Jackson Two

Category: Personal

  • Dear Data 2019 – Week 6, Physical Contact

    Dear Data 2019 – Week 6, Physical Contact

    Week 6 postcards of the data project Sarah Bartlett and I are working on are here and I couldn’t be more excited. The theme of week 6 was physical contact.

    During the original project Giorgia and Stefanie tracked people they touched and who touched them, but I decided to switch things up and include my cats. Since I primarily work from home I figured it was a great opportunity to add in additional data elements. I was also genuinely curious to see at the end of the week who gets the most physical affection from me in my house.

    I used IFTTT again to track touches and set up buttons on my phone to represent the 5 major buckets I was likely to encounter: my husband, my cats, family/friends, and strangers. I chose to only represent intentional touches and those that I gave – making data collection a bit less awkward.

    Here’s my postcard:

    Dear Data 2019 – Ann’s week 6, physical contact
    Dear Data 2019 – Ann’s week 6, physical contact (legend)

    Cutting to the chase, the bar chart on the back of the postcard clearly indicates that I give out most of my affection to Starly.

    Starly interfering with work

    Focusing back on the design of the postcard, this week I wanted to continue to push the boundaries and go further into an abstract representation of data. The postcard started out as a 10 x 10 grid that was going to have clearly defined borders for each individual square. The design continued to morph as I started using metallic pen markers that made the edges softer and revealed something I hadn’t considered, the connected blocks (Tetris pieces) of touches. Through the imprecision of my drawing what was originally a very strict grid turned into a more quilt-like representation of my week.

    As two last design elements, I chose to outline the entire pattern with pink – no data elements represented there, but I felt that it completed the transformation that the data took on. And then one cognition piece was adding on dots to help read the grid appropriately, left to right and top down.

    Although the data revealed what I had suspected, visually seeing how connected and integrated my pets are into my life and well-being has been extremely impactful. It’s a reminder of the companionship they offer and of our shared affection.

    Here’s Sarah’s postcard:

    Dear Data 2019 – Sarah’s week 6, physical contact
    Data 2019 – Sarah’s week 6, physical contact (legend)

    I love this design by Sarah. She managed to take a data subject and turn it into a complete picture. I especially like how she chose 3 specific types of touches, hugs, kisses, and handshakes – and then how they correspond to different social circles. It’s amazing when counting the petals how sacred physical contact is to those closest to us vs. colleagues and other outer circle individuals.

    And that’s a wrap on the week – save one last off topic thought I had. After crafting my postcard I couldn’t help but think that it looked similar to some other artwork I’ve seen before.

    Patchwork vs. Postcard

    Although I’m probably biased on creating the connection, I enjoyed the idea that the game had somehow influenced the final drawing.

    A new blue box!

    Don’t forget to check out Sarah’s take on the week!

  • Dear Data 2019 – Week 4, Mirrors

    Dear Data 2019 – Week 4, Mirrors

    Week 4 of the data postcard project Sarah Bartlett and I are working on this year is here. We still have yet to reach consistent timing for postcard arrival. Sarah usually receives mine 2 days or more before I receive hers, but this week we were only one day apart.

    Week 4’s topic was all about mirrors and reflections of ourselves. I was intrigued by this one, I had no sense as to how often I look at myself properly in a mirror. Also, I decorate my house with a lot of mirrors (which you’ll see) – not because I am vain, but because they are great at reflecting natural light and making spaces appear larger.

    I ended up re-purposing my IFTTT buttons for this week, but found the data collection process much less labor intensive. In the original collections from Giorgia and Stefanie, they had both captured accidental glances, however I chose not to go down this path since I would likely spend way too much mental energy determining if it was accidental or on purpose (or turned to having a purpose).

    Dear Data 2019 – Ann’s week 4, mirrors
    Dear Data 2019 – Ann’s week 4, mirrors (legend)

    For the final visualization, I also decided NOT to use time as a dimension. Time has shown up in several of our previous postcards, so it was time to do something different. Instead I chose to represent the 5 different types of mirrors/reflective surfaces that I am around. I also captured some meta data related to the mirrors themselves, with each sketch being a rough estimate of the shape and proportion of each mirror.

