Month: October 2016

Knowledge is More Than a Point of Data.

Every month, with clockwork like precision a brown paper package arrives in the mail. The unwrapping is revealing. For almost 50 years the National Geographic has been enriching my imagination. The connectedness to ourselves, to our planet and cosmos is like a lattice of human context. It’s also an important source for our visual and aesthetic literacy. I see our graphically visual world as distinctly human, whereas raw data points have no human essence. There should be no mistaking data for knowledge.

Big Data, and data visualization are important topics. But it’s troubling when they’re stories reduced to little more than ill-defined link bait. Accepting there’s also no unified theory or singular definitions for either data or it’s visualization is important too. We can discern between structured (bits of ledger) and unstructured data (streams of social chatter), but data itself is simply the columns and rows fodder. It’s the slices of pie in that fill a chart. Spreadsheets and pie charts are meaningless artifacts. It’s the art of asking questions that brings them to life. Transforming crumbs of data into information, in turn gets us to the possibility of knowing.

Without structure, data doesn’t become knowledge. It’s like looking into a murky swamp and trying to understand the dividing properties of an amoeba. Try viewing it in a petri dish instead. Appreciating when there’s no structure, there’s no meaning attracted me to Manual Lima’s book Visual Complexity. It’s influenced my appreciation of visual literacy. It was also cool seeing Mentionmapp on page 153.

With a historical context and framework of techniques and best practices, Visual Complexity also help me discover other visualization leaders (who we’ll write about in future posts). Lima’s depiction of the visualize network being “the syntax of a new language,” made an impression. Knowing that sight is the translational interface between a visual object and a textual relationship, was my… “ahhh, that’s it moment.”

When data intersects with visual science, there needs to be an aesthetic anchoring for knowledge to surface. There has to be an art to the science. Lima shares this Matt Woolman quote; “functional visualizations are more than statistical analyses and computation algorithms. They must make sense to the users and require a visual language systems that uses colour, shape, line, hierarchy, and composition to communicate clearly and appropriately, much like the alphabetic and character based languages used worldwide between humans.”

From his TED2015 talk Lima says, “we can see this shift from trees into networks in many domains of knowledge. This metaphor of the network, is really already adopting various shapes and forms, and it’s almost becoming a growing visual taxonomy.”

Watch Manuel Lima: A visual history of human knowledge

Using data and revealing a world of stories is an art. I’m appreciative of how Lima communicates the aesthetic value of visualization. Turning the complex and the chaotic into meaningful social, political, economic, and human insights is essential. We can’t get so lost in the science of data that we forget the importance of allowing our eyes, and allowing ourselves to both revel in it, and to discover knowledge in the art of data.

*Conceptual artist* *Katie Lewis* devises elaborate methods of recording data about herself, be it sensations felt by various body parts or other other aspects of life’s minutiae plotted over time using little more than pins, thread and pencil marked dates. The artworks themselves are abstracted from their actual purpose, and only the organic forms representing the accumulation data over time are left. She describes her process as being extremely rigid, involving the creation of strict rules on how data is collected, documented, and eventually transformed into these pseudo-scientific installations.

From the pen of John (cofounder)

Please visit Mentionmapp today!

My Virtual but Very Real Run

Forecasting rain. None came. Didn’t matter anyway. Barring a deluge of the biblical kind, I was running. The virtual Great Climate Race was happening. No excuses.

The start. Olympic Village. I’m crappy with selfies!

Unimaginable. The idea of running the seawall two years ago, even a year ago was more like something I’d experience through the lens of a virtual reality headset. Shocking. My physiotherapist saying (Oct. 2013), “your left hip needs replacing.” Me thinking, “I’m too young for that!” Reality. That crunching sound with every step, the limp and chronic pain was bone grinding away at bone.

Bionic. New hip (Feb. 6 2015). Another scar. A little more life-tested. It’s been a process. It’s been hard work. Pain is gone, canes are gone, I should have a Pez dispenser because pills were being eaten like candy, that thinking is gone too. Lack of mobility, angst about being jostled on the sidewalk or in crowded places were tangible. Physical limitations haunted me. Memories push me.

Hard. Rehab was the no excuse exercise. Five sometimes six days a week. Being healthy is all the push needed. Running’s a part it. It’s not about racing, it’s not about times and distances, and it’s not a social activity.

