The city of San Francisco is one of the most technologically advanced cities in the world. The city is famous for its individuality and lively civic engagement. (ART+DATA) Institute Fellow Ron Vinson shared some of his social media lessons at a recent event at technology giant Salesforce, headquartered in the downtown San Francisco. Here is a summary of his comments:

1. THE IMPORTANCE OF DIALOG.

The City of San Francisco launched a Facebook Page, and within 24 hours, nearly 125,000 joined. Cities need an open digital media forum.

2. WELCOME ALL PERSPECTIVES.

Positive or negative, let thoughts come from all directions. Welcome diverse opinions.

3. LET CONVERSATION FLOW.

Enable the conversation, then get out of the way. Monitor your social pages and profiles, but let the conversation flow freely.

4. EASE THE ENGAGEMENT.

San Francisco residents send their city government pictures of graffiti or traffic issues via various Twitter apps. Make it easy for your residents to report, share and contact.

5. USE ANALYTICS TO UNDERSTAND CITIZENS.

San Francisco studies data science. Using analytics, the City can know that 25% of their social media community doesn’t live within the city. Some live outside the U.S., but their voices count as fans of the city. Know your citizens.

6. SOCIAL MEDIA DRIVES CUSTOMER SERVICE.

The City uses digital media as a customer service outlet in order to meet residents where they are.

Anytime, Anywhere communication of needs.

7. CONTINUALLY ENCOURAGE ENGAGEMENT.

Consider contests, quizzes, games and other attention-grabbing, sharable approaches to social media in order to grow your community.

8. USE DIGITAL MEDIA CHANNELS WITH PURPOSE.

The City and County of San Francisco uses YouTube to share government meetings, Facebook for conversations, Twitter for updates and response, etc. Consider the uses of each social channel and ensure they serve a purpose.

9. MAKE GOVERNMENT HUMAN.

Use social media to make your government feel more accessible and familiar. While an official government website needs to feel official, social media provides a more personable outlet.

10. KEEP YOUR CITIZENS INFORMED.

Use your social channels to keep your city informed in real time. San Francisco responds and posts constantly in order to provide updates of what’s happening around the city.

”Tell me what you’re feeling, and what it all means” Phoebe Snow

Imagine being able to know exactly how you felt, in quantitatively precise terms, at any specific second of every day that you have ever lived. It would be the emotional equivalent of “scrubbing” on an iPod. For those who may not know, “scrubbing” is the process of using your finger, voice or pointer to move to a chosen point of a song or video, or any type of media.

The components of tomorrow’s memories

An entire class of emotion sensing software is emerging from the category called electroencephalography. In “EEG” devices, some kind of hood or headset with a electrodes touching the head read electrical signals emitting from your brain. These brainwaves can tell when you recognize someone, feel tired, or excited. The added bonus that may change the world is that the brainwaves can be decoded to determine your emotional state. It works now, and improvements are monthly.

Memoto is taking over where Flip Camera left off.

The business of memories

Athletic trainers are the unsung heroes of amateur and professional sports. Trainers are omnipresent, moving seamlessly with athletes from practice, to warm up, to post
game treatment. Most fans are unaware that trainers are recognized by the American Medical Association as health professionals. Trainers are often the first people athletes engage when injuries do occur. The trainer performs medical assessments in real time, recommending whether the athlete has the capacity to continue after an injury.

Our theory is that the trainer of the future will need to be capable of using math and statistical analysis to understand the athletes whom they support.

same time in every other game they’ve ever played. Understanding the optimal potassium level, the trainer could add more to their water if required.In the case of injury, the trainer might use a device similar to a very rugged iPad. Kneeling down next to the injured athlete, the Trainer would hover the iPad above the joint or muscle in question, rather than ask “what hurts?” or, “describe the pain to me.” The trainer would then replay the moment of injury with a 3D

and receive tactile responses as if the holographic object were real. In this scenario, the trainer will design the athlete’s reactions by having them play against a mathematically precise hologram of the opponent.

By (ART+DATA) Institute

This post is also available in: Chinese (Traditional)

What would happen if data, not politics or purely commercial development, drove the design of our cities and towns? Singapore is a marvel of efficiency, the result of a dedication to data-driven life design and urban planning. The (ART+DATA) Institute is examining how the philosophy of data-influenced design can be applied to the organization of living, with Singapore as the prime example.

