Out With A Bang

I have Dominic Campbell to thank for this; if truth be known, inspiration was in little short supply this weekend.

We have something decent in the pipeline – OK, I’m biased – but that remains a few days and several more dev hours away from hitting the streets. So, therefore, this tweet was heaven-sent:

@dominiccampbell http://opendatamanual.org is great but why does so much #opendata related stuff have to look so drab? not going to draw in the masses #gov20

Data. As in sets. As in open. As in, er, dull…?

Or, to quote Dominic, ‘drab’?

It’s a block that we’ve walked before. As in EveryBlock…

http://rickwaghorn.co.uk/2009/03/20/everyblock-was-brilliant-but-we-have-to-aim-higher-than-data-cos-in-my-little-provincial-world-punters-dont-do-data-they-do-people-and-they-do-stories-for-when-they-get-a-mo/

And, again, as in Drones vs Grunts on the ground… that the way to win the hearts and the minds of punters – or rather to win the trust and the dollars of the advertising punters – is to get boots on the streets, familiar faces on the street corner…

http://rickwaghorn.co.uk/2009/04/23/the-lesson-comes-from-the-streets-of-baghdad-that-our-future-has-to-be-a-joint-operation-you-need-grunts-on-the-ground-you-win-no-hearts-and-few-minds-with-just-drones-in-the-air/

Re-reading that post from April, 2009, it still seems a bit bizarre to be quoting from an obscure military manual when it comes to formulating thoughts on this new, media landscape of ours but – for me – it still rings very true…

The battle is easier to win if it is a ‘joint operation…’ ie, data with a human story attached. From said post:

“New communication technology allows air and ground forces to work together much more effectively than in the past,” the author continues.

“The synergy that joint forces derive from this interaction vastly magnifies the power of the force. The situational awarenss of both soldiers and Marines increases dramatically when married to airborne ISR [Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance].

“The effect of this increased air-ground synergy has been to make the surge [in Iraq] more effective than 20 per cent increase in ground forces would have suggested…”

Only now – in 2011 – I’ve added a few more under-scores to underline the point yet again.

Data alone is not sufficient to win the hearts and minds of an embattled populace. We need to look at joint ops, new synergies, involving both data and people.

Data, at best, delivers a ’situational awareness’ to those we still hope to find out there on the ground, working the streets, left to put a human face and context to the ‘drab’ data delivered by those drones over-head.

For whatever reason, as one hack-day after another unearths yet another previously untapped seam of data, I have this nagging image of Lord Percy discovering green.

‘Oh, Edmund… can it be true? That I hold here, in my mortal hand, a nugget of purest Green? etc etc

Only for green read grit-bin, public-toilet, postbox, etc etc… none of which are pure gold. They are all shades of green… useful only to help colour in a bigger picture.

And I have another nagging doubt about this current fascination with data. Because data is finite. At the end of the day, there are only so many data sets sat in the back of a local government larder.

At some stage in the none-too distant future, we will have mapped every toilet, grit-bin and post-box; will have charted the movement of every library book, grit lorry and food hygiene official. And then what?

People, by contrast, are infinite; there is no limit to the variations possible within the human story; that’s what makes for interest, for engagement and for community. We do not gather round camp fires populated by data streams; we gather round camp fires where people gather with warming stories to tell.

Always have; always will.

Which, I think, all lies towards at the heart of this excellent post by Marshall Kirkpatrick:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_heartbreak_of_hyperlocal_news_aol_scoops_up_ou.php#

..in which he poses an intriguing question: Why haven’t the three great hyper-local technology sites in the US – Outside.In, EveryBlock and FWIX – worked out as well as everyone hoped?

And when he put that question to his Twitter audience, one answer stood out.

‘Because they lack soul…’ said @mathewi

Precisely. Data has no soul; people do.

Likewise data doesn’t build communities; people do.

And we ignore that basic human truth at our peril.