crowdsourcing Meets visualization
Comments(4)So I’m a bit late to the party, but I had the pleasure of participating in Assignment Zero. What is Assignment Zero, exactly?
“Inspired by the open-source movement, this is an attempt to bring journalists together with people in the public who can help cover a story.“
This project is interesting because with all the talk of democratizing this and democratizing that, why not “democratize” journalism? We have the CNN-YouTube debates, major news outlets are increasingly relying on user-submitted stories and content, so why not?
The fine folk behind Assignment Zero and Wired.com answered that question by offering any volunteer the chance to interview experts of crowdsourcing. I had the luck and pleasure to interview – Mr. Martin Wattenberg. He runs IBM’s Visual Communication Lab where his team explores ways to “visualize” information that help people make sense of data. We all prefer pictures and graphs over pages and pages of text…but what I really love about information visualization is that I believe it is the next frontier for analysis and communication. The Internet gave us an information-buffet, Google indexed it all…now we just need an effective way to find the gems in the haystack.
A peek at some of our Q&A’s:
Q: Your Many Eyes project mentions that visualizations offer a social side, where “discussion and storytelling are just as important as data analysis.” What is it about visualization that sparks discussion and collective insight?
A: I don’t really know. Those are exactly the questions we’re trying to answer with Many Eyes. I can hazard a few guesses, though. On the serious side, visualizations can give a group of people a common mental model so they can have a productive discussion. Let’s face it, it’s boring and trite to complain about government spending in the abstract… but add a historical chart of the entire US budget and you get an interesting conversation. Visualizations are also just plain fun, and serve as an attraction and conversation starter.
Q: How would you like to see information visualization evolve?
A: I’d like to see information visualization turn into a full-fledged medium of communication. That will require new tools to make it easy to create and remix visualizations, as well as universal access. I’d also like to see information visualization used for more types of data than pre-digested tables of numbers. We’re starting to see more visualizations of “unstructured” data, but there’s a long way to go.
Q: Do you really think there’s wisdom in crowds? If so, what’s the clearest example you know of?
A: There’s always wisdom in crowds, just as there is always gold dissolved in seawater. The question is how to extract it! One of the clearest examples is Wikipedia, which illustrates three features of crowd intelligence. First, it can work: I find Wikipedia so useful that I probably turn to it at least once a day. Second, it works inconsistently: I still frequently find incomplete Wikipedia articles. Third–and this may be the most controversial point–crowds can be creative. If you look at the set of guidelines, processes and policies that Wikipedia has invented, it’s an amazing structure that’s not quite like anything else.
My favorite quip by Martin was also his last of our interview:
“If you want to see the future, look at what artists are doing today.”
Check out the rest of the Q&A interview here.
Stumble It!
Del.icio.us!Change the world in 5 seconds
Leave a CommentPinguy has an excellent collection of famous images that have changed our world. In the 5 seconds that it took to let these images register in our brains, lives were turned upside down and new realities emerged. The strong emotions that these images elicited had a wide range..
Moving:
Somber:
Relief and jubilation:
The point is that these images communicated more in 5 seconds than any book, editorial, essay, or blog could have done in 5 weeks. Words are just never enough sometimes…
Pinguy deserves a fortune cookie for providing historical context and links for each image. He also cites the photographers who captured these incredible images. Check out the rest of the collection right here.
Startup Weekend?? Not so much
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No one dreaded the imminent arrival of the weekday more than the 70 founders of StartupWeekend.com.
The goal?
Create a company in one weekend from idea all the way to launch on Sunday night. Perhaps they were inspired by Guy Kawasaki’s bootstrapping efforts, or the growing interest in crowdsourcing…needless to say, the launch didn’t happen and went from VoSnap to “Oh Snaps!”.
But,
(yes that was a big but and I cannot lie) there are a ton of things about this group that I loved:
- VoSnap is set to solve a very real problem – making decisions in a quick and timely fashion while ensuring everyone has a voice. Ironically, the same decision-making problem that VoSnap is attempting to solve eventually led to its demise as experienced founders “sat on the sideline” without contributing their voice. Given this experience, I’d love to see how they address this tricky issue within the released product.
- Everyone who attended became a founder. How freakin’ cool is that?!? It actually backfired a bit, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction as far as crowdsourcing is concerned.
- They acknowledged their mistakes. Not only did they acknowledge their mistake internally (to prevent civil war), but they also acknowledged it publicly with a post aptly titled “Brutal Honesty”.
