First of all, a personal resolution: I will not whine.
The Boston Indicators Project, which is an initiative by the Boston Foundation and the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, relaunched its web site in November, and I was not invited to the event. I will subdue my inclination to pout, and move on to praising the new web site.
Fortunately, a fellow Boston Technobabe, Kat Friedrich, did attend; you therefore have the option of skipping my blog article and going straight to hers. Kat’s focus is on “How Nonprofits Can Earn News Coverage Using Data Visualization,” which is certainly a great take-away for mission-based organizations.
My interest is slightly different. Here are a few things that are especially striking:
- Measuring what we value. This principle is prominently displayed on the relaunched web site, and is one that I learned in 2002 from the Boston Indicators Project’s co-founder and director, Charlotte Kahn. (I worked on the 2003 indicators report, which was the very first to be webified.) The version I heard from her own lips is “we should measure what we value, rather than only valuing what we can measure.” It’s not enough to throw together a lot of data about our region, simply because it’s available. We have to think about what it means, why it’s important, and it helps us understand the most effective strategies for positive change.
- Democratizing the data. This is a principle that I learned both from Charlotte and from Barry Bluestone; the latter is a professor at Northeastern University and has been enormously influential in the evolving Boston Indicators Project. Democratizing the data means more than making canned reports available; it entails a constant effort to increase the interactivity of the web site, so that anyone concerned about the future of our region can slice and dice crucial data, and thereby go beyond the Boston Indicators Report to conclusions and initiatives of his or her own. For that, we must thank not only Charlotte and Barry, but two of my other great favorites: Tim Gassert, the Boston Foundation’s director of web communications, and Georges Grinstein, a professor of computer science at University of Massachusetts at Lowell and one of the trailblazers in the creation of the Weave data visualization tool.
The new Boston Indicators web site is great example of nonprofit technology in the service of a mission that is much greater any one community foundation or specific region. I happen to live in the greater Boston area, so I’ve been more easily drawn to it than I would be if I were living elsewhere. But it’s an example to any individual or organization, of the power of the universal access to the significant data, and the importance of analyzing it in ways that benefit the community.
Tagged: access, access to information, barry bluestone, boston, boston foundation, boston indicators project, boston technobabes, charlotte kahn, community foundation, data, data visualization, democratizing the data, foundation, georges grinstein, greater boston, interactivity, kat friedrich, mapc, measurement, measuring what we value, metropolitan area planning council, mission-based organizations, nonprofit, nonprofit technology, northeastern university, nptech, online, outcomes, positive change, regional trends, relaunching, tbf, tim gassert, university of massachusetts-lowell, values, weave, web, web site, webification, whining
