drinking from the digital data fire hose

Drinking from the Digital Data

Fire Hose

WEBINARUS Dept. of Housing and

Urban DevelopmentOCIO Learning Session

Maremel InstituteDr. Gigi Johnson

April 2014

… as I’ve said many times the future is already here

William Gibson, 1999, NPR

— it’s just not very evenly distributed.

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This Webinar

In this introductory-level session, we will share:

Strategies and tools for creating a proactive “pull” of the right abundant data

for decisions coming up the road

Ways to save you an hour a week in how your team may be using data now

Insights into social media as a business intelligence tool for listening, not just

“marketing”

Ways to spy a bit on your competitors’ actions and

plans

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We face a tsunami of data

Abundant Data

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Consumers and Competitors Decide Everywhere and Are Throwing Off

Data

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Big Data: Big Business But Not Today’s Discussion

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Despite free/cheap tools, smaller businesses often do not use Internet customers or external market research data to make strategic or marketing decisions.

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Pain Points

Noise

Abundance

Time

Our Core Discussion

How will better use of data improve the Key Performance Metrics of my firm or in my job?

What is my Data Strategy?

• Understanding opportunity cost in time• Dealing with uncertainty• Make better decisions

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5 steps to both grow and simplify

1. Strategize

2. Create Simple Systems

3. Listen

4. Visualize

5. Share (Smart)

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1. STRATEGIZE

How we can use this abundant data to make better daily and strategic decisions?

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W’s: Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How?

• What do I need to know?• What is available out there already?• How much money and time will this cost?• What is available for free or cheap?– Will that service go away because it doesn’t have a

robust business model?– Is it free or cheap because they share rights to my

information?

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Consideration Sets – Data Affecting Choice

“I found this cool product at the convention, and the salesperson said…”

• Anchors — first ideas or data lock in the process and create bias

• Art of the Possible — how broad of a range of options?

“Just In Time” Search — Not Neutral

• Keywords/Taxonomies/ Domain Phrases — words we use• Affected by location, mode (e.g., mobile), past searches• Nature of Google (67% of US Searches): Inbound links, not

public popularity, and Google’s PageRank index• Search & Social drives Ads: re-targeting and augmentation

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“Just in Time” vs. Queues

Todd Henry“The Accidental Creative”

Setting up queues for future decisions• Filter• Discovery

2. CREATE SIMPLE SYSTEMS

How can we use tools and design systems to use data for decision-making and business growth?

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The Words We Use and Plan Around Matter

• “Keywords" – Google Keyword Planner -- challenge of Google

Analytics and keywords– Alexa -- keywords

• Our own “taxonomy” – How do we search, gather, and re-find information

for our work domain/field? – What words are important to other people, esp.

current and potential customers?

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https://adwords.google.com

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https://www.alexa.com

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Other Starting Tools

• Google Analytics• Web Traffic– Alexa– Compete– Quantcast

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https://www.google.com/analytics

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https://siteanalytics.compete.com

27https://www.quantcast.com

Twitter “Scraping” – Following Competitors and Experts

• SocialBro, Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, + MANY More

28http://www.socialbro.com

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http://tweetdeck.twitter. com

Industry Specific: Growing

• Next Big Sound• Bookigee

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Storage and Replay: Social Bookmarking & Dashboards

• What to DO with the darned information once we have it — for ourselves and for our working teams

• Examples:– Diigo in Social Bookmarking– NetVibes in Dashboards for teams

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http://www.diigo.com

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http://www.netvibes.com

Easy to Track Website Changes and Blog Updates

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Storage and Rediscovery

Hard Drive — cost in time and resources, rediscovery, privacy• Tendency: Folders on hard drives, with uncertain

names• Tagging: Taxonomy of stuff• Hard Drive or Cloud?

Sharing Ideas• Evernote (Your 100 year memory)• Dropbox (consumer), Box.net (end products with

clients)• Google Drive• Dropbox -- challenge - notifications

• Shoulder-tapping systems in a busy world

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Continuing Challenges in Data Finding, Storage, and Rediscovery

• How do others think?• Retention Policies — when do we ditch it?

How stale?• Who owns this?• How do I remember to come back to changed

data? Does this still need to tap my email?