    As with previous weeks, I chose to collect from Monday through Friday – and there’s some good insight with that knowledge. Looking at my bathroom mirror, there are 16 glances, 10 of which are me brushing my teeth. After seeing the results, I think what surprised me most was the kitchen mirror. My kitchen is in the center of a very open floor plan, but I didn’t realize how often I used it to check my appearance. In converse, the green mirror (my bedroom) is where I apply makeup or do my hair.

    I’m not impressed with my postcard this week, while I think it is an effective unit chart, I’m struck by the imprecision of the dimensions and some of the sloppy sketching. And the hashing of the corners to denote whether it was at home or not didn’t add much to the overall look.

    And here’s Sarah’s week 4 postcard:

    Dear Data 2019 – Sarah’s week 4, mirrors
    Dear Data 2019 – Sarah’s week 4, mirrors (legend)

    I really like Sarah’s this week. She managed to pull off a lot of depth by using different textures and writing instruments (there’s pencil vs. marker). If my assumptions are correct, then she and I start our mirror glancing the same way – in the bathroom. I also appreciate that she spent more time being specific about what was happening when she was looking at the mirror, and conscious of using mirrors for makeup.

    Mailed Sunday night from my favorite blue box!

    And that’s it for week 4 with mirrors. Don’t forget to check out Sarah’s blog post and get her take on the week.

  • Dear Data 2019 – Week 3, Thank Yous

    Dear Data 2019 – Week 3, Thank Yous

    Week 3 postcards for the data project Sarah Bartlett and I are working on this year have finally reached their destinations. I think we both felt that the mail was slower than normal, perhaps due to the abnormally cold weather here in the US.

    Week 3’s topic was tracking how often we say “thank you.” I knew going into this week that it wasn’t going to be an easy task. I say “thank you” a lot, so I decided to set up IFTTT buttons on my phone. They also show up on my Apple Watch to make it much easier to record the data as soon as it happens.

    IFTTT button set to record values when button pushed

    The recipe for each Applet is very simple. Once a button is pushed it will write a row to a spreadsheet called DD3 with the following columns of information. I customized the last 2 fields based on my desire to capture the medium (in person/virtual) and who the person was. Here are the final buttons, they reside in the widgets area of my phone. I put IFTTT at the very top to make sure they’d be easy to access.

    So many buttons!

    Sarah and I also talked about how we were each going to track data this week and she also ended up using IFTTT. And after using the buttons over the course of the week, I will definitely be reusing this technique for future weeks.

    Now that the data collection backstory is out of the way, here’s my poscard:

    Dear Data 2019 – Ann’s week 3, thank yous
    Dear Data 2019 – Ann’s week 3, thank yous (legend)

    In this visualization each vertical line represents a day of the week (Monday to Friday). Each shape coming off the line is a thank you. Those on the left side are for people outside of my inner circle (business contacts, strangers, people on social media). Conversely those on the right represent my close friends, family, and my husband (Josh). I chose to use shapes to represent whether the thank you was for Josh or not, as seen by the triangles vs. circles.

    The shapes are also plotted in sequential order throughout the day, with the top being the first thank you and the bottom being the last thank you. And the final two pieces are: pink or green to represent in person vs. digital and an additional < next to business related thank yous.

    I also cheated a bit this week and mocked up the postcard in Tableau. I wanted to make sure the faint idea I had in my head would look okay on paper. You’ll notice very quickly that quite a bit of the detail was reduced for the postcard.

    Initial visualization in Tableau

    I really enjoyed the pattern that my data revealed this week. On most days I start my morning sending thank you emails and then as it builds, I end up leaving my house or talking to other people. The thank yous I dish out to Josh seem to be very dependent on what the focus of the day is.

    In contrast, here’s Sarah’s week 3 postcard:

    Dear Data 2019 – Sarah’s week 3, thank yous
    Dear Data 2019 – Sarah’s week 3, thank yous (legend)

    I say “in contrast” jokingly here, because I think we took a VERY similar approach. Not only superficially in the usage of lines for passage of time and the choice of triangles, but also in the choice of detail we decided to track. Her breakout of people is similar to mine, leaving a special place for her husband, and carving out social layers from friend/family, to work, social media, and finally strangers. One thing she did that I really like was include the vertical line for AM/PM. I think that adds a little more context to the flow of each day.