City Dwelling in Singapore

It is not simply a matter of city planning in the traditional sense. The very rhythm of Singapore is based on a marvelously efficient data collection process, which feeds the continuous refinement of urban planning. The Singaporean approach to analytical design contains important lessons, as statistics from the United Nations suggest 70 percent of the world’s population will live in cities by 2050. This kind of growth will put immense pressure on urban infrastructures, many of which are already archaic and crumbling.

The cultures of the Southeast Asian region have historically fueled many of the world’s innovations. Many
of these advances are the result of the complex interactions between cultures and technology. As we move more deeply into the 21st century, the technology law of accelerating returns is more evident in Asia than in Europe or America. The rate of change in the way people live is increasing at an exponential rate each year in Asia.

Against this backdrop of continuous change driven by data collection technology, Singapore has
implemented restoration of green space with astounding results.

Proportionate Green Space Design

Since I first visited Singapore around 1994, the population has grown to slightly more than five million, almost double what it was in the early nineties. In that same period, the greenspace — as defined by parks, mini-gardens, and rooftop green gardens — has increased to nearly half of the surface space of the city.

This astute use of data to drive the city’s greening is the analytical portion of 10-year development program managed by the country’s National Parks Board. Led by Mr. Lim Eng Hwee, the deputy chief executive for planning at the Urban Redevelopment Authority, the city has set aside close to 10 percent of the total land area in Singapore for parks and nature reserves, to correspond with future development and population growth.

Measuring Biodiversity

In another impressive display of art and data sensibility, Singapore pioneered the City Biodiversity Index,
a statistical calculation used for optimizing the ratio of green space to buildings and population density. As
a testament to the poetry of this analytical model, 28 other major cities around the world have adopted it.

London was among the first to adopt the The City Biodiversity Index, which helped improve the impression of this oldest of Northern European cities as experienced by attendees of the 2012 Olympics. My travels to London this summer revealed a city with a renewed and quantifiable emphasis on livable urban space.

During my journey from London to the beautiful town of Harpenden to visit the grounds of Ashridge, I realized how much of England had been originally designed to showcase natural green space. The staff at Ashridge have true appreciation for how green design transforms the very nature of work. It struck me that data-driven emphasis on greening inspired by Singapore’s Index simply returned London to its own long legacy of harmonious design.

Singapore Provides a Roadmap

Statistical approaches to green space planning could be the future of quantifying proper land use, instead of political favors to developers that often end in inefficient, monstrous design. Instead of emphasizing metrics promoting square feet of office space, maybe the answer is to require developers to develop green space in correlation with office space built. It’s difficult to argue against this, given Singapore’s GDP per square foot of green space.

By Roger Wood – Founder of the (ART+DATA) Institute in San Francisco, California

This article originally appeared on the sustainable cities website This Big City.

The (ART+DATA) Institute is dedicated to original research and thought leadership on the topic of how Design and Analytics affect and enhance one another.We support sponsor companies with analysis and research aimed at improving
data-driven product design and data collection.

Welcome to our annual list of the top ten innovators in the world of Sports and Athletics

Compiled by
Yvonne Buysman and Roger Wood

TOP TEN INNOVATORS IN SPORTS AND ATHLETICS

The (ART+DATA) Institute presents its first annual list of the best in Design and Analytics related to Sports.

Athletics have always been about measuring, monitoring, tracking. It has also been about design and craft, with the
most advanced equipment and training often providing the critical edge to the victor. In this new era, data also helps
officials play their parts and enhances the experience for the fans.

Sports promises to become one of the most vibrant arenas for experimentation with new technologies that extend human athletic potential, enhance the experiences of fans, and improve the effectiveness of athletic equipment beyond anything we have ever seen.

Yvonne Buysman, Sports & Fitness Fellow for The (ART+DATA) Institute helps us understand how the data helps design a better round of golf. Her writing reveals the effect of an instant feedback loop in golf . .

Data Analysis in golf : Designing peak performance

By Yvonne Buysman, Sports & Fitness Fellow

As a golfer on the eternal quest to improve my game, trialing new clubs and receiving instant feedback from cutting edge golf simulators trumps the Tom Hank’s FAO Schwarz toy piano scene in the movie “Big”. Edwin Watts, in Orlando, is an example of a golf shop, supporting the club fitting process with an innovative simulator calculating swing angles and lofts. The swing, brand of clubs and courses left on the bucket list may top golf conversations, but numbers are the underlying factor. 18 holes, 9 holes, handicaps, and wedge degrees bring out competitive streaks and bottom line in golf ability. However with leading technology, numbers and data analysis in golf have created an entirely new and powerful language. Players, manufacturers, and coaches can start interpreting data for opportunity.