Solitude. Early mornings are like having the Seawall almost to yourself. There’s energy and creativity from being lost and alone in thought. There’s the tuning into a physical rhythm. Some body moments are like being in a Jazz mans groove, and other moments are total discordance. Some mornings I’m running away, some I’m running into an unknown tomorrow, some I’m just running. I’m writing, I’m running the business, I’m device free, I’m non-quantifiable (this run was an exception). My only distraction is my imagination.

Climate. It’s bigger than me. I run for me, but this morning I ran for the Climate. Leaves crunched and squished underfoot. Fall colours light in the early morning darkness, and there’s puddles unseen to splash through. Seagull’s are unseen but overheard. Water’s lapping against the rocks. A city waking up. A SouthEast sliver of white light breaks through black cloud. Enough wind in my face to hint resistance, but not whither the pace. Fully sensing this environment is worth the hard work, because it’s not hard to take in and feel in awe.

12.4km. A meaningful cause. What was only imagined, was realized. I’m grateful that the Great Climate Race can create moments that matter for each us, today and tomorrow. Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, get out and walk or run the 2.5km or 10km and be part of the Great Climate Race. No excuses. You can take action. You can make a difference. There’s only one planet. There’s only one life to live. There’s no do-over.

Orcas Inspire People to Care About the Environment and Climate Change.

ELSE, (“Emerging leaders for Solar Energy), is partnering with the Great Climate Race and Bullfrog Power to raise funds for an expanded renewable energy project to power OrcaLab. (http://GreatClimateRace.org/orcalab)

The OrcaLab story is worth exploring further, so we caught up with their founder Dr. Paul Spong to learn more.

A little background:

Dr. Paul Spong is originally from New Zealand.
He’s a neuroscientist and cetologist
He has researched orcas in British Columbia, Canada for almost 50 years
In 1972 he moved to Hanson Island and established the OrcaLab.

Dr. Spong explains, “OrcaLab’s research is land based, and as a matter of philosophy it’s research without interference. The approach works well in our area, with its many waterways & relatively small distances. OrcaLab’s location on Hanson Island at Blackney Pass is perfect for reception of radio signals from Johnstone Strait & Blackfish Sound, two of the most important areas used by the whales.”

Dr. Spong explains that they’ve developed a network of remote hydrophone stations that provides acoustic coverage of much of the orcas’ core habitat. Adding, “this remote system enables us to follow the whales. In the past these were mostly acoustic, but recently we’ve been able to incorporate video. We now have a network of six remote hydrophone stations, and a network of ten remote cameras.”

As both a place of research, and the place the team calls home, Dr. Spong describes the “lab as fairly complex, and capable of using a lot of energy.” He points out that they do cook with a wood-burning stove, and explains, “when we started the lab in 1970 we basically had no energy source at all; then incorporated a small gas powered generator to charge our VHF radio batteries for a little bit of communication with the outside world.”

OrcaLab’s energy needs began to change as they started developing the systems and capabilities to monitor the whales remotely. He’s quick to point out that today “our energy needs keep escalating, in particular as our technology and communication needs expand. Since the early ‘80’s we’ve being trying to boost our energy capacity by using solar. We’ve bit by bit increased our ability to meet our energy needs using solar. We’re essentially there, but only when the sun is shining.”

To support OrcaLabs expanded renewable energy project visit http://GreatClimateRace.org/orcalab

Being on Northern Vancouver Island there is no shortage of cloudy and rainy days, which dictates the need. for more solar capacity. “Our whole objective is to become oil free, which is what we’re really hoping the Great Climate Race will allow us to become,” Dr. Spong added.

We’re thinking about this story from our human connection with nature and climate as well; he points our that “the work we do with orcas inspires people to care about the environment. Not just our work, but the orcas themselves inspire people. In a large part the work we do is an attempt to help people understand the lives of the orcas which in turn gives them context and a connection to their own lives.”

It’s worth appreciating that unlike the whale watching industry, OrcaLab’s work is essentially doing the same thing. The key difference is that they aren’t disturbing the lives of orcas. As he said, “it’s a tricky balance. You have to think about ways in which people become involved with the environment, coming to care about it, and ultimately coming to protect it.”

Bringing us into contact with the orca in a benign way “is helping people learn and care about them, and this in turn leads to the understanding that their habitat needs to be protected.” In conclusion, we wholeheartedly agree with Dr. Spong when he says, “I think it’s a big message for the environment.”

http://GreatClimateRace.org/orcalab

A #PRStudChat community discussion: PR, Twitter & Politics

It was great being a guest and participating in this timely & topical TweetChat. This PR Student Chat is hosted by Deirdre Breakenridge and Valerie Merahn Simon. This all flows out of the October 11th discussion.