    Same blue box as last week!

    That’s a wrap for this week! Don’t forget to check out Sarah’s blog post and get her take on the week.

  • Dear Data 2019 – Week 2, Transportation

    Dear Data 2019 – Week 2, Transportation

    It’s time for week two of the data postcard project Sarah Bartlett and I are working on this year. During this week our focus was spent on transportation, essentially how we get to different places.

    I live in the suburbs of Phoenix, AZ, tend to work from home, and drive to most places (read that as everywhere). So for this week, I decided to spend some additional time plotting my routes and tallying who was with me. Here’s my postcard:

    Dear Data 2019 – Ann’s week 2, transportation
    Ann’s week 2, transportation (legend)

    Each circle represents a day of the week (starting with Sunday) and my house. The lines going from the circle are paths that I took, each one representing a trip in the car. The direction from the circle is equivalent to the cardinal direction and each of the destinations are categorized into different colors. I also included who was with me and who was driving.

    I feel like this week’s postcard is very revealing in terms of my personal life. You can immediately tell that (at least for this week of tracking) I go nearly everywhere with my husband and that he is the primary driver. You can also see that I like to efficiently plot most of my paths and I also try to go to more than one place per trip. There are some fun exceptions to be seen, particularly on Friday, where I went to 2 different grocery stores in search of a very specific item (and still didn’t find!). The other exception was on Saturday, where I ended up driving. This was due to a spur of the moment trip after a few beers (not by me!).

    I also didn’t drive anywhere on Thursday and had planned to draw it on the postcard as a null in line with the other days. Magically I forgot to include it and had to re-add it. I actually quite like the authenticity and whimsy of that part, I think it reinforces the idea that this was something hand-drawn vs. computer generated.

    By contrast, here’s Sarah’s week 2 postcard:

    Dear Data 2019 – Sarah’s week 2, transportation
    Dear Data 2019 – Sarah’s week 2, transportation (back)

    Sarah chose to take a different path that I believe turned out really well – she created (what to me) looks like a flower that displays where she went and how she got there. In stark contrast to me, it seems like Sarah is rarely in a car and spends most of her time in other modes of transportation. I also really like the symmetry of the blue petal days, where she heads to the station, gets on a train, then the tube, goes to the office, and comes back. I am guessing when there’s nothing atypical in her week that most days look like that.

    I really enjoyed tracking this week and taking a different approach to sketching (and actually being OK with an oops moment). I’ve also been having an on-again off-again conversation with my husband on whether we should go back down to one car and after seeing the data I am more convinced than ever that we should downsize and switch to electric (although it can’t be seen, every destination was within a 10 mile radius of my home).

    A different post office box (and mailed during the day!)

    Don’t forget: check out Sarah’s blog post and get her take on the week.

  • Building an Interactive Visual Resume using Tableau

    Building an Interactive Visual Resume using Tableau

    click to interact on Tableau Public

    In the age of the connected professional world it’s important to distinguish and differentiate yourself.  When it comes to the visual analytics space, a great way to do that is an interactive resume.  Building out a resume in Tableau and posting it on Tableau Public allows prospective employers to get firsthand insight into your skills and style – it also provides an opportunity for you to share your professional experience in a public format.

    Making an interactive resume in Tableau is relatively simple – what turns out to be more complex is how you decide to organize your design.  With so many skills, achievements, and facts competing for attention, it’s important for you to decide what’s most important.  How do you want your resume to be received?

    In making my own resume, my focus was on my professional proficiency across larger analytics domains, strength in specific analytics skills, and experience in different in industries.  I limited each of these components to my personal top 5, so that it is clear to the audience what areas hold the most interest for me (and I’m most skilled in).

