A2 Datadive Recap: Over 70 participants and 2 non-profits helped!

Welcome to the very long overdue recap of the A2 Datadive that I helped host from February 10th - 12th. We had 78 people attend our event that weekend and a lot of amazing work was done for the two non-profits that kindly shared their data with us.

To refresh your memory, a datadive is an opportunity for local non-profits with data they aren't sure what to do with to meet up with data scientists who are willing to provide assistance. The concept was developed by Jake Porway at Data Without Borders, who lamented the fact that non-profits didn't always have the resources to take full advantage of the data they were collecting. Datadives are intended to give these organizations access to folks with the skills to get them started on taking their data to the next level.

This year we had two non-profit participants: Focus: HOPE, a group that is working to improve the quality of life their neighborhood in Detroit and the African Health OER Network (AHON), which is collaboration between medical colleges in the United States and Africa that is providing open educational resources to under-resourced medical colleges in Africa. Each group came with their own set of unique data problems and questions. Focus: HOPE was interested in learning more about the community that they serve (which areas of their neighborhood are taking advantage of their programs? what are the demographics of their community like? can we identify under represented populations in our target area?). AHON wanted to know about the resources they distributed (who was taking advantage of them? which resources or mediums were most used?) and the network that provided those resources (who in the network contributed the most content? could we identify influential members in the network? could we identify members that were not as engaged as other members?)

The plan for the weekend was simple. On Friday evening, the non-profits we had recruited presented their data and questions to the group and there was time for all the participants to socialize before the big work day. Work on Saturday started early, with the data scientist participants digging through the data and coming up with methods to begin answering some of the non-profits' questions. Sunday was reserved for wrapping up the work that was done, documenting the process, and reporting to the non-profits on what we uncovered. Simple, right?

We lost no time getting started on Saturday morning. Above are the two teams strategizing what they intend to work on and how they will plan out their work for the day.

We took over North Quad on the University of Michigan's Central Campus for the weekend. Thankfully there was a lot of space for all of the break out groups to work.

Several Ann Arbor community members came up to me during the event to thank me for hosting an event like this; they were so excited to help in such a unique way. Data Without Borders really tapped into a deep unvoiced need amongst data scientists to be able to contribute their skills for the greater good. It was inspiring to be around so many folks who were so enthusiastic about lending their talents to help institutions in need.

Having fun working with data

Sunday's wrap up was a great chance for us all to see what everyone else had been working on. Above is the work from one of the AHON groups looking at the influence of various members within the organization's network. Preparing for the presentations also gave groups the opportunity to clean up their documentation on the Data Without Borders wiki. As you can see below, several groups tried to create step-by-step instructions so that the non-profits could replicate the work that was done after the datadive was over. Here's a link to the wiki page, in case your interested in the details of what work was done.

But none of this would have been possible without the enormous efforts of my team mates and the student volunteers we had on hand during the event. And of course I can't forget organizations like, Data Driven Detroit and Code for America, who lent their support and know-how to our event as well. Sometimes I'm really staggered when I think about the fact that we basically planned this whole event in less than 3 months... while still being full-time grad students.... HA!

Thanks again for all your help guys!

The Dream Team: Nikki Roda, Emily Puckett Rodgers, and Claire Barco

Emily, Claire, and I are already getting started on planning the event for next year. Fingers crossed, we'll have this event tucked into one of the student organizations on campus. By doing so we hope to keep the institutional memory so that SI and Open.Michigan will keep on datadiving even after Claire and I graduate.

Our big brother organization, Data Without Borders, has shown us so much support and been so encouraging during this whole process that I have no doubts we'll be able to muster up enough energy to hold this event again next year.

Coming soon! More information about the A2 Datadive

So we had an amazing (and exhausting) weekend at the first ever A2 Datadive! I promise to write more about what happened and upload pictures of what the event was like ... but right now it is full crunch time on midterms.

Amazing news is that we made the paper! Michigan Daily wrote a piece about our event, and even misspelled my name twice! ;)

On a more serious note, I've still got a lot to take in from the event, but one thing that really struck me was home many community members attended and also personally thanked me for thinking of such a creative use for their skills. I'm definitely not taking credit for the idea, which belongs firmly to Data Without Borders, but clearly this idea has tapped into a really deep and unknown/unvoiced need from this community (data scientists). It seems that they were just thankful to have been able to put their skills to good use... to get a chance to volunteer and give back, but in such a way that also provided a lot of mental stimulation. I was really blown away by the enthusiasm of this group.

The whole event was really inspiring.... but more on that later.

Now back to the grind

A2 Datadive starts this weekend!

It is finally coming together, folks! What started as an idea this summer has rolled into an event that we'll be hosting at my school THIS weekend!

I know you'll all be with me this weekend in spirit - but in case your interested, you can follow along with the work being done this weekend by checking out the project pages we've set up on the Data Without Borders wiki. As work gets done, we'll be documenting the process on the wiki so that the non-profits have a record of all the work that was done (and hopefully some instructions on how to replicate it).

Here is the link for the African Health OER Network project page.

And here's the link for Focus: HOPE's project page. You can see I've already added a lot of documentation to Focus: HOPE's page because their data needed a lot more scrubbing and prep work ahead of the datadive.

We apparently have 70 people registered for the event already - which is incredible! I feel so thankful that I go to a school where there is such a positive environment for giving back to the community. Anyone's guess as to how many people ACTUALLY show up - especially since we weren't expecting people to stay all day ... but still! This is pretty awesome!