- They shared their lessons for others to learn from. Ahhh, crowdsourcing at its best. I love it when I see the free-flow of information from one party to another. Now that is true democratization of the internet.
There were a few docked brownie points of course (missing expectations, apparently gaming truemors), but all in all, you gotta give this group some major kudos. Whether VoSnap sees the light of day or not, I’m sure everyone involved with the project has learned a great deal, and that’s what really matters right?
It starts with a line…
More often than not, we all need to just take a step back to really see the big picture and the meaning behind things.
I wonder how many takes they needed to shoot this video.
Reggae meets Orthodox Jew
I have absolutely no clue what this guy is saying, but it’s a fantastic mixing of cultures. My buddy said it best:
“That’s like the weirdest combination I could think of…jewish reggae artist”
This is a “cultural melting pot” at its finest. The video has fantastic visualizations as well so check it out.
A Hidden Truth? Al Gore ‘08
I’m not one to blog about politics, but I was watching an Al Gore interview today and of course, the inevitable questions about his candidacy arose. I’d love to see the odds on which someone is surely gambling on, but assuming he WILL throw his hat into the ring, he is bound to receive some strawberry kudos for running such a savvy build-up to the campaign. Let’s examine it from his point of view:
- Al Gore is not an official candidate for President
But he sure is making quite a media splash. An Oscar win for An Inconvenient Truth which is now on DVD, and the perfectly timed release of his new book The Assault on Reason – which, conveniently enough, gives him a reason to go on “book” tours on all the relevant talk and news shows.
- Politics shmolitics!
Since he is not running, he doesn’t have to deal with all the silly political mumbo-jumbo. Let the other candidates confuse American voters on 59 different topics. Instead of bickering over voting histories, Al gets to stick to the big issues – the Environment and the Iraq War. Two big issues that mean much more to the American public than someone’s voting history on some obscure bill. To top it off, BOTH of these issues can be easily addressed by using Al’s movie and book as the basis for discussion, rather than discussing only for politics sake. And if a candidate tries to smear him? Al could simply respond with “I’m not running, but thanks for the thought”. Instant kudo points right there.
- Image is everything
Ignoring the wise marketing words of Sprite soda, Al is carving up quite an image for himself (something he seemed to have trouble with during the 2000 election). He is the clear-cut “face” of the global warming movement, which helps him establish some moral credibility, and he also has the job experience to speak on the Iraq War. Whereas everyone else is bickering, Al is starting to emerge as somoene who champions the issues instead of playing political tag. He doesn’t get caught up slamming other candidates, because he’s not running…yet. He is a “champion-er” of issues, which is what American voters ultimately want to see from their candidates.
Al Gore seems to have everything right now. He has the basis to discuss 2 very important issues while deftly avoiding political mud fights to ride the wave of “positivity” right into the White House. Not saying he will, but from the looks of it, he has somehow managed to turn “Plan B” in 2000 into some pretty nice options in 2008. If you’re into signs and patterns and such, check out the interesting parallels to Nixon.
Okay, that’s enough politics for now 
Ain’t no fakin’ it
There’s something about good journalism that makes me smile. Case in point:
Anderson Cooper is all over CNN these days, and given the lack of quality TV, I’ve been spending a lot of time watching him on CNN. An honest, genuine journalist, Anderson has an uncanny ability of letting a story speak for itself, rather than crafting a story. But what really struck me about Anderson was learning of his Vanderbilt roots. He’s a priveleged son, from a priveleged family, who refused the silver spoon and instead ventured off to meet new faces and stories in war-torn regions such as Burma, Somalia, and Rwanda.
The appeal of Anderson and the really good bloggers out there is the genuine feeling they provide to their audience. It’s what I believe to be the gold standard of the “Conversation Economy”, and will be a decisive factor in the future evolution of social networks and online communities. But it doesn’t stop there…rather it begins with friendships and relationships and makes a stop by journalism, blogging, marketing, advertising, and business……no matter where, there just ain’t no fakin’ it =)
UPDATE:
Came across this nice lil quote courtesy of Doc that pretty much sums up this post:
It’s all about having a human voice and re-personalizing the connections.
~ Chris Anderson, Deliver Magazine May ‘07
So Anderson Cooper and bloggers in general = human voice
Typical news segment = corporate speak as decided by some editor
The choice is simple right?
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