Harnessing Data Exhaust

#1 Thing You Need to Learn from This Post:
Organizations have the opportunity to convert the plumes of data generated every moment into useful, actionable information and knowledge.

A More Detailed Exploration:
Just take a moment and think about how much data is generated by every Tweet, Foursquare check-in, Facebook status update, and other social media transaction. It’s just a drop compared to the ocean of data created by large scale organizations, corporations and government.

Living in this data rich world, our challenge is not generating data but making it useful. As Robert Kirkpatrick from UN Global Pulse and others mentioned this past week at the United Nations Population Fund’s brainstorm, more humanitarian agencies are beginning to wake up to the potential positive impact organizing and filtering this data can create.

Just like the internal combustion engine harnessing and filtering the exhaust to help increase fuel efficiency and reduce negative side effects of fossil fuels, organizations can construct systems to aggregate data sets to provide real-time insights. As we know from the Data Information Knowledge Wisdom (DIKW) hierarchy, we can convert data into the higher forms with enough energy and focus.

What data sets could you aggregate, filter and focus to drive the social change you’re seeking to lead? What systems, partnerships and processes do you need to make it happen?