Martin Kaymer’s final efforts in precision at the 2012 Ryder Cup may have been the result of practicing with advanced data analysis equipment such as Trackman Pro. (www.trackmanpro.com)The innovative tool delivers state-of –the art data by displaying a golf shot’s trajectory in real time along with impact and ball flight information. Detailed data such as club speed and path, spin axis, smash factor, and hang time is being captured in every shot.

As Tiger Woods fights the good fight to climb back towards his top ranking, he embraces data to help understand his standings. Attack angles, “D-planes”, and how numbers relate to ball track and spin can help change a player’s game. PGA Professional, James Leitz, describes the D-Plane as a physics model that is simply ‘The Descriptive Plane,’ “It illustrates why the golf ball flies the way it does because of impact.”In Tiger’s testimony of using innovative technology such as Trackman Pro, he admits every degree is critical to the universal law of numbers and makes a difference in the game.

Golf is about consistency and precision. Trackman’s philosophy is to support recording the rhythms and patterns in players swings, so changes can be made based on the quantitative analysis. When winners of the British Open such as Tim Clarke, or champions of the US Open such as Lucas Glover and Graeme McDowell, take action in using measuring equipment, the results speak for themselves. Data analysis tools such as Trackman provide proven change management to achieve performance and accurate swing and flight ball analysis.

To accommodate the mobile lifestyle, Trackman offers a version with full wireless control catering to tablets and smartphones via the WiFi enabled radar. Truly offering insight and a chance to witness current behaviors, built-in hi-speed camera and performance studio software allows the chance to integrate video with data. The PGA Teaching and Coaching Summit have included D-Plane and new flight laws to meeting agendas. Leitz is a firm believer in the benefits of technology and performance. “Any Summit should always be cutting edge,” said Leitz.

“Any teacher should continually seek better information, then filter it and present it to his or her students. I also have the distinct honor of presenting such information to enlighten my fellow professionals.

The D-Plane concept was first written in the “Physics of Golf” by Theo Jorgenson.He discusses mathematically what occurs and how the ball takes off after separation from the club face. Teachers have discussed the relationships between collision, friction, and energy. Trackman has helped verify best starting positions for ball face. New technology is supporting Ball Flight laws and playing a handshake in physics and mathematics. Again, golfers love talking numbers, and D-Plane analysis may make the conversation on the 19th hole especially interesting.
The D-Plane concept has opened questions in need of 3 dimensional answers. The true path of a swing is a combination of up and down in motion with left and right.Hence a video’s 2-dimensional reflection cannot capture a 3-dimensional action. The development of revolutionary solutions such as Trackman and Flightscope(www.flightscope.com) can provide true insight and the chance to impact swing. If Ben Hogan had the access to such modern inventions as Trackman, then he may have included it in his legendary golf book “The Five Fundamentals” where he addresses grip, knees, arms and hip rotation contributing towards ball impact.

As a tour player desires the perfect club fit and an equipment manufacturer crafts to enhance performance and brand, new golf design language emerges. “Degrees of adjustability”, “deeper heal and toe”, “lighter weight swing weight screw” and “refined cut slot creates a higher launch angle” are just a few phrases pinpointing design tactics for precision. Often technology analysis drives the new design and goal for top performance.

Tracking and data analysis support is not only improving equipment in the world of golf, but also for major sports venues such as the creation of Adidas’s FIFA soccer ball for the World Cup 2010 in South Africa.

From its origins in 15th century Scotland, the game of golf has rested in principles of tradition. The laws of physics and math linking to D-plan philosophies and the developments of sophisticated data analysis equipment are welcome friends to the sport. The language of golf is taking the foundations of numbers and encouraging a fluency of terms in swing direction, spin rates and landing angles. When trying to fix your slice, fade, draw or hook, you may want to consider analyzing quantitative data on your swing made available by cutting edge technology and begin walking the new talk in golf and data.