    Additionally, I also wanted to spend a significant amount of real estate highlighting my community participation.  After plotting a gantt chart of my education and work experience, I realized that the last two years are jam packed with speaking engagements and activities that would be dwarfed on a traditional timeline.  To compensate for this, I decided to explode the last two years into its own timeline in the bottom dot plot.  This allowed for color encoding of significant milestones and additional detail on each event.

    The other two components of the resume serve importance as well.  I’ve chosen to demonstrate experience in terms of years (a traditional metric to demonstrate expertise) with the highest level of certification or professional attainment denoted along each bar.  And finally, including a traditional timeline of my education and work experience.  The “where” of my work experience is less important than the “what,” so significant detail was spent adding role responsibilities and accomplishments.

    Once you’ve decided how you want to draw attention to your resume, it’s time to build out the right data structure to support it.  To build out a gantt chart of different professional roles a simple table with the type of record, name of the role, start date, end date, company, flag for if it’s current role, and a few sentences of detail should suffice.

    This table structure also works well for the years of experience and community involvement sections.

    You may also want to make a separate table for the different skills or proficiencies that you want to highlight.  I chose to make a rigid structured table with dimensions for the rank of each result, ensuring I wouldn’t have to sort the data over each category (passion, expertise, industry) once I was in Tableau.

    Here’s the table:

    That’s it for data structure, leaving style (including chart choices) as the last piece of the puzzle.  Remember, this is going to be a representation of you in the digital domain, how do you want to be portrayed?  I am known for my clean, minimalist style, so I chose to keep the design in this voice.  Typical to my style, I purposely bubble up the most important information and display it in a visual format with supporting detail (often text) in the tooltip.  Each word and label is chosen with great care.  It’s not by mistake that the audience is seeing the name of my education (and not the institution) and the labels of each proficiency.  In a world where impressions must happen instantaneously, it’s critical to know what things should have a lasting impact.

    I also chose colors in a very specific manner, the bright teal is my default highlight color, drawing the eyes in to certain areas.  However, I’ve also chosen to use a much darker gray (near black) as an opposite highlight in the bottom section.  My goal with the dark “major milestones” is to entice the audience to interact and find out what major means.

    The final product from my perspective represents a polished, intentional design, where the data-ink ratio has been maximized and the heart of my professional ambitions and goals are most prominent.

    Now that you’ve got the tools – go forth and build a resume.  I’m curious to know what choices you will make to focus attention and how you’ll present yourself from a styling perspective.  Will it be colorful and less serious, will you focus on your employment history or skills?  Much like other visualizations whatever choices you make, ensure they are intentional.

  • Aiming for data-driven? Don’t forget the people.

    Aiming for data-driven? Don’t forget the people.

    I’ve been in this situation too much recently: I’m having a conversation with someone about the state of analytics and there’s a sudden turn to product feature comparison.  What follows are a series of strengths and weaknesses bulletpoints.  The kicker?  Often the points are focused on what the tool can do, or how the tool fits into a technology stack, or (inevitably) the cost of the tool.

    What’s left out?  How it works with people.  How the tool you’re selecting is going to be affected by existing culture, or more importantly, what your future-state analytics culture will look like.

    Feature comparisons put machines before people.  Feature comparisons assume that the needs of the machines supersede the needs of your team.  Feature comparisons focus on a future state of “will these technologies play nice with each other” and not on “will my team be enabled to access and understand OUR data.”

    A data-driven culture is dependent on the people.  Culture is created or manifested by human behaviors and values.  A data-driven culture is one where people are empowered to use data to answer questions.  Curiosity, exploration, iteration, analytical reasoning, and continuous improvement are all critical.  Doing this all at speed is essential.

    The questions you should be asking are: how do I set up an environment where my team can be curious and motivated to find answers?  What support, education, and resources are needed to ensure they can model the behaviors we want to embody?  How do we build out a strong infrastructure and communication pipeline between hardware managers and data explorers?

    Starting with those questions ensure the vision you’re trying to achieve is the priority, not the minimization of growing pains that must be experienced to reach your goal.  It clarifies how you’ll measure success as well.  Success won’t be meeting a migration timeline or coming in under budget, success will be the transformation of how people engage and react to data daily.  Your ultimate finish line becomes the day where relentless analytical reasoning and action from its outputs are the norm.  Where new, deeper, more complex, and creative questions get asked daily.

