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Jordan Morrow sees data literacy taking off at Qlik

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Qlik’s director of data literacy Jordan Morrow saw validation of his program soon after he took the job: His new series of online modules, he reports, rose to four of the top 10 downloads within the first couple of months.

None of the modules were easy. Being on subjects like basic statistics, they sure weren’t shiny. Without knowing the subjects of competing modules or other details, their popularity is notable — an interesting break with the data industry’s drive toward “data democratization” and “self-service” by thrusting ever newer, shinier tools toward users’ “fingertips.”

“Without data literacy,” says the head of Qlik’s data literacy program, Jordan Morrow, “[data analysis tools are] just Excel on steroids.”

Visualized data did make a leap, but it’s still just data. “If you can’t interpret [the data], it’s nothing.” That is, there’s more value than meets the eye. Artificial intelligence will find that value — and happily for owners of capital, AI will run on fewer and fewer warm bodies.

As machines overtake quantitative decision-making, humans will be left with qualitative decisions — which have to be based in data, of course.

Question: The data industry has been talking about “data democratization” and “self service BI” for years. Why does it seem to have accelerated now? What do you think? Tell me. (If the form is too short for you, just give me a brief answer and invite me to get back to you.)

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Qlik Qonnections / Qlik: serious about data literacy

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Qlik could have forgotten the tired slogans — such as “data is the new currency” — at the recent Qlik Qonnections and gone straight for the what makes Qlik stand out. That starts with their tastiest, chewiest morsel: their apparently serious campaign for data literacy.

What is data literacy? Valerie Logan, Gartner data and analytics research director, described it in the show’s best presentation: It’s “the ability to read, work with, analyze, and argue with data.”

“This is the heart,” said CEO Mike Capone in the morning session, “of what’s going to drive the future.”

[Read more…] about Qlik Qonnections / Qlik: serious about data literacy

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Connectedness / the downside, but upside too?

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Robert Kaplan writes about foreign policy, but his warning about connectedness also cuts into our dreams of free-flowing connectedness at home in cities.

From Sunday’s New York Times review of his new book, The Return of Marco Polo’s World:

After the Cold War, many of us naively assumed that the communications revolution would be the vehicle through which the West would spread its values, attitudes and tastes to the rest of the world. We forgot that the revolution worked in the opposite direction as well: that for every Google executive fighting for political liberalization in Cairo, there might also be an alienated young Islamist in the West learning how to build a bomb by reading Inspire, Al Qaeda’s slick online magazine.

Kaplan never loses sight of this fluidity: “The smaller the world actually becomes because of the advance of technology,” he writes, “the more permeable, complicated and overwhelming it seems, with its numberless, seemingly intractable crises that are all entwined.”

That is the world’s reality — crooked, unexpected, ironic and often tragic …

Crooked, unexpected, and often tragic! So much for the fear that connectedness and “smart” will turn cities into bland, Disney-like fantasy.

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Smart cities / Cisco’s smart pipes plus Teradata’s scary-smart tech

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Cisco’s plumbing will soon feed Teradata’s brains, according to last week’s announcement. That’s a no-brainer of a partnership, since everyone knows that Cisco’s good at data plumbing and Teradata’s good at data analytics. But the news release lets the interesting part go unexplained.

To get a glimpse, you have to do look at Teradata’s newish Customer Journey. It’s a bundle of technology that monitors and guides customers along each person’s path from flirtation to commitment.

To see the city application, just skew it away from large commercial organizations, which are the current users, and point it toward cities. Call this repurposed bundle Citizen Journey and you have an urban designer’s wet dream.

This extra-smart beast would ingest Cisco’s data, plus any other data that may come its way, and take care of opted-in citizens with machine-like intimacy. It would sense locations, intentions, likes and dislikes, cravings, plans, and emergencies. It might even abide by tribe rules, such as to avoid Starbucks in favor of independent coffee shops. It would guide, suggest, nudge, and remind each individual in real-real time over text, email, or calls — but only for those who opt-in, I assume.

Wait, exactly what would citizens opt in for? Consider what Customer Journey does in the commercial world. A bank, for example, sees a customer spend an hour on the mortgage calculator and then drop it. It may ask why. It offers help. It might offer calibrated incentives. Or imagine a telco that knows what each customer wants who calls the call center even before rep says hello. The beast watches, knows, predicts, and prompts.

I doubt if even the real dreamers among us can see the full possibilities yet.

It’s not just the dreamers whose imaginations work on this, it’s those with nightmares, too. I’ve worked with some. These ever-vigilant citizen activists in every city will speak articulately in forums that matter. I know this class, having lived among them and having edited media published by environmental organizations they helped lead. What will ensure that the beast behaves itself?

Technology and its makers can’t stop themselves. The only real limit, it seems to me, comes with an alert, politically active, and tech-savvy public — led by a public-interest group staffed by experts and advocates. Through them, the public has to insist on GDPR-level transparency and legislated protection.

Once we’ve agreed on that, the smart beast can can be a catalyst for collaboration and a platform on which cities thrive.

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How old spin becomes new

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This week a longtime consumer of news, blogs, articles, whitepapers, and other content issued by the data industry said this to me.

After reading stories about big data and data quality for years, I think you’ll agree that everything [the data business] has wanted to say, they’ve said. They’re just trying to put new words and spin behind it.

Yes, but why? Is the old stuff all the issuers of old spin know? Are they like a geezer who’s forgotten he’s told the same joke for years? Or do they hold their noses, hoping that no one notices? After all, the “old stuff” is still current stuff, even though it’s not as much fun anymore.

A good way to make it new is with stories. It takes work, but if you ask around long enough you can usually find a novel problem or novel fix. Old stuff doesn’t have to be boring.

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