If you are looking for a model of how to drive innovation in your community check out Project Project Nimbus.  It is an initiative that hopes to solve innovators’ problem of finding data sets and services by offering a central place for authoritative and reliable data and services access from government and commercial entities in Singapore.  Nimbus is built on SQL Azure (Around 20 DB's) and Windows Azure (Around 4 - 6 Web and Worker Instances). The architecture actually matches Dallas quite closely and is based on the Open Data protocol.

It was developed by a group of part-time innovators who happen to work in organizations that have great relationships with key companies and government entities throughout Singapore. Over the past few years, they recognized the struggles innovators face and came together as a community create a solution that allows them to pursue their passion to create and and innovate instead of chasing or recreating content, screen scrapping sites, and Google-ing for random data sets.

Its objectives are to:

• Unite the voices of Singapore Innovators and identify data sets and services in demand

• Work with content owners and government entities for the appropriate release of data sets and services to Singapore Innovators

• Help innovators focus on innovation