  • Go Give Back: Tableau Foundation Service Corp

    Go Give Back: Tableau Foundation Service Corp

    Recently I had the opportunity to finish my first Tableau Foundation Service Corp consult.  Something that’s been 2 years in the making.

    Since my early exposure to the Tableau community I’ve wanted to be actively involved in the Tableau Foundation – so I was delighted when I received an email in November expressing that they’ve extended the program to allow new volunteers.  I raced to complete my profile and get active.

    And just about one month later I’m on the other side of my first consult.  So what was it like?  In a single word: fulfilling.

    In verbose form:  I wasn’t sure what to expect – I got a quick sentence on the pain point and then scheduled a time to meet.  From the detail I knew the ask was about calculating a metric to determine satisfaction factors of students.

    The day of the consult came (a Saturday at 4 PM) and it was time to get started.  After brief introductions we got down to work.  Within the first 10 minutes I’d helped create the correct calculation – something that had been a road blocks for more than 3 months.  We quickly went from talking through the calculation to best practices on visualizing.  After an hour we had even included some additional components to make the visualization more flexible and useful.

    After our hour – we both parted ways.  Me with a huge sense that I was exactly where I was supposed to be, doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing.  Pushing past the fun of problem solving in Tableau, I felt my overarching purpose during the call was to be an educator and enabler.  The correct calculation alone wasn’t the value of the call – the value was the connection and conversation on the how and why.

    If you find yourself searching for ways to contribute and continue to grow – I strongly suggest signing up for the Tableau Foundation Service Corps.

    And if you are on the flip of the coin and are a nonprofit in need of help – I am available.

     

  • A follow up to The Women of #IronViz

    A follow up to The Women of #IronViz

    It’s now 5 days removed from the Tableau Conference (#data17) and the topic of women in data visualization and the particularly pointed topic of women competing in Tableau’s #IronViz competition is still fresh on everyone’s mind.

    First – I think it’s important to recognize how awesome the community reception of this topic has been.  Putting together a visualization that highlights a certain subsection of our community is not without risk.  While going through the build process, I wanted to keep the visualization in the vein of highlighting the contributions of women in the community.  It wasn’t meant to be selective or exclusive, instead, a visual display of something I was interested in understanding more about.  Despite being 5 days removed from the conference, the conversations I’ve been involved in (and observed from a distance) have all remained inclusive and positive.  I’ve seen plenty of people searching for understanding and hunting for more data points.  I’ve also seen a lot of collaboration around solutions and collecting the data we all seek.  What I’m thankful that I have not witnessed is blame or avoidance.  In my mind this speaks volumes to the brilliant and refined members of our community and their general openness and acceptance of change, feedback, and improvement.

    One thing circling the rounds that I felt compelled to iterate off of, is @visualibrarian’s recent blog post that has interview style questions and answers around the topic.  I am a big believer in self reflection and exploration and was drawn to her call to action (maybe it was the punny and sarcastic nature of the ask) to answer the questions she put forth.

    1. Tell me about yourself. What is your professional background? When did you participate in Iron Viz?

    My professional background is that of a data analyst.  Although I have a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics, my first professional role was as a Pharmacy Technician entering prescriptions.  That quickly morphed into someone dedicated to reducing prescription entry errors and built on itself over and over to be put in roles like quality improvement and process engineering.  I’ve always been very reliant on data and data communication (in my early days as PowerPoint) to help change people and processes.  About 2 or 3 years ago I got fed up with being the business user at the mercy of traditional data management or data owners and decided to brute force my way into the “IT” side of things.  I was drawn to doing more with data and having better access to it.  Fast-forward to the role I’ve had for a little over 8 months as a Data Visualization Consultant.  Which essentially means I spend a significant amount of my time partnering with organizations to either enable them to use visual analytics, improve the platforms that they are currently using, or overcoming any developmental obstacles they may have.  It also means I spend a significant amount of time championing the power of data visualization and sharing “best practices” on the topic.  I often call myself a “data champion” because I seek simply to be the voice of the data sets I’m working with.  I’m there to help people understand what they’re seeing.

