June 19, 2013
I am delighted to publish a guest blog from one of the most brilliant data geeks I know, Jacqui Taylor Founder and CEO at FlyingBinary. For those that have yet to meet Jacqui, she is a super clever lady: a web scientist in fact. After implementing a banking regulatory change programme with Web 3.0 tools she co-founded FlyingBinary.
A recent appointment to the Cabinet Office as an Open Data domain expert recognised her as a web scientist of influence in the era of Big Data. Jacqui trains Advanced Analysts on the Science of Data Visualisation is a regular speaker on Cloud Adoption, Big Data, Smarter Analytics and Profiting from the Web.
In this post Jacqui is picking up our focus on social innovation as she examines how the next generation of data visualisation makes information available to all, and allows for innovation.
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As we move from the B2C space where Social Media innovation started, we evolve into the next wave, B2B space, where the impact is even greater. Data is the new currency, and social media data allows us to understand the connected economy in a way that the data inside our companies never could. Social data about your brand or company reveals the DNA of your organisation and can be harvested to check the heartbeat of your brand or company across the social web, by you or your competitors.
How do you start? At FlyingBinary when we create the data teams within a company we do look for some technical resources to help, but predominantly we staff the team from within the business. You all know these people, they are the linchpins within an organisation already, they are the goto people when you want to know something or get stuff done.
However there is a skills gap which we need to cross first, data skills. Before you run for the hills let me reassure you that you won’t need to learn Python, although if you do fancy acquiring coding skills I definitely recommend it.
So you’ve got the team what next, it’s the data. This is an exploration phase, it is about understanding what data you have, blending this with social data and looking for the patterns. The good news is that these skills can be taught and it only takes three 1 day workshops over a few months to be able to train in the basic data skills.
If you are super smart you also will use a data visualisation tool which makes what you create accessible to all, from the CxOs to every corner of your business. When you share the data stories with these visualisation tools created from data from both inside and outside an organisation this opens up whole new possibilities such as smarter business and new revenue channels.
Recently we published a data visualisation on data.gov.uk, which made transparent for the first time anywhere the process of government. This was in relation to the release of government data for use by businesses, Open Data. This was described by government ministers at last week’s G8 Summit as “world leading innovation” because it allows data innovation to be part of the connected economy.
When a national government is driving its innovation and growth on data it signals a time for all business to realise that data and data skills are the key. Those companies who invest in the data agenda will be the next wave of data gamechangers. It is going to be an exciting journey and I look forward to sharing it with you.
It is well worth following Jacqui’s Twitter feed @jacquitaylorfb for more insight