Hey everyone, thanks for following BuzzData and checking in on what we do. A quick update: we recently launched a new redesign for our company website:
This redesign means that new blog content will now show up at:
http://buzzdata.com/content/blog
Eventually this Tumblr will probably disappear. But you always can keep up with BuzzData’s ongoing adventures in data at our new blog address or on Facebook or Twitter.
Cheers!
-the BuzzData team
From the press release:
BuzzData Selected as Finalist for SXSW Accelerator Competition
March 9, 2012, TORONTO, ON — BuzzData, a developer of data-sharing software, announced today that it has been selected as a finalist in the News Related Technologies category for the 4th annual SXSW Accelerator competition.
“We’re honoured to have been selected by SXSW,” BuzzData CEO and co-founder Mark Opausky said. “BuzzData is changing the way people showcase their data and communicate the information it contains. Our inclusion in the News-Related Technologies category reflects our success to date with newsrooms looking to produce first-class data-driven journalism.”
SXSW Accelerator is the marquee event of SXSW Startup Village, where early-stage tech companies present innovative technologies in front of influential judges and a live audience. More than 670 companies worldwide submitted to present — BuzzData was one of only 48 finalists selected.
The three-day event will be held Monday, March 12 to Wednesday, March 14. BuzzData presents Monday, March 12, between 12:30pm and 1:30pm, local time. Live streaming of all Accelerator presentations, including BuzzData’s, will be available at the following link:
http://sxsw.com/accelerator/live
———————————————————————————————————-
If you’d like to check up on our CEO Mark Opausky and our EVP of Business Development Nick Edouard’s adventures in Austin this weekend, follow them @Opauszky and @NickEdouard.
Our Best City in the World Contest has come to an end! We’re so excited to start compiling all the submissions and seeing what people came up with. (Backgrounder: in this contest, the Economist Intelligence Unit challenged the world to devise and visualize new ways to rank cities and measure urban liveability.)
You can check out — and in the case of interactive submissions, play with — many of the contest entries which have now been made public on our Best City Contest Topic page (which aggregates all the submissions).
Some screenshots of the most recent submissions (picked for no specific reason):
Very impressive — great job, everyone!
I’ve worked with data throughout my career (possibly for my sins). I’m not a data scientist, but even before BuzzData barely a day went by where an Excel spreadsheet or CSV file didn’t end up in my inbox. Sales forecasts, cost-benefit analyses, market research, product test results, benchmark data, P&Ls and other financial data – even my own household budget.
Now, given my role at BuzzData, I also work “in” data – I’m part of the data sector or ecosystem. So naturally, I follow industry trends. Now barely a day goes by without something Big Data-related ending up in my inbox.
Don’t get me wrong – I think Big Data is pretty darn cool. I’m not going to pretend that I know my Hadoop from my elbow, but I recognize the potential of Big Data and understand that Big Data is rightly a Big Deal. It’s not just a “current obsession.”
But I do worry that all the noise currently around Big Data is detracting from a very real problem that already exists for organizations over and above “what to do about Big Data?” What is this problem? Simple: how best to share the data you already have.
I’m talking about your sales forecasts, test results, HR employee lists, your output from Big Data analysis, etc. You’ve done the work creating or curating the data – but how do you share it so that it becomes useful and improves your organization’s collective knowledge? This data might not be big, but it’s important to you and your organization. In fact, Big Data might be compounding this problem: after all, Big Data needs to be turned into yet more data – specifically smaller data files – to become digestible by people and actually actionable. And again, that data needs to be shared.
Just identifying this problem immediately prompts two questions. First, how do we share data today? Well, if you’re like most people, you probably a) email it around or b) put it in a folder somewhere, perhaps using a simple file-sharing platform (like Dropbox or Box) or some form of enterprise collaboration platform (like Sharepoint or Huddle).
Second: Is there anything wrong with sharing via email and file folders? Well, when you open a data file this way, you aren’t shown:
This data-sharing problem is perhaps most obvious in government. Open-data initiatives are good for many reasons, not least because they can radically improve internal data-sharing. “One of the reasons governments opened up their data is because it allowed better communication between departments,” Open Knowledge Foundation founder Rufus Pollock told us in an interview in 2011. And he’s right: it’s consistently documented that a high percentage of the initial visits open data platforms receive upon launch are from internal IP addresses.
The bottom line here is that certain types of files – data files (.xls, .csv, etc.) – need context to aid engagement. These kinds of files are inevitably part of a bigger picture, and that’s the real thing that needs to be communicated – the story, if you will, in your data. This is how your data becomes clever.
We’re making things better for anyone who needs to share data with their team, organization or the world. We’ve spoken with a lot of people about their specific issues and possible solutions, and continue to do so every day. We don’t really care if your data is big or not, we just want it to be as clever as possible.
Nick Edouard, EVP Business Development & Marketing, BuzzData
Want to know more about how we’re making data sharing easy, effective and engaging? Check out http://buzzdata.com or get in touch with me directly at nick@buzzdata.com.
Have you been planning to submit a data visualization entry to our Best City in the World Contest and help the Economist Intelligence Unit find new ways to rank the world’s cities? Time is running out — don’t let your chance to win $10,000 slip away.
Submitting your entry correctly involves a few steps; make sure you get it to us properly so your efforts aren’t wasted. Take a few minutes to watch our submission guide video to ensure you know how:
Best City in the World Contest Submission Guide from BuzzData on Vimeo.