Opportunity in New Combinations

• Reorganization — going through old folders• Forced Adjacency — putting ideas together

that normally don’t mix

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Become “Net Smart”

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Net Smart Now in Paperback:http://www.amazon.com/Net-Smart-How-Thrive-Online/dp/0262526131

Peeragogy.org 2.0 Handbook: PDF at http://peeragogy.net/peeragogy-2.0-print.pdf

Peeragogy.org Collaborative Handbook

3. LISTEN

How can we use data from inside and out that is already around us?

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Business Intelligence Through Social Media

• Skimming from social discourse

• Skimming through social sentiment

• Real-time analysis• Connecting databases of

purchasable consumer data with your own customer data

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Challenges with Aggregated Data

• Who are you? Multiple devices or browsers• Who are you? 5 users on Netflix, etc.

Source: By Jeremy Keith (Flickr: Cuddling with multiple devices) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Data – Presence and Connecting as Content and Data

• Social Networking as content – Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, FourSquare, Reddit–

what are you doing and what do you like?…with data• Ecosystems around ecosystems: Twitter and FB

application developers

– Diigo, StumbleUpon, Pinterist, Tumblr, Instagram, Vine, SnapChat – what are you looking at?

– Spotify, YouTube, and Pandora –what are you listening to?

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Business Intelligence through Listening

• Basic and Easy: Job Postings by Competitors

• Scraping Twitter feeds of competitors and industry pundits/reporters

• Google Alerts – any keywords that you choose

4. VISUALIZE

How can we use visuals to make and persuade around decision and data?

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Visualization: Decision Framing with Complex Data

Two goals:1. Use visuals to made decisions with data2. Use visuals to convince others in

organizations to make similar or better decisions

One Example: Gapminder

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http://www.gapminder.org

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Concept Mapping – data visualization

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mind_mapping_software

http://maremel.com/2011/12/infographic-tools-galore/ -- Detailed resources

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Data Visualization

• Visual.ly – Platform to create new infographics• Piktochart – Transforms your information into

memorable presentations.• Infogr.am - Create interactive charts and infographics.• Gephi – Like Photoshop for data. Graph visualization

and manipulation software.• Tableau Public - Free data visualization software.• Free Vector Infographic Kit – Vector infographic

elements from MediaLoot.• Weave – Web-based analysis and visualization

environment.• iCharts – Charts made easy.• ChartsBin – A web-based data visualization tool.• GeoCommons – See your data on a map.• VIDI – A suite of powerful Drupal visualization modules.• Prefuse – Information visualization software.• StatSilk – Desktop and online software for mapping and

visualization.• Gliffy – Online diagram and flowchart software.• Hohli – Online charts builder.• Many Eyes – Lets you upload data and create

visualizations.• Google Chart Tools – Display live data on your site.

Infographics for Decisions

5. SHARE (SMART)

How can we work with teams and partners to best use collaborative data and tools?

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Current Knowledge Patterns

• Common: email, print to share, cloud or hard drive folders– Weak choice to filter, find, and discover– Demographic differences– “Zero” cost – high social costs for others, social

obligations

How do you discover, filter, and store business knowledge?

Knowledge Management for Collaborative Work

• Modern Challenge: Distributive project management. – Salesforce as a $38 billion market cap business

• Assumptions and unspoken routines• Difference by audience and type of work– E.g., creative tools at

http://www.creativebloq.com/design/online-collaboration-tools-912855

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We (vs Me) and Data

• Collaboration Tools – More than just shared storage

• Physically Distributed Teams: Dropping Avg. Sq. Foot/Employee:– 225 in 2010 to 176 in 2012 and 150 in 2013

(CoreNet, 2013)– 195 in 2012, down from 250 “Gold Standard”

(Norm Miller, UCSD)

More Obvious Tools: Sync and Share

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https://www.loomio.org

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https://podio.com

Just a Step in the Digital River Firehose

• This is just a starting step down an interesting path . . . How do we balance time, value, information, and behavior of others?

• Resources change with greater speed . . . How do we keep tabs on what is possible and shift from what is outdated?

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Questions? Opportunities?

Gigi Johnson, EdDMaremel Institutegigi@maremel.com@maremel

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