Regardless of the turn out, I've planted a couple of ringers into the group, so I'm confident that we'll have some good output for the non-profits by the end of the weekend.

Keep your fingers crossed for me this weekend! This is probably the biggest (and most uncertain) event I've ever put together. I'll be sure to keep you posted as to how it went!

A2 Datadive: Where Science Meets Service

This is the home page for my school advertising the datadive that I'm helping to host - the A2 Datadive. The event, which is based on a Data Without Borders's datadive, is being held Friday February 10th - Sunday 12th. I still can't believe that the "small idea" I had to bring a datadive to UMich is actually happening...

I mean, we still have a lot of work left to put it all together -- but I'm just totally amazed at how all it took was an idea ... I found so many generous people at SI who were willing to help me make it a reality.

A thoroughly geeky evening

After a seemingly interminable first week of classes we thought we'd take Saturday off to geek out!

Here's Allen playing with his Christmas present, an Electronic Drum Machine Shirt from ThinkGeek. He was having such a blast with it because it comes with a little mini amp that goes to 11, allows you to loop tracks, and has an output so you can record the beats you've made with a shirt! Dissertation productivity might have seriously gone down yesterday, but fun definitely went up!

We also invited a group of friends over to watch Star Wars Uncut, which is a remaking of of the original... just by fans ... and in 15 second increments. Sadly the video feed didn't work so we weren't able to see it to the end ... but no matter we had plenty of bad movies on hand (ahem, DareDevil) to make fun of and the interent provided a ridiculous amount of funny videos to entertain us. Some of my favorites included Guy on a Buffalo and Dara O'Brian on videogames... in my defense though, I was pretty tired! ;)

Happy New Years! 2011: Year-end Review

HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYONE!

Thinking about the up-coming year made me curious to see how far we've come in the past year. So I put this post together to remind us of all the awesome things that happened in 2011.

We started off the year strong spending time with our dear friends Hamsa and Danika (first in Delhi, then in Bihar on our Buddhist adventure). Next was the intense Vipassana meditation course I did in Sarnath; I'll always cherish the lessons I learned in that course, even if I'm not good enough to keep my meditation every day. After that was the South India trip Allen's brother took with us, where we saw elephants and house boats in Kerala and beautiful temples in Tamil Nadu.

By March we'd found out that I had gotten a full ride to the University of Michigan's School of Information and that changed all our plans. Next stop, Ann Arbor, Michigan! Our last months in India were a bit of a blur after that, but we did get some time relaxing in the mountains of Mussoorie (and thankfully, Allen got some good writing done on his dissertation).

Once we had gotten back to the States it was a whirlwind of family reunions at the beach, preparations for the move to Ann Arbor, and friends' weddings.

The shift to Ann Arbor and grad school was a little rough for me because Allen had to stay behind in Brooklyn trying to sell our apartment. In the meantime though, Allen was keeping himself busy going to conferences, getting interviewed on TV about his work, and writing up his dissertation.

But by Thanksgiving we had finally lined up a likely buyer for the apartment (whoohoo!) so we lifted Allen's temporary exile at Brooklyn and moved (almost) all of our stuff to Ann Arbor.

And then, as far as our blog is concerned, we dropped off the face of the planet basically. But not without good reason. We've been up to a lot.

While I had a very eventful (read: extremely busy) semester, it was at least extremely productive and I'd say for the most part successful. My grades for the semester were stellar and one of my professors wants me to work my term paper into a conference paper. I got elected to be an officer for our Student Organization for Computer Human Interaction (basically the society that thinks about how to make interaction/interfaces with digital information more user-friendly). I'm also coordinating a Data Without Borders inspired datadive at our school this February. So, yes .... I'm keeping busy in grad school.

Allen is plugging and chugging at his dissertation and we marveled the other day about how far he's come in the last couple of months. Meanwhile he's already gotten a scholarship to work on his dissertation for 6-weeks in London this spring and is a finalist for another post-doc (won't jinx it by saying much more). He's well on his way to finishing this year - if that's what he decides to do. Playing the game of academia means that he may want to take an extra year of fellowship funding next year while testing the job-market waters instead.

So that, my dear family and friends, leads us to now... the holiday season. We were especially excited to come down to Asheville for Christmas this year so we could play with our 3-month old niece, Caroline and let me tell you she is a CUTIE!

All dolled up for Christmas

And of course we had a blast with our nephews, Joseph and William ... Allen got a special treat by playing Santa for them on Christmas day because at 6 and 3 they still believe in the magic of Santa. Grandma and Grandpa explained that Santa was leaving by going up the stairs because he had to go to the bathroom before he continued on his way. HA!

Check out the Brady Boy Band! You heard 'em here first, folks!

After the orgy of presents and family crazy fun time Allen and I had a nice relaxed New Year's Eve in Asheville ....... of course playing bridge with his folks! Ha!

We will take ALL OF THE TRICKS!

We hope that you all had a wonderful time with all of your friends this holiday season and have a very very HAPPY NEW YEAR!

To our blog readers from Santa!

Hi all! You haven't heard much from us in awhile because we've been busy with finals and dissertations; but we wanted to wish you all a happy holiday season.  Click on this link to watch a video we had santa make especially for you.


http://youtu.be/qiQv_P5So90

Happy Holidays!

Allen and Nikki