SXSW Day 3

March 16, 2009 - 00:08

Two things today:

(1) There's been a lot of talk at the conference about data visualization and using APIs to allow developers to get at data. The keynote today was an interview of Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com, who did statistical analysis of polls and other information to correctly predict all but one state in the 2008 election. I love data visualization, too. But I'm fearful of putting data into the hands of people that aren't trained to use it in meaningful and accurate ways. Nate alluded to the media's broad statements and lack of meticulous analysis during his interview and I couldn't agree more. I would, however, like to hear his thoughts on whether or not what people are doing with current APIs to visualize data is genuinely helpful. I look at sites like Swivel and graphs of unrelated data that give false impressions about relationships and wonder if we're letting ease of use cancel out intelligent results.

(2) There's been a trend towards quoting Ghandi's "be the change that you believe in" and then asking people to give 10%:

  • Alex Bogusky talked about his employee devoting 10% of his time to a pet idea of an urban bike-sharing program.
  • Lawrence Lessig talked about us devoting 10% of our time to helping to create a citizen-funded democracy
  • and Tony Hseih of Zappos talked about devoting 10% of his time to finding out what happiness is all about.

Each of these speakers seemed to imply that we should also devote 10% of our time to their same idea. "You only need to take 10% of your time..." is tossed around a lot. But you know what? 10% is a lot. Especially if I need to spend 10% of it trying to be the change that I believe in, 10% helping foster citizen-funded democracy and 10% trying to figure out the root of happiness. Granted, I can get back that 30% if I just be the change all the time, fix democracy and figure out what happiness is, but I don't see that all happening any time soon.