Alas, I am not talking about Ryan Gosling’s new film, nominated for the Palm d’Or at this year’s Cannes, the DRIVE I’m talking about is a data and reporting conference put together by the University of Washington’s Advancement Reporting group.

Yesterday, at the Bell Harbor Conference Center, I joined about 100 reporting, analytics or data professionals mostly from higher–ed and non-profits. A few other fields were represented (like Krill Systems & the Seattle Prop Club by MCDM’s very own Lynne Watanabe). The morning was filled with sessions ranging from data mining to data visualizations. I was able to attend both University of Washington’s Information School’s Marilyn Ostegren’s presentation on Data Visualization and Cool Data Blog‘s Kevin MacDonnel’s talk on predictive modeling.

Somehow in the last few years I have become