There’s little doubt the 2016 Presidential election campaign, and Twitter have come together like the amplifier connecting with the guitar. It’s an electrified stage. But, it’s place politically extends well beyond what’s unfolding in the United States. I’ve also had the chance to watch a Canadian election play out on the platform. Watching the Brexit tweet stream was significant too. Everyday with Mentionmapp I get a first hand view of Twitter’s global reach.

Because I can’t vote, and what I think about either party or candidate doesn’t matter, most of my bias is checked at the door. I’m interested in this conversation from a perspective of the communication platform and what’s being communicated on it. Channeling my inner Marshall McLuhan, it’s about us considering his notion — “the medium is the message” — and asking, how is Twitter changing or impacting the message?

Rather than subscribing to the “just wing it theory” for the #PRStudChat, I did some preparation. After looking at the research notes, it seemed like a decent idea to share them.

Mapping Twitter Topic Networks: From Polarized Crowds to Community Clusters (FEBRUARY 20, 2014)

Structurally, here’s how we can map & think about conversations on Twitter. “They create networks with identifiable contours as people reply to and mention one another in their tweets. These conversational structures differ, depending on the subject and the people driving the conversation. Six structures are regularly observed: divided, unified, fragmented, clustered, and inward and outward hub and spoke structures.” We can think about the six structures as distinct “audiences.” This is a communication and a conversation network, so how do we “crack it”?

“Like topographic maps of mountain ranges, network maps can also illustrate the points on the landscape that have the highest elevation. Some people occupy locations in networks that are analogous to positions of strategic importance on the physical landscape. Network measures of “centrality” can identify key people in influential locations in the discussion network, highlighting the people leading the conversation. The content these people create is often the most popular and widely repeated in these networks, reflecting the significant role these people play in social media discussions.”

THE FIRST DEBATE OF THE TWITTER ELECTION

“Most key elections have a key medium (radio for the silver-tongued F.D.R., (TV for the dashing Kennedy). Whoever wins the frantic, news-bite-addled contest of 2016 will owe that success partly to the small blue bird.”

“Twitter, like most social-media services, is an instrument of selective scope; the “sphere” you follow isn’t comprehensive of the globe but of a narrow range of users you find interesting.”

“According to NBC’s tweeted analysis, Trump, by somewhat mysterious metrics, generated sixty-two per cent of the “Twitter conversation,” while Clinton generated thirty-eight. On Twitter, though, it isn’t clear that more mentions translate into more success”

One of millions, but a .gif that seems to be an embodiment of the internet — https://twitter.com/rabihalameddine/status/780616963584176129

Political Newcomers: Here’s How Twitter Can Boost Your Campaign

Inside Trump’s ‘cyborg’ Twitter army

Twitter beats national polls for election predictions, prof claims

Think the Press Is Partisan? It Was Much Worse for Our Founding Fathers

Why would anyone spend money on Twitter?

There’s more to PR, politics, and Twitter. The Presidential Campaign is like a black hole sucking all of the attention out of the “mediaverse,” which leaves me curious about looking into Congressional and Senatorial campaigns… that’ll be another day. Looking past election campaigns, it’s also worth considering how Twitter as a communication platform operates and influences all levels of our body politic.

Beyond national politicians like @POTUS or Canada’s Justin Trudeau, there’s Twitter Accounts for Government Departments, Offices, Agencies —

https://twitter.com/usagov?lang=en

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ode/socialmedia/#tw

Or, like this for the government of Ireland —

http://www.gov.ie/services/twitter-accounts/

This story always stands out: The Spanish Town That Runs on Twitter

“Jun (pronounced hoon), whose population barely tops 3,500, into one of the most active users of Twitter anywhere in the world.

For the town’s residents, more than half of whom have Twitter accounts, their main way to communicate with local government officials is now the social network. Need to see the local doctor? Send a quick Twitter message to book an appointment. See something suspicious? Let Jun’s policeman know with a tweet.”

I’m still true to my analog bookworm roots, and pick up books everyday. Long live the paper cut!