]]> http://artplusdata.com/my-caddie-just-joined-mensa/feed/ 0 http://artplusdata.com/start-up-start-with-a-big-data-mindset/ http://artplusdata.com/start-up-start-with-a-big-data-mindset/#comments Tue, 02 Apr 2013 13:05:20 +0000 admin http://path2websolutions.com/artplusdata/?p=544 Continue reading →]]> October 7, 2012 by Edward Boudrot

Big Data can come in small packages

How can a company leverage data across multiple sources to gain valuable insight to deliver all the more value to customers and create a sustainable competitive advantage?

Whether you are Amazon using big data to create more relevance for your Product Recommendation Engine to drive more sales, or a small start-up looking to create that next killer product, having a big data mindset is critical.

I worked for a start-up search engine company Direct Hit during the emergence of the search engine wars between Google, Yahoo and Lycos. While the larger competitors were focused on building the size of their database, at Direct Hit, we focused on how we could create an algorithm that would generate more insight into what users were actually searching for – dramatically increasing relevance. We achieved this by adding unique sources of data no one at the time had thought of. Not only did we create better results for end users, we ended-up selling the company for $500M.

As Direct Hit pursued improved relevance, we were driven by the principle of combining a multitude of data points to create valuable and actionable insight?

Big Data gives start-ups Big advantages.

We also had a brilliant data scientist who would look at the data much differently than the business side and come up with new possibilities. This, perhaps, was the most valuable input because it took off inherent blinders we might have had being too close to the business. This is this why I like (ART+DATA)’s concept so much. They have brilliant minds looking at data in a much different way.

We are now looking a data the same way in my current start-up, SnapApp. We now capture 27 points of data across multiple channels (Website, mobile and social) to create valuable actionable insights.

It is critical for start-ups to have a big data mindset – not only for their own business as it grows, but also for the products they deliver and how to fit them into this new emerging world.

There is a great quote by IBM, “Big data is more than simply a matter of size; it is an opportunity to find insights in new and emerging types of data and content, to make your business more agile, and to answer questions that were previously considered beyond your reach.”

 

]]> http://artplusdata.com/start-up-start-with-a-big-data-mindset/feed/ 0 http://artplusdata.com/why-literature-matters-in-business/ http://artplusdata.com/why-literature-matters-in-business/#comments Tue, 02 Apr 2013 12:57:39 +0000 admin http://path2websolutions.com/artplusdata/?p=534 Continue reading →]]> January 11, 2012 by Roger Wood

Why write business thought pieces inspired by great works of literature? Because some of the greatest inventions, products, and businesses we have ever known sprang forth from literature. New York Times writer Harriet Rubin wrote eloquently of this phenomena in her article “C.E.O. Libraries Reveal Keys to Success.”

Steve Jobs was inspired to build a company that would amplify the individual spirit after reading “1984″ by British novelists George Orwell and various works of William Blake. David Oglivy, the founder of modern advertising, was an avid reader of literary works. Ogilvy, a scholarship student at Christ Church, Oxford University, shared that alma mater with Micheal Moritz, another lover of great literature, and one of the most successful Internet investors, ever.

Ralph Lauren channeled F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” into the most successful lifestyle brands in business history. William Randolph Hearst read (and hired) the greatest writers of his day, including Mark Twain and Ambrose Bierce, which inspired his emphasis on the perspective of the audience that has shaped the look and content of today’s mass media. Dee Hock founder of Visa, practically meditated on Omar Khayyam’s “Rubáiyát,” daily, and the Founder of Harman Kardon could quote Albert Camus’s “Stranger.”

It is with these examples of literature’s effect on business that Brand plus Design by Statistics, brings the learned executive a perspective on today’s trends, innovations and methods of measurement, all framed in reference to great books.

The concept of this blog is dedicated to Lucy Hood, my intellectual mentor and the most literate marketer I’ve ever known.

]]> http://artplusdata.com/why-literature-matters-in-business/feed/ 0 http://artplusdata.com/yoyo-ma-social-scientist/ http://artplusdata.com/yoyo-ma-social-scientist/#comments Tue, 02 Apr 2013 12:36:02 +0000 admin http://path2websolutions.com/artplusdata/?p=521 Continue reading →]]> Published: March 28, 2013 by Roger Wood

Yes, a Cello player

What can a CEO learn from the most famous cello player of the modern age? A great deal indeed. More than any other modern performer, Yo Yo Ma has taken his mastery of an obscure musical instrument, and turned himself into an enduring enterprise and a analytical marketing machine. Any CEO looking to lift a mundane product or service into the elite ranks of global brands should look no further than Yo Yo Ma. Below is a perspective on lessons any CEO of an arcane product can take away:

