Making sense of small data

Jon Pratty/Arts Council England

“We want a website. We don’t want a database. We don’t need a database. We want more people to visit our attractions, our museums, our theatres.”

Cut to another place…

We were almost at the gallery we’d scoped out for a weekend visit.

But it wasn’t there.

#Small Data: check how people find you, online!

• You are the single most important source of info about what you do. • No-one else is tasked with getting

your info right.

Be more data-centric

• Being data-centric isn’t about being digital.

• It’s about your stuff, your collection, your theatre piece

• It’s about picking out the most important facts that might be relevant to other people

It’s just information

• Calling the same things, the same things. • Info about your venue, your work, or the

things you have collected in your museum.• Where is it? • When does it open? • What’s the most popular object?

Basic steps

Building blocks for an information strategy:

• It’s impossible to know everything about all objects in your museum collection

• Key thing is to know the basic stories• What are the most important items? • Distinctive characteristics?

Relational Culture and me?

• In a relational world, all info sources are important, big or small.

• Your valuable info mixes into a bigger pot of data that people search online.

• Might be a uniquely important piece of information about an object that is uniquely searchable online.

Things connect in different ways now

• Search engines, Reddit, Twitter, Europeana, the National Curriculum, the OCLC Universal library info system.

• But how do you decide what, and how, to connect?

• New meanings and cultures: have we got a history or anthropology of hashtags?

Relational thinking

• Relational thinking = taking one story about your early lawnmower, and making connections to transport or social history websites or databases.

• What might the National Curriculum link be to that?

• Thinking about linking means thinking about deeper relationships between objects, eras, subjects

Why is it my job?

• Because you are the expert here• People need to come to you to find out about

this• You’re the mother lode of info about the work• Knowing your key facts and info is the start of

being data-centric• Curating & thinking relationally is core

ideology of Open Authority

Back to reality

• Flag yourself up to the web, making your culture findable

• Think about what data is• Work out what your needs are• Take small steps• Think about how things connect, how context

works• Keep quality at the heart of the data and info

plan

Brand values of data

• We trust it• It’s up-to-date• it’s authoritative• It’s information rich• It’s neutral• It’s easily readable• Accessible• Sustainable

Read More

• Counting What Counts, an excellent research report commissioned by NESTA/Arts Council England.

• Gavin Starks, CEO of ODI – great and simple explanation of what Open Data actually is: http://www.slideshare.net/theODI/odi-at-digital-utopias-201501

The Internet of Place

• London Data Dashboard• Leeds Data Mill• Culture data sits in broader information context• Crime rates, school catchment areas, pollution

danger zones, property prices by postcode• Novel online services and commercially viable

business models with open data • Social machines

Culture Kent Pathfinder project

• Towards a regional data economy• Strategic funds [£25k] into arts/tourism partnership • Town councils, a county council, museums, galleries

and theatres, and major destination marketing organisation

• Intention: transformational change, agreement to collect culture info and content

• Share it out to reach bigger audiences via other platforms, other publishers or data output

You’d think that was simple…

• Collective understanding of open culture values not in place

• Across regional landscape, micro-economies exist

• Mixed commercial and public sector models• Sometimes commercial model that dictates

how projects work• Publicly funded open data culture is potentially

dangerous to business models

Agreement!

• We have worked hard to break down barriers with our partners

• Tentative, but stable, decision• Shared data is the goal• It has a shared value between us as partners• That was the real project, not delivery of the

technology platform

Finding a #smalldata purpose

• Pathfinder project incorporated into successful Kent Cultural Destinations proposal

• Pathfinder project forms information strategy core to the bigger project

• Partners of original project group invited onto the larger group advisory board

• Now an Open Information project, with a real public-facing context.

Open information business plan

• How long would it take to develop skills in content production or data sharing

• Considered size of partner organisations and resources at their disposal

• Looked at ways to make data upload easy: direct input, CSV files, data or api hook-ups

• Thought about workflows: some once every six months; some tourism partners working in campaign cycles

• We had to match the system to some very different needs and workflows.

Project overview

CKPData Pool

Data from Pathfinders

Data from cultural sources

Digital Platform

Analysis& reporting

Data from Visit Kent

Datastandardised

Engagement& support

Data sharing withother data sources,e.g. Education, Economic

Revenue,New products & services

1

API for researchers& 3rd party apps

Apps & other digital platforms

2014

Project overview

CKPData Pool

Data from Pathfinders

Data from cultural sources

Digital platform

Analysis& reporting

Data from Visit Kent

Datastandardised

Engagement& support

Data sharing withother data sources,e.g. Education, Economic

Revenue,New products & services

1

2

3API for researchers& 3rd party apps

Apps &other digital platforms

20152014 2016

Project overview

CKPData Pool

Data from Pathfinders

Data from cultural sources

website

Analysis& reporting

Data from Visit Kent

Datastandardised

Engagement& support

Data sharing withother data sources,e.g. Education, Economic

Revenue,New products & services

1

2

3API for researchers& 3rd party apps

4

Apps & website plugins

2014 2015 2016 2017

Where we are today

• Agreement info is going to be shared• It might develop into a range of paid-for

information services• It can be used by our tourism sector partners in

existing services that are paid-for or subscription services

• There would be an initial information service that is free and accessible

• Embodies public sector ‘commons’ philosophies.

Next steps

• Partner culture/tourism data hack day• Partners/developers/tech people• Considering how things join• How to actually make something• Mapping common data fields from our cultures• Map these simple fields across to Culture24• Deeson - platform integration or uploading• Partners - diplomacy and negotiations around

copyright and IP

Closing the last local loop of open data

• These might be new cultural roles• New models for income generation• Accumulation of cultural capital• Imagine a line in your accounts or annual

report, on your asset register, that records growth in your relational connectivity

Thanks

…this is my last day at Arts Council England.

Jon PrattyCreative Digital Producerjonnypratty@gmail.com@jon_pratty