Thought I share a 6 pack of reading for communication professionals

The Persuaders: The hidden industry that wants to change your mind (James Garvey)
Made to Stick (Chip Heath and Dan Heath)
The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web Is Changing What We Read and How We Think (Eli Pariser)
Rhetoric (Aristotle)
Language As Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method (Kenneth Burke)
Infinite Jest (David Foster Wallace)

Lastly, it’s Mentionmapp use cases like these that keep us doing what we do-

The Campaign Workshops Best Political and Advocacy Campaign Tools. include us, and highlight it’s values by having the ability to“map connections between Twitter users and visualize what they’re saying.”

This First Draft News article shows how critical verification is today. Josh Stearns talks about how “MentionMapp allows you to see who the person is talking to and what they’re talking about, so it maps conversations and people,”

Be like Deirdre Breakenridge, PeaceTech Labs, the BC Innovation Council, become a paying Mentionmapp member today; “Discover smart people & smart talk.”

Brains versus Bots

The four characteristics of humanism are curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race. E. M. Forster

We love to set it and forget it; what’s not to like about life on easy street and rolling in easy money; there’s nothing like the open road, the wind rushing through your hair and being on cruise control; we love our easy to program devices; easy just slides off the tongue, and tops our tool-kit of four letter words.

It’s like the realization of Moore’s Law has delivered us to the Cult of Easy’s altar. If we contrast Forster’s sense of humanism with the key four characteristics of a computer; with their speed, accuracy, versatility and storage capacity, it only makes sense that these tools will be our saviour. They’ll save us from work, save us undue effort, save us from thinking, and maybe even save us from ourselves.

As communication professionals, we need to see the Cult of Easy for what it is. On one hand, it’s a massive noise generator, and on the other, it glorifies the tools for managing all of that noise. The Cult’s impact is like an ergot fungus blight infecting a healthy field of wheat. It’s causing hallucinations and distorting realities. The machines, the tools of today like the bots and algorithms are no replacement for our brains. We need to look beyond easy and recognize that no software application can supplant our own curiosity and creativity.

We’re creating, curating, consuming, and confronting a daily tsunami of information. It’s daunting. From all of this information, the data exhaust is being described in terms of exabytes and zetabytes. According to this study, we’re producing the data equivalent of 530,000,000 millions of songs every day. But looking beyond the big numbers, I think it’s more important to consider what’s relevant to you, your organization, your audience, or your stakeholders. Of course defining what’s relevant, and then discovering it, and then connecting who’s an authority is still complex. Who’s kidding who, it’s hard.

I don’t pine for the good old days of analog, newspaper ink coating my fingertips or watching a DVD. The fact our machines can, and are trained to see patterns both fascinates and concerns me (by redefining repetitive business tasks = good. Being mechanisms of state surveillance = bad). But, I also don’t believe machines can question revealed patterns. Each of us sees patterns differently. Granted that just because we see differently than machines, and can ask different questions we’re not assured of discovering what’s relevant or meaningful. We’ll always have to navigate our own personal bundles of bias. At least I can question my bias or that of other people’s. Good luck questioning the bias that’s coded into an algorithm you could be banking your company, or your client’s success upon. We sense, we question, we create, whereas machines simply process.

The thrashing machine separates the wheat from the chaff, but it’s the baker who puts the life into what lights up your taste buds. I’m all for computing horsepower trying to help us separate signals from noise. Grinding the life out of information and data is like turning it into ‘Wonder Bread.’ By grinding it too finely we’ll lose its textures. What anomalies or outliers will we miss? Instead, appreciating a taste sensation like ancient grains with their texture and complexity coming to life, important knowledge and information or compelling narratives are distilled into blandness. Likes, views, pins, shares and every other vanity metric don’t tell a relevant or fulfilling story. It’s hard to take meaningful action when the machines give us a report of irrelevance and the blandness of another pie chart or spreadsheet.

Sifting through the noise, managing complex communication environments and platforms are hard work. I also wonder if there’s a tendency to over-complicate business processes or claim to adopt new technologies simply to look like we’re keeping up with the “times.” I’m skeptical about many businesses or organizations needing tools of National Security Organization intelligence and sophistication. If all of this computing horsepower is not discovering would be terrorists, then keeping us in tune with relevant information and conversations is a doubtful proposition as well. Defining, deciding, discovering, and verifying what information matters, why it matters, and how to act on it are still very human things to do.

We’re the curious ones, we innovate, we create, all of which connects us to potential moments of serendipity. As Frans Johansson writes in the Harvard Business Review, “diverse perspectives drive innovation. “ He concludes “serendipity is what sets us apart — since that is the only way we can discover an approach that is not obvious or logical.”