Lesson #1: Own your space

No matter how boring your product, own the product in the minds of the Served Available Market (SAM) and Total Available Market (TAM), not just your industry. The Cello is not the most glamorous instrument, and lots of teens would rather be a guitar hero than a cello hero. However, Yo Yo Ma set out to “own” the space, and dominates mindshare of about 500 million people in his Served Available Market. Only about 2.5 out of 7 billion people in the world constitute the (TAM) for most products, so that’s a fantastic percentage of SAM. Yo Yo Ma used a quantitatively savvy partnership strategy to ensure that he would become the only cello player the SAM would have ever heard of. The SC Johnson company does a fantastic job and many of its cleaning brands were the only names anyone remembered in their respective categories for decades. Herman Miller does an incredible work as well – few cared about their office chair brand until the Aeron Brand came to own the space in the late ’90s.

Lesson #2: Become the official choice

Yo Yo Ma played for Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama. He subsequently played, without charge, for a wide variety of other official occasions in business and civic life. No matter what your product is, find a way to become the official choice of esteemed institutions. Thomas Edison’s General Electric was the official supplier of lighting to J.P. Morgan, and continues to be the official provider of infrastructure needs for the world’s elite institutions. My friend Dan Martin did an incredible job of this with Green Mountain Coffee. Oscar De La Renta has dominated the formal dress of First Ladies in both political parties for three decades. The Lead generation impact is measurable.

Lesson #3: Partner with the Best

I love Bossa Nova music. Rossa Passos elevated the form to new artistic heights, and I buy most anything she records. It was through Yo Yo Ma’s brilliant collaboration with Rossa Passos on “Obrigado Brazil” that I became familiar with him. Savvy move as Brazil has the largest population in Latin America. Yo Yo Ma has collaborated with celebrated musicians from nearly every continent on more than 75 albums, and as a result, his brand has catapulted far beyond lovers of classical music. His performance along with Itzhak Perlman (violin), Gabriela Montero (piano) and Anthony McGill (clarinet) for the Obama inauguration became a new model such occasions. In my view 3M, DuPont and Honeywell are the gold standard for brand collaboration. If you have a mundane product, lose the ego and partner with the best in another business that uses your product.

Lesson #4: Build a Cult Brand

There are some relatively simple rules for developing a cult brand. i) Make a very useful, effective, or pleasing product. Camelbak nailed it in this regard; ii) Communicate tirelessly with your customers, giving them a name or a symbol to solidify the group’s identity. Harley Davidson name “hogs” comes to mind; iii) Invite your most loyal customers into the inner circle of managing your product. No one does it quite like GoPro; iv) “Live” the business of your business – there’s magic in doing that. Yo Yo is almost never photographed without his cello or bow, just like James Dyson is near always holding or standing near a Dyson Vacuum.
]]> http://artplusdata.com/yoyo-ma-social-scientist/feed/ 0 http://artplusdata.com/baseball-big-data/ http://artplusdata.com/baseball-big-data/#comments Tue, 02 Apr 2013 12:17:17 +0000 admin http://path2websolutions.com/artplusdata/?p=514 Continue reading →]]> August 22, 2012 by Dave Feinleib

Moneyball = Databall

Many a baseball fan has read or seen the movie based on the book Moneyball, Michael Lewis’ bestseller about using analytics to assemble a great baseball team. Now Nationals manager Davey Johnson is relying on data to help ensure star pitcher Stephen Strasburg has an enduring career.

Strasburg had reconstructive elbow surgery in 2010. “The idea of risking Strasburg’s long-term health for a desperate run at the 2012 World Series title is tantalizing but foolish, especially for a team built like this,” reported Tyler Kepner yesterday in the New York Times.

A Model for Risk Management

The article, titled “When Precedent Dictates Prudence” might well have been titled “When Data Dictates Prudence.” Many a pitching career has been cut short by overwork. “The last three decades are littered with pitchers who endured punishing workloads before age 24 and flamed out in their 30s. For every Greg Maddux, who turned out fine, there are many more like Steve Avery, Bret Saberhagen, Fernando Valenzuela and Mike Witt,” reports Kepner.

Johnson’s management of Strasburg means he’s not just a great manager when it comes to baseball, he would make a great fund manager too.

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