    In terms of Iron Viz – I first participated in 2016’s 3rd round feeder, Mobile Iron Viz.  I’ve since participated in every feeder round since.  And that’s the general plan on my end, continue to participate until I make it on stage or they tell me to stop 🙂

    2. Is Tableau a part of your job/professional identity?

    Yes – see answer to question #1.  It’s pretty much my main jam right now.  But I want to be very clear on this point – I consider my trade visual analytics, data visualization, and data analytics.  Tableau is to me the BEST tool to use within my trade.  By no means the only tool I use, but the most important one for my role.

    3. How did you find out about Iron Viz?

    When I first started getting more deeply involved in my local User Group, I found out about the competition.  Over time I became the leader of my user group and a natural advocate for the competition.  Once I became a part of the social community (via Twitter) it was easy to keep up with the ins and outs of the competition.

    4. Did you have any reservations about participating in Iron Viz?

    Absolutely – I still have reservations.  The first one I participated in was sort of on the off chance because I found something that I want to re-visualize in a very pared down elegant, simplistic way.  I ended up putting together the visualization in a very short period of time and after comparing it to the other entries I felt my entry was very out of place.  I tend to shy away from putting text heavy explanations within my visualizations, so I’ve felt very self-conscience that my designs don’t score well on “story telling.”  It was also very hard in 2016 and the beginning of 2017.  Votes were based off of Twitter.  You could literally search for your hashtag and see how many people liked your viz.  It’s a very humbling and crushing experience when you don’t see any tweets in your favor.

    5. Talk me through your favorite submission to Iron Viz. What did you like about it? Why?

    Ah – they are all my favorite for different reasons.  For each entry I’ve always remained committed and deeply involved in what the data represents.  Independent of social response, I have always been very proud of everything I’ve developed.  For no other reason than the challenge of understanding a data set further and for bringing a new way to visually display it.  My mobile entry was devastatingly simple – I love it to death because it is so pared down (the mobile version).  For geospatial I made custom shapes for each of the different diamond grades.  It’s something I don’t think anyone in the world knows I did – and for me it really brought home the lack of interest I have in diamonds as rare coveted items.

    6. What else do you remember about participating in Iron Viz?

    The general anxiety around it.  For geospatial 2017 I procrastinated around the topic so much.  My parents actually came to visit me and I took time away from being with them to complete.  I remember my mom consoling me because I was so adamant that I needed to participate.

    Safari and Silver Screen were different experiences for me.  I immediately locked in on data sets on subjects I loved, so there was less stress.  When I did the Star Trek entry I focused on look and feel of the design and was so stoked that the data set even existed.  Right now I am watching The Next Generation nightly and I go back to that visualization to see how it compares to my actual perception of each episode (in terms of speaking pace and flow).

    7. Which Iron Viz competitions did you participate in, and why?

    Everything since 2016 feeder round 3.  I felt a personal obligation and an obligation to my community to participate.  It was also a great way for me to practice a lot of what I tell others – face your fears and greet them as an awesome challenge.  Remain enthusiastic and excited about the unknown.  It’s not always easy to practice, but it makes the results so worth it.

    8. What competitions did you not participate in, and why?

    Anything before mobile – and only because I (most likely) didn’t know about it.  Or maybe more appropriately stated – I wasn’t connected enough to the community to know of it’s existence or how to participate.

    9. Do you participate in any other (non Iron Viz) Tableau community events?

    Yes – I participate in #MakeoverMonday and #WorkoutWednesday.  My goal for the end of 2017 is to have all 52 for each completed.  Admittedly I am a bit off track right now, but I plan on closing that gap soon.  I also participate in #VizForSocialGood and have participated in past User Group viz contests.  I like to collect things and am a completionist – so these are initiatives that I’ve easily gotten hooked on.  I’ve also reaped so many benefits from participation.  Not just the growth that’s occurred, but the opportunity to connect with like-minded individuals across the globe.  It’s given me the opportunity to have peers that can challenge me and to be surrounded by folks that I aspire to be more like.  It keeps me excited about getting better and knowing more about our field.  It’s a much richer and deeper environment than I have ever found working within a single organization.

