies and their family. Sure the US still have a lot to do to improve its visa system, but the American way of life and its people, makes the US the most attractive place to go for non-whites techies.
Same can be said for Canada. As a non-white, I have not faced any discrimination yet in Canada ever since I moved here ten years ago. Sure there may be racism but at least not in the everyday life and certainly not in the tech sector.
Same can be said for West Germany. The horror stories are overwhelmingly from the former East Germany and Berlin.
I'm not trying to defend what is going on "over there", but you have to realize that Germany is, in many respects, still not one country and will remain so for a very long time.
Whenever you hear people speak of German unification, keep the following in mind: While we were incredibly lucky that there was no bloodshed, the people of East Germany were completely screwed in the process. More than twenty years after the beginning, it is misleading to speak of unification.
What happened was an annexation.
Every part of East German society was uprooted, down to the most minuscule. Massive labor migration to the west completely changed demographics, with many young women leaving but fewer young men doing so.
Wherever you have conditions such as these in any European country, Skinheads and the like will start appearing. As if it was some perverse rule of nature.
Maybe we're screwed. Maybe it is an emergent trait of European culture. I hope it isn't.
I honestly find that surprising. Germany is the place in Europe where there is the most white guilt. I stayed there for a few months and experienced zero problems.
I have a lot of (brown) Asian family relatives who've spent decades in Germany, they tell me America is basically a heaven in comparison. Canada is pretty much the only country that comes close to America (according to them -- and my experiences ring true here as well), in not being racist to non-white individuals.
That doesn't prevent a latent racism in big parts of the population.
Simply growing up with almost no non-whites makes everyone who looks different stand out a lot, and the step from standing out to shunned out is quite small, I'm afraid.
I'm sorry about that. As an also non white developer my personal experience has been the extreme opposite. Even my pathetic attempts at German were held in good humor.
And getting the visa was amazingly easy too. Got it within a week, but go with a native speaker.
seriously ? even in Berlin Africans and Asians get taunted on the street, beat up and occasionally killed. An Asian guy was killed last year just off of Alex. There were a series of u-bahn attacks on Africans last year.
Very multi-kulti here but you still have to be watchful.
If you are traveling in eastern Germany while black you will get quite strong harassment and in many towns you would be unwise to travel at night by yourself.
source: black people told me so
But statistically speaking its still safer than many US cities. And as a Nigerian born, Moscow raised guy told me, Moscow is way more racist.
