Last week Ogilvy launched their new thought leadership program called the Red Paper series. I was fortunate enough to be able to write the very first one – Learning to read the river. The paper describes how all the data that is generated today provides a huge opportunity for companies to grow their business. It [...]
Imagine this – a Census worker walks on dirt road deep in the woods somewhere in North Michigan. After half an hour she reaches a bungalow, the 1st sign of life she’s seen in a while. Just as she pulls out her new 2010 Census form she sees a bag hanging from the doorknob. In [...]
A friend just sent me this beautiful visualization of where people are taking pictures in London. You can clearly see the high traffic areas around the tourist hotspots. It’s a great use of the type of data people are generating by going about their everyday lives. It also shows how this data could become really [...]
What is the actual value of a story? Are people prepared to pay more for something if there is a story attached to it? It turns out that they are. That is the outcome of a very original experiment by writer / NYT columnist Rob Walker. I saw Rob speak about his Significant Objects project, a [...]
I was talking to Andy McMains of AdWeek today who asked me if “thoughtful blogger” wasn’t an oxymoron. I hope not.
I found Clive Thompson’s recent Wired post on “Why We Should Learn the Language of Data” thoughtful.
He argues that being “statistically illiterate” is bad for your health, and everyone else’s too. (Shouldn’t that be “innumerate”, [...]