    10. Do you have any suggestions for improving representation in Iron Viz?

    • Make it more representative of the actual stage contest
    • Single data set
    • Everyone submits on the same day
    • People don’t tweet or reveal submissions until contest closes
    • Judges provide scoring results to individual participants
    • The opportunity to present analysis/results, the “why”
    • Blind submissions – don’t reveal participants until results are posted
    • Incentives for participation!  It would be nice to have swag or badges or a gallery of all the submissions afterward

    And in case you just came here to see the visualization that’s set as the featured image, here’s the link.

  • Don’t be a Bridge, Instead be a Lock

    Lately I’ve spent a lot of time pondering my role in the world of data.  There’s this common phrase that we as data visualization and data analytics (BI) professionals hear all the time (and that I am guilty of saying):

    “I serve as the bridge between business and IT.”

    Well – I’m here to say it’s time to move on.  Why?  Because the bridge analogy is incomplete.  And because it doesn’t accurately represent the way in which we function in this critical role.  At first glance the bridge analogy seams reasonable.  A connector, something that joins two disparate things.  In a very physical way it connects two things that otherwise have an impasse between them.  The business is an island.  IT is an island.  Only a bridge can connect them.  But is this really true?

    Instead of considering the two as separate entities that must be connected, what if we rethought it to be bodies of water at different levels?  They touch each other, they are one.  They are the same type of thing.  The only difference is that they are at different levels, so something like a boat can’t easily go between them.  Is this not what is really happening.  “The business” and “IT” are all really one large organization – not two separate, foreign entities.

    This is where the role of being the Lock comes in.  A lock is the mechanism by which watercraft are raised or lowered between waterways.  And to a large extent it is a better analogy to our roles in data.  We must adapt to the different levels of business and IT.  And more importantly it is our responsibility to form that function – and to get the boat (more specifically “the data”) through from one canal to the other.

    Even exploring what Wikipedia says about a lock – it fits better.

    “Locks are used to make a river more easily navigable, or to allow a canal to cross land that is not level. ”

    “Larger locks allow for a more direct route to be taken” [paraphrased]

    Is this not how we function in our daily roles?  How fitting is it to say this:

    “My role is to make your data more easily navigable.  My goal is to allow data to flow through on your level.  I’m here to allow a more direct route between you and your data.”

    It feels right.  I’m there to help you navigate your data through both IT and business waters.  And it is my privilege and honor to facilitate this.  Let’s drop the bridge analogy and move toward a new paradigm – the world where we are locks, adjusting our levels to fit the needs of both sides.

  • Boost Your Professional Skills via Games

    Boost Your Professional Skills via Games

    Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you were looking for opportunities to get more strategic, focus on communication skills, improve your ability to collaborate, or just stretch your capacity to think critically?  Well I have the answer for you: pick up gaming.

    Let’s pause for a second and provide some background: I was born the same year the NES was released in North America – so my entire childhood was littered with video games.  I speak quite often about how much video gaming has influenced my life.  I find them to be one of the best ways to unleash creativity, have a universe where failure is safe, and there is always an opportunity for growth and challenge.

    With all that context you may think this post is about video games and how they can assist with growing out the aforementioned skills.  And that’s where I’ll add a little bit of intrigue: this post is actually dedicated to tabletop games.

    For the past two years I’ve picked up an awesome hobby – tabletop gaming.  Not your traditional Monopoly or Game of Life – but games centered around strategy and cooperation.  I’ve taken to playing them with friends, family, and colleagues as a way to connect and learn.  And along the way I’ve come across a few of my favorites that serve as great growth tools.

    Do I have you intrigued?  Hopefully!  Now on to a list of recommendations.  And the best part?  All but one of these can be played with 2 players.  I often play games with my husband as a way to switch off my brain from the hum of everyday life and into the deep and rich problems and mechanics that arise during game play.

    First up – Jaipur

    Jaipur is only a 2 player game that centers around trading and selling goods.  The main mechanics here are knowing when to sell, when to hold, and how to manipulate the market.  There are camel cards that get put in place that when returned cause new goods to appear.

