MarBlog

This post is way off the leftfield of the normal topics on this blog, but this timelapse video of earth as seen from the International Space station was so impressive I just had to share it!

In his TED talk, Jason Fried, pretty much nails it – why we don’t manage to get work done at work!

Managers and Meetings are the prime source of interruptions and articifial divisions that means you never make it through a full “work-cycle” he explains in the talk. There is a lot of truth in this, in that meetings very often tend to generate two things:  more meetings and changed objectives.

So why am i even including this on a data management blog? Well for starters, most data managers work in some kind of office with some colleagues, and quite likelyt can be the source of thew two major evils to other workers: management and meetings. As someone with the word “management” directly in the title, I guess we are perhaps jsut native interruptions to other workers in an organisation, and the need to call meetings to get combined strategies and systems in place, pretty much makes us walking interruption bombs if we’re not careful.

So what can we do in terms of getting good management of data, but without being a constant source of interruption to others? Wll i think that the job of a data managemer is working as a conduit, translating needs, and bridging the technology and business goals of the organisations we work for. Jsut like everyone else, we’ll need periods of uninterrupted work to be creative, and to come up with good solutions – but we also need to respect others need for the same. SO it’s a two-way street – reduce your own interruptions, and be careful about interrupting others. Perhpas use email or IM for something that does not require a room full of people for two hours to reach consensus on.  Perhaps consider that the door shouldn’t always be open. It’s good to be approachable – but you need time to concentrate as well.

I think preparation is key as well. When it finally comes to having some of the meetings that simply are necessary – make sure you are prepared. Identify what you need to do at the meeting before you sit in the conference room! Don’t let anyone run away with the agenda or hijack the meeting – make a plan and stick to it. There are meetings that are productive – but those are the ones where people walk out afterwards and have a clear idea of what was achieved, and who is doing what. Those kinds of meetings takes time to prepare for – uninterrupted time

Data Managers benefit from discussing with peers, jsut like in any other trade – and perhaps even more so because of the rapid technological development pace. However, as cash is strapped during this financial downturn, many may find travel options limited and will turn to the web instead (or in addition to the personal face to face meetings).

There are of course many, many places on the web where you can start discussing, but I often find that locating an active community can be a bit of a challenge. LinkedIn is a thriving community with many active groups, mainly focussed on the professional aspects of our lives. The benefit of some of these groups is that they include real life professionals with clear credentials, and have groups where people actively debate issues that are close to the hearts of data managers, ranging from how best to implement quality management through to provacy and ownership issues.

In this post, I have gathered a short list of som e of the groups i enjoy reading and participating in. Note that most of them you will have to request to join – but it helps reduce the amount of spam and keeps the discussion focussed amongst people with relevant interests. I hope you might find it useful, and if you have other sites/communities or groups, please do share

Data Ownership in the Cloud

The Data Ownership in the Cloud group on LinkedIn is a global venue for multi-disciplinary networking between technologists and non-technologists interested in providing thought leadership on this critical issue. 

IAIDQ Information/Data Quality Professional Open Community

LinkedIn.iaidq.org is an open community for Information Quality, Data Quality and Data Governance professionals (practitioners, consultants, academics, vendors etc.) to support collaboration, learning networking and interaction in a vendor neutral format. 

Obsessive-Compulsive Data Quality (OCDQ)

This is a networking group for Obsessive-Compulsive Data Quality (OCDQ), which is an independent blog offering a vendor-neutral perspective on data quality. 

Vendor-neutral does not mean no vendor related content. When the products and services of vendors are presented or discussed, it will be done in an objective manner. 

The goal is to foster an environment in which a diversity of viewpoints is freely shared without bias. Everyone is invited to get involved in the discussion and have an opportunity to hear what others have to offer.

Talend Open Source Data Integration

Talend is the first provider of open source data integration solutions, used primarily for ETL for business intelligence/data warehousing, data synchronization, data migration, operational data integration, data quality and MDM. 

This group enables Talend users (and friends) to share information, news, discussions, and ideas about their Talend projects – and anything else of interest for the Talend community! 

Data Management Utopia

The purpose of this group is to bring together a professional group of individuals to collaborate about issues, problems, situations within the data space. 

