Alla Morrison at the Worldbank blog: Key findings — Many new data companies have emerged around the world in the last few years. Of these companies, the majority use some form of government data. There are a large number of data companies in sectors with high social impact and tremendous development opportunities. An actionable pipeline of data-driven companies exists in Latin America and in Asia. The most desired type of financing is equity, followed by quasi-equity in the amounts ranging from $100,000 to $5 million, with averages of between $2 and $3 million depending on the region. The total... (More >)
New Research Suggests Collaborative Approaches Produce Better Plans
JPER: “In a previous blog post (see, http://goo.gl/pAjyWE), we discussed how many of the most influential articles in the Journal of Planning Education and Research (and in peer publications, like JAPA) over the last two decades have focused on communicative or collaborative planning. Proponents of these approaches, most notably Judith Innes, Patsy Healey, Larry Susskind, and John Forester, developed the idea that the collaborative and communicative structures that planners use impact the quality, legitimacy, and equity of planning outcomes. In practice, communicative theory has led to participatory initiatives, such as those observed in New Orleans (post-Katrina, http://goo.gl/A5J5wk), Chattanooga (to... (More >)
The Emerging Science of Superspreaders (And How to Tell If You're One Of Them)
Emerging Technology From the arXiv: “Who are the most influential spreaders of information on a network? That’s a question that marketers, bloggers, news services and even governments would like answered. Not least because the answer could provide ways to promote products quickly, to boost the popularity of political parties above their rivals and to seed the rapid spread of news and opinions. So it’s not surprising that network theorists have spent some time thinking about how best to identify these people and to check how the information they receive might spread around a network. Indeed, they’ve found a number... (More >)
Can Big Data Stop Wars Before They Happen?
Foreign Policy: “It has been almost two decades exactly since conflict prevention shot to the top of the peace-building agenda, as large-scale killings shifted from interstate wars to intrastate and intergroup conflicts. What could we have done to anticipate and prevent the 100 days of genocidal killing in Rwanda that began in April 1994 or the massacre of thousands of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica just over a year later? The international community recognized that conflict prevention could no longer be limited to diplomatic and military initiatives, but that it also requires earlier intervention to address the causes of violence... (More >)
United States federal government use of crowdsourcing grows six-fold since 2011
Alexander Howard at E Pluribus Unum: “Citizensourcing and open innovation can work in the public sector, just as crowdsourcing can in the private sector. Around the world, the use of prizes to spur innovation has been booming for years. The United States of America has been significantly scaling up its use of prizes and challenges to solving grand national challenges since January 2011, when, President Obama signed an updated version of the America COMPETES Act into law. According to the third congressionally mandated report released by the Obama administration today (PDF/Text), the number of prizes and challenges conducted under... (More >)
Thanks-for-Ungluing launches!
Blog from Unglue.it: “Great books deserve to be read by all of us, and we ought to be supporting the people who create these books. “Thanks for Ungluing” gives readers, authors, libraries and publishers a new way to build, sustain, and nourish the books we love. “Thanks for Ungluing” books are Creative Commons licensed and free to download. You don’t need to register or anything. But when you download, the creators can ask for your support. You can pay what you want. You can just scroll down and download the book. But when that book has become your friend,... (More >)
Findings of the Big Data and Privacy Working Group Review
John Podesta at the White House Blog: “Over the past several days, severe storms have battered Arkansas, Oklahoma, Mississippi and other states. Dozens of people have been killed and entire neighborhoods turned to rubble and debris as tornadoes have touched down across the region. Natural disasters like these present a host of challenges for first responders. How many people are affected, injured, or dead? Where can they find food, shelter, and medical attention? What critical infrastructure might have been damaged? Drawing on open government data sources, including Census demographics and NOAA weather data, along with their own demographic databases,... (More >)
Mapping the Intersection Between Social Media and Open Spaces in California
Stamen Design: “Last month, Stamen launched parks.stamen.com, a project we created in partnership with the Electric Roadrunner Lab, with the goal of revealing the diversity of social media activity that happens inside parks and other open spaces in California. If you haven’t already looked at the site, please go visit it now! Find your favorite park, or the parks that are nearest to you, or just stroll between random parks using the wander button. For more background about the goals of the project, read Eric’s blog post: A Conversation About California Parks. In this post I’d like to describe... (More >)
The Right Colors Make Data Easier To Read
Sharon Lin And Jeffrey Heer at HBR Blog: “What is the color of money? Of love? Of the ocean? In the United States, most people respond that money is green, love is red and the ocean is blue. Many concepts evoke related colors — whether due to physical appearance, common metaphors, or cultural conventions. When colors are paired with the concepts that evoke them, we call these “semantically resonant color choices.” Artists and designers regularly use semantically resonant colors in their work. And in the research we conducted with Julie Fortuna, Chinmay Kulkarni, and Maureen Stone, we found they... (More >)
The Open Data 500: Putting Research Into Action
TheGovLab Blog: “On April 8, the GovLab made two significant announcements. At an open data event in Washington, DC, I was pleased to announce the official launch of the Open Data 500, our study of 500 companies that use open government data as a key business resource. We also announced that the GovLab is now planning a series of Open Data Roundtables to bring together government agencies with the businesses that use their data – and that five federal agencies have agreed to participate. Video of the event, which was hosted by the Center for Data Innovation, is available... (More >)