I appreciate Johansson relating the serendipitous story of how “nine months into Google’s existence, Sergei Brin and Larry Page realized they needed to choose between their company and their Ph.D. work at Stanford. They decided to pursue their doctorates and offered their search engine to Yahoo for $1 million. Yahoo declined” Now imagine if Yahoo had bought Google.

We need to think about what we’re asking of our machines versus ourselves. We can, and should care about the questions we’re asking of our information or data; what’s it telling you and why. We can be intellectually honest, machines can’t. Machines aren’t serendipity generators. We can put care into what’s created. The value and magic in what we craft and how we communicate have nothing to do with the tools; it’s all in that moment where imagination meets performance.

Originally published at www.deirdrebreakenridge.com on October 3, 2016.

From John’s (cofounder) pen. Please visit Mentionmapp today!

“How to Make the Most of a Do-Over”

We built it, sold it, and got it back. Seemed like the right thing to do. For the past year we’ve been working on a do-over of Mentionmapp. It’s been like a six year work in progress, except for the almost three years where no work was happening.

Some backstory… Mentionmapp started as a fun Twitter visualization project in late 2009. By 2012 it was an orphan. It’s owners ignored it and left it uncared for. We were happy finding it still working, and still with a few admirers. We also found traces of life in different blogs, articles, videos, and in a variety of languages; we thought, why not. This do-over’s giving us an opportunity to build the business we imagined it could be 2011.

With zero fanfare the new version launched on September 25, 2015, and we’ve been listening and learning since. It’s been an interesting experience connecting with so many different people using Mentionmapp, and finding out they’re using it in so many different ways. Twitter users from over 90 different countries have visited us. Seeing their diversity of interests, backgrounds, and stories keeps putting a little awe into everyday.

We’re making this our place to share stories, not shill product. Mentionmapp’s a destination for the curious. It’s for explorers of the Twitterverse looking to discover people and conversations that matter. We have a fascination with mapping the flow of knowledge and ideas through the human network, and want to use Medium and Mentionmapp as a spark for engaging conversations.

There’s no shortage of noise drowning out meaningful voices and narratives. While my internal voice is saying, “great, now you’re just adding to the noise,” I’m past having that angst. Seeing technology playing a central role in eroding the quality of discourse is one of my biggest concerns. I care about how algorithms are squeezing the curiosity of people, and making it harder to discover a diversity of knowledge and ideas. “Filter bubbles” constraining our world view, along with increasingly polarized attitudes are as disturbing as the sight of opinions parading around as if they’re knowledge.

Media has always mediated our conversations. I remember the age of analog, and talking with colleagues around the water-cooler. We’d be talking about global events as something that’s happened, not happening. Meaningful social movements unfolding, the deaths & births; elections of Presidents, Popes, and Prime Ministers; events like the Olympic Games, World Cup of Soccer or the Super Bowl were owned by the exclusive domain of authorities, experts, and commentators. For better or for worse media’s now mediate by us.

Today we’re talking, we’re the sharing, and we’re listening. But, it’s also more challenging than ever to find responsible voices, define the authorities of knowledge, occupy spaces of decorum, and appreciate intellectual honesty. So much good stuff is getting caught-up in a tangled networked web of the loud, the trolling, and the abusive.

I also say, “so what.” Twitter’s a unique lens on our collective imperfections, making it a forum that’s far from perfect. I’ve accepted that free speech isn’t free. Free speech comes with being responsible for our thoughts, a responsibility that is to easily shirked. At least we’re free to hit delete, mute, block, and not follow the noise that’s a sensory affront. We see our world as one of “the good, the bad and ugly” talk. We’ll keep sifting through the Twitterverse so we can keep experiencing events from the global to the local in ways like never before.

It’s a space of complexity, elusiveness, and tension. It can be horrific and hateful. At the same time it’s the place of awe and beauty; it’s the celebration and the joy that defines our experience of being human. We hope you’ll find Mentionmapp’s do-over is a place that’s for discovering and even elevating the talk that matters to you.

__________________________________________________________________

I’m John F. Gray (cofounder), and I hope you’ll keep exploring this curious business that’s the human network.

“In this electronic age we see ourselves being translated more and more into the form of information, moving toward the technological extension of consciousness.” — Marshall McLuhan

Stories Matter

Keeping Humanity in the Conversation