We all know that the world of enterprise data is sometimes hard to control and understand but together we can make a difference and learn from one another’s experiences. Whether you’re dealing with Oracle, SAP, IBM, etc. it doesn’t matter we still share some of the same pain points. 

This group encourages everyone to share their lessons learned, thought leadership ideas, best practices, etc. that will educate and promote the development of world class solutions.

Habitats – (Social Validation of INSPIRE Annex III Data…

Habitats (Social Validation of INSPIRE Annex III Data Structures in EU Habitats) related spatial data is critical in the management of Europe’s bio-diversity. INSPIRE needs work here, particularly in its Annex III data themes: 16-18 (Sea regions, Bio-geographical regions, Habitats & biotopes, Species distribution).

Yet another TED Talk plugged! This time it is a slightly longer talk around the concepts of visualising large amounts of data in a manner that enhances understand – or information design for short.

The talk  is by David McCandless, data journalist showcases different aspects of visualising multiple data sets in a single info-graphic. Refreshingly, he also talks about caveats in the ways of aggregating and considering the visual data – essentially encouraging a critical sense in both the journalist fields creating such info graphics, and raising awareness in the consumer at the same time.

There is little doubt that complex tasks of aggregated, and visualising larger and larger data sets in an area of increasing attention – and it is nice to see some of the potential output – even if it does not focus on marine data

It would seem jsut about every conceivable part of the web, and associated technology has been declared dead according to the collection over at Technologizer

I guess working with data management – it is something that we’re used to. Large Projects are declared dead before they hit the streets and the tech is outdated before the final user acceptance testing has rolled through. But obviously, in spite of various obituaries of web and projects – things still chug along.

Yes it happens from time to time! This article written by Jim Harris has it all – Dilbert, Data Quality, Rabbits and #FollowFriday – worth a read if you need to remind yourself of that all important Oscar Wilde quote: “Life is too important to be taken seriously”

Below is a really interesting TED talk about how we imagine ourselves being very global on account of the internet. Yet at the same time, it turns out that we primarily read local pages, and talk to our local friends through the internet – so hardly the barrier breaking and culture levelling experience forecasted for the internet. Still – its a work in progress, and I’d recommend that you watch the video – it’s an interesting talk!

It also made me think in data contexts. We use and submit data to the systems we know, and they often tend to have strong regional foci. There are obvious reasons for pooling data from particular regions, and there are also much more global databases out there-  but it still require you to know about the sources. Like Ethan Zuckerman talks about for social media in the video, perhaps we also need bridge figures in scientific data online to open up our awareness of global data. Let’s all become those data xenophiles

In this video from TED, Tim Berners-Lee demonstrates a few examples of the amazing work that can happen very rapidly when data is released. The examples does not exactly fall into the marine science category, but they are powerful examples of the ways in which other people might turn your data upside down and use it in new ways.
Obviously, there are also examples of this working less well, when data is taken out of context or misinterpreted because insufficient documentation of laziness has led to quick and dirty flashy maps without real informative content – but it’s perhaps a risk worth taking when you consider the potential gain in the examples in this video.

First post upon installation of WordPress is Hello World, and I thought it was a reasonable title to retain for this first post on MarBlog.

In the time to come, I will post on a variety of topics in the world of marine science. The two closest to my job is likely to get the most attention, namely ecology and data accessibility.

Ecology is increasingly becoming central in Marine science – going from being a rather loose term with vague and poorly quantified mechanisms to a central role in policy and legislation for the management of the marine environment. Obviously, ecology encompasses a wide array of information, all of which may not have been necessary to join together previously for single species or stock issues in fisheries for example. Now we’re faced with a situation where a broad raft of data from very different science disciplines are having to be merged and contribute to more common goals. It is a challenge being addresssed on many levels currently from individual univiersities, and other organisations fighting to bring together years or decades worth of scientific effort to national and international bodies creating large systems and databases to gather it all under one umbrella.

These are some of the issues I will be blogging about on this site in the time to come, although there will hopefully also be room for a few stories that are just about the fascinating marine life that still serves to amaze and capture me!