Anyone can be a DataGenius…

In my first blog for the DataGeniusIV challenge, I wrote about my thoughts on the evolution of data intelligence over the past 7 years. It was a bit of curiosity that had me look back at a simple example of data from an old project and trace its evolution from spreadsheets, to dashboards, to exploration and visualization to the idea of mobile applications. To help people get started with their DataGenius projects this year, I put together an SAP HANA Academy video series that walks through my example using the US Environmental Protection Agency data (power plant emissions data publicly available from eGRID). For this project, I used a free Developer edition of HANA Cloud Platform account and SAP HANA, then connected that to a trial Standard edition of SAP Lumira for phase 1. For the next phase, I plan to use some of the capabilities of HCP to build out a more dynamic analytics application example.

My goal was simple: provide more people with the power of insight. I love the idea of crowd sourcing the tough issues of our day. With access to information I think the conversations get broader and the understanding of the issues gets deeper – isn’t that better for us all? No more soundbites or slanted news stories on social media. What if we were all able to be our own data geniuses and find our own conclusions? Who says where the next great solution will come from? I’d say make this a middle school project and teach students technology AND science together so they are armed for the future. Give University students in science, technology and analytics usable access to the data sets of places like the EPA, ESA, UN and other agencies and NGOs so they can become more technically and socially active in effecting change. If two heads are better than one, then wouldn’t 200, 2000 or 2 million be even better?

I’m not sure how much of this I will have time to build out as my spare-time project, but here is how I started in case you want to try it yourself. Maybe you can take it from here and make it amazing! Or maybe you will use these ideas to build your own analysis of other publicly available data sets in support of your cause. Learn some new technology and save the world. Not bad for a Sunday afternoon…