Flutterby™! : Assembling a crack team

I've mentioned that I've started to get interested in hacking on government data. Charlene and I did some graphs from various historical Federal and State data a few months back, but government at that level is something I don't much have the patience for. Too much boneheaded appeasement for me to get excited about playing those games. The local level, though, seems like something I can enjoy playing with as a hobby.

So I've started to talk to folks in and around the city government, and, for the most part, I'm being met with tremendous enthusiasm. Everyone wants to see more citizen involvement, most of the data is supposed to be public, but no one uses it, and the idea that any of this stuff would become valuable, rather than just filed away for the archives, is exciting. They're already doing what they can to pull disparate departments together and get them all on common databases, and then share that stuff with the world. They have an application that allows looking at the various GIS data. They broadcast meetings of the various councils and advisory councils. However, they're having a hell of a time justifying all this stuff that feels pretty core to the notion of open governments when only a few citizens actually take advantage of this stuff. The only time anyone cares is when issues get all NIMBY, and though they won't actually say it, I'm guessing that's the same fifteen people each time.

Here's the problem: I need to find a couple of other hackers who'd like to figure out ways to do interesting and educational things with city data. I'd like to find ways to create an open source sort of approach to evaluating and reporting city information so that we can transcend the limited ways that the local paper gives us "news", so that we can go back to original sources, and so that we have a better dialog among the residents (because the level of discours on the local paper's forums is pretty weak).

So I'm trying to figure out how to put together a "government data user's group", and publicize it. I'd like to keep this a group interested in data more than issues, I don't want yet another group of "progressives" or "patriots" trying to control the discussion by talking louder or asserting things that don't stand up to research. I'd like to find applications, users of those applications, and people to implement them, that could be more than a novelty.

Any suggestions on how to write the flyer and how to publicize the call?