First, read the Contest Rules. By participating in this contest, you agree to be bound by these rules. We also suggest that you bookmark this page and the Contest Rules page for future reference; please check back from time to time for any updates.
EIU 2011 World Cost of Living Index
a. Upload your new dataset to BuzzData, making it “Private”. See BuzzData Help for guidance on doing this.
b. Add the topic “Best City Contest” to the dataset (mandatory) and start to follow this topic (optional but we recommend it).
a. Make the dataset “Public”. See BuzzData Help for guidance on doing this.
b. Invite the user “BuzzJudge” to become a collaborator on your dataset. This will confirm your submission.
Our ‘Best City in the World’ contest in partnership with the Economist Intelligence Unit forges ahead — there’s only one weekend left to submit your entry! The deadline fast approaches: March 4, 2012. If you’ve got data visualization skills and urban design knowledge to show off, don’t let the chance to redefine city liveability and win $10,000 slip past you.
Some quick updates on the contest:
1) Eager data-visualization enthusiasts continue to iterate on the EIU’s liveability data sets on our Best City Contest topic page, mining for interesting and telling trends:
Some very interesting ways of interpreting the data are popping up — follow along and join the discussion!
2) One contestant recently asked us a question regarding climate vs. weather indicators in the EIU’s liveability index:
At “Category 3: Culture and environment” in the document “About Liveability Survey.doc”, the indicator Humidity/temperature rating is mentioned.
This indicator does not appear in the (liveability) spreadsheet, instead there is a “Climate rating” indicator.
Does this indicator relate climate in the sense of weather, and in that case which factors is this indicator taking into account?
EIU Cost of Living editor Jon Copestake clarified as follows:
“The climate category has two indicators: a general comfort indicators supplied by the correspondent and also a quantitative indicator calculated from average weather conditions. The enquirer is right - these are the same indicator.”
To help further clarify, Copestake also passed along the EIU’s climate scoring methodology, which is now found under “Attachments” of the EIU’s contest liveability index data set.
The EIU has been very open to answering contestant inquiries as completely as possible, so do take advantage! If you have a question, ask Copestake directly through a BuzzData private message or ask us at contest@buzzdata.com.
BuzzData is hosting a panel talk tonight called “How social data can change the world” at the Centre for Social Innovation (215 Spadina Ave., 4th floor). Come hear speakers at the forefront of data communication talk about:
1) the significance of sharing data and connecting data to people
2) the challenges and risks of the data-sharing business model
3) how social principles are key to driving (and scaling) data-driven innovation
Our panel of speakers:
More details can be read here. Looking forward to a stimulating evening! See you there!
The Atlantic Cities just posted an interview with one of the judges of our Best City in the World contest, EIU Cost of Living editor Jon Copestake:
Another great related article to read on the subject, also in The Atlantic Cities, is “Why Ranking Cities is Such a Tricky Business,” by Toronto-based Globe and Mail writer John Lorinc, who lays out the pitfalls and oversights that can occur with international city ranking press coverage.
Would love to hear people’s thoughts on the EIU’s new open-market, open-data approach to encouraging new methods for measuring liveability, in light of Lorinc’s piece. With data enthusiasts already dabbling with different techniques on our real-time Best City Contest topic page, things are already getting interesting.
Want to throw your hat in the ring? Watch our submission guide video, and check out the contest details.
-Momoko Price (momoko@buzzdata.com)
Hello and Happy Holidays from everyone at BuzzData!
The new year is fast approaching, but we couldn’t help but push a few more new features to the site before 2011 officially comes to an end. Without further ado, here are the latest and greatest improvements we’d like you to know about:
Dataset and user profile badges to add to your websites
We have just released a set of customizable publishing badges you can now embed into other website(s), thus instantly increasing the visibility and reach of the data you generate.
Whether you want to use them on a personal blog or a company homepage, BuzzData badges make it easier than ever to share your data with the world.
Adding badges to your website requires simply copy-and-pasting a few code snippets into your webpage source code. You can learn all about how to add badges to your website in our new FAQ & Knowledge Base. Try them out and let us know what you think!
Tweet, share and ‘like’ datasets
Now sharing data with your social circle is as easy as a single mouse click. Want your social media followers and friends to be able to download cool data you find on BuzzData? Get the data into the Twittersphere in an instant.
Community Tasks
This is an early-stage community feature we’re quite excited about. Now whenever you create a new dataset on BuzzData, you can write in tasks that you’d like help with from others in the dataset’s Overview tab.
So what? Well, if your dataset is public, it will show up in our new global “Tasks” webpage, located just to the left of the BuzzData search box, along with the tasks you need help with.
The Tasks page is where users can peruse unfinished data projects from around the world that they can contribute to, thus helping the data community work together to achieve their goals.
To illustrate, when creating a dataset:
The global Tasks page is an early-stage feature that will continue to evolve in 2012. We hope you make use of it often and let us know how we can make it better by emailing us at support@buzzdata.com.
Now accepting direct image uploads and video URLs
Have you made a visualization of your dataset on your desktop and want to upload an image or video of it in action? No problem, you can now upload image files directly to the site and view them in our new visualization viewer.
In addition, BuzzData’s visualization viewer now allows you to post and stream videos from a variety of popular content providers such as Youtube, Vimeo and BrightCove, so you can showcase videos of interactive visualizations and other media on BuzzData as well.
Alright that’s it for now! We hope you have a lovely, stress-free winter break and a fun-filled New Years’ Eve!
The BuzzData Team