    Why you should play: It is a great way to understand value at a particular moment in time.  From being first to market, to waiting until you have several of a specific good to sell, to driving changes in the market by forcing your opponent’s hand.  It helps unlock the necessity to anticipate next steps.  It shows how you can have control over certain aspects (say all the camels to prevent variety in the market), but how that may put you at a disadvantage when trying to sell goods.

    It’s a great game that is played in a max of 3 rounds and probably 30 minutes.  The variety and novelty of what happens makes this a fun to repeat game.

    Hanabi

    Hanabi is a collaborative game that plays anywhere from 2 to 5 people.  The basic premise is that you and your friends are absentminded fireworks makers and have mixed up all the fireworks (numeric sets 1 to 5 of 5 different colors).  Similar to Indian Poker you have a number of cards (3 or 4) facing away from you.  That is to say – you don’t know your hand, but your friends do.  Through a series of sharing information and discarding/drawing cards everyone is trying to put down cards in order from 1 to 5 for particular colors.  If you play a card too soon then the fireworks could go off early and there’s only so much information to share before the start of the fireworks show.

    This is a great game to learn about collaboration and communication.  When you’re sharing information you give either color or numeric information to someone about their hand.  This can be interpreted several different ways and it’s up to the entire team to communicate effectively and adjust to interpretation style.  It also forces you to make choices.  My husband and I recently played and got dealt a bunch of single-high value cards that couldn’t be played until the end.  We had to concede as a team that those targets weren’t realistic to go after and were the only way we could end up having a decent fireworks display.

    Lost Cities

    This is another exclusively two player game.  This is also a set building game where you’re going on exploration missions to different natural wonders.  Your goal is to fill out sets in numeric order (1 to 10) by color.  There’s a baseline cost to going on a mission, so you’ll have to be wise about going off on a mission.  There are also cards you can play (before the numbers) that let you double, triple, or quadruple your wager on successfully going on the exploration.  You and your opponent take turns drawing from a pool of known cards or from a deck.  Several tactics can unfold here.  You can build into a color early, or completely change paths once you see what the other person is discarding.  It’s also a juggling act to decide how much to wager to end up making money.

    Bohnanza

    This one plays well with a widespread number of players.  The key mechanic here is that you’re a bean farmer with 2 fields to plant beans.  The order in which you receive cards is crucial and can’t be changed.  It’s up to you to work together with your fellow farmers at the bean market to not uproot your fields too early and ruin a good harvest.  This is a rapid fire trading game where getting on someone’s good side is critical and you’ll immediately see the downfall of holding on to cards for the “perfect deal.”  But of course you have to balance out your friendliness with the knowledge that if you share too many high value beans the other farmers may win.  There’s always action on the table and you have to voice your offer quickly to remain part of the conversation.

    The Grizzled

    The Grizzled is a somewhat melancholy game centered around World War I.  You’re on a squad and trying to successfully fulfill missions before all morale is lost.  You’ll do this by dodging too many threats and offering support to your team.  You’ll even make speeches to encourage your comrades.  This game offers lots of opportunities to understand when and how to be a team player to keep morale high and everyone successful.  The theme is a bit morose, but adds context to the intention behind each player’s actions.

    The Resistance

    Sadly this requires a minimum of 5 people to play, but is totally worth it.  As the box mentions it is a game of deduction and deception.  You’ll be dealt a secret role and are either fighting for victory or sabotage.  I played this one with 8 other colleagues recently and pure awesomeness was the result.  You’ll get the chance to pick teams for missions, vote on how much you trust each other, and ultimately fight for success or defeat.  You will get insight into crowd politics and how individuals handle situations of mistrust and lack of information.  My recent 9 player game divulged into using a white board to help with deductions!

    Next time you’re in need of beefing up your soft skills or detaching from work and want to do it in a productive and fun manner – consider tabletop gaming.  Whether you’re looking for team building exercises or safe environments to test how people work together – tabletop games offer it all.  And in particular – collaborative tabletop games.  With most games there’s always an element of putting yourself first, but you will really start to understand how individuals like to contribute to team mechanics.