1. Drinking from
the Digital Data
Fire Hose
WEBINAR
US Dept. of Housing and
Urban Development
OCIO Learning Session
Maremel Institute
Dr. Gigi Johnson
April 2014

2. … 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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3. 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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4. We face a
tsunami
of data
Abundant
Data
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5. Consumers and Competitors Decide
Everywhere and Are Throwing Off
Data
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6. 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.

7. Pain Points
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Noise
Abundance
Time

8. 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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9. 5 steps to both grow and simplify
1. Strategize
2. Create Simple Systems
3. Listen
4. Visualize
5. Share (Smart)
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10. 1. STRATEGIZE
How we can use this abundant data to make
better daily and strategic decisions?
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11. 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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12. 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?
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13. ―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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14. “Just in Time”
vs. Queues
Todd Henry
“The Accidental Creative”
Setting up queues for
future decisions
• Filter
• Discovery
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15. 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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16. 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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17. 17
https://adwords.google.com

18. 18

19. 19
https://www.alexa.com

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21. 21

22. Other Starting Tools
• Google Analytics
• Web Traffic
– Alexa
– Compete
– Quantcast
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23. 23
https://www.google.com/analytics

24. 24

25. 25

26. 26
https://siteanalytics.compete.com

27. 27https://www.quantcast.com

28. Twitter ―Scraping‖ – Following
Competitors and Experts
• SocialBro, Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, + MANY
More
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http://www.socialbro.com

29. 29
http://tweetdeck.twitter. com

30. Industry Specific: Growing
• Next Big Sound
• Bookigee
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31. 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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32. 32
http://www.diigo.com

33. 33

34. 34
http://www.netvibes.com

35. Easy to Track Website Changes and
Blog Updates
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36. Storage and Rediscovery
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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

37. 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?
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38. Opportunity in New Combinations
• Reorganization — going through old folders
• Forced Adjacency — putting ideas together
that normally don’t mix
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39. 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

40. 3. LISTEN
How can we use data from inside and out
that is already around us?
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41. 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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42. Challenges with Aggregated Data
• Who are you? Multiple devices or browsers
• Who are you? 5 users on Netflix, etc.
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Source: By Jeremy Keith (Flickr: Cuddling with multiple devices)
[CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

43. 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?

44. 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
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45. 4. VISUALIZE
How can we use visuals to make and
persuade around decision and data?
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46. Visualization: Decision Framing with
Complex Data
Two goals:
1. Use visuals to made decisions with data
2. Use visuals to convince others in
organizations to make similar or better
decisions
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47. One Example: Gapminder
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http://www.gapminder.org

48. Concept Mapping – data
visualization
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mind_mapping_software
http://maremel.com/2011/12/infographic-
tools-galore/ -- Detailed resources

49. 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
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50. 5. SHARE (SMART)
How can we work with teams and partners to
best use collaborative data and tools?
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51. 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?
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52. 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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53. 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)

54. More Obvious Tools:
Sync and Share
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55. 55
https://www.loomio.org

56. 56
https://podio.com

57. 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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58. Questions? Opportunities?
Gigi Johnson, EdD
Maremel Institute
gigi@maremel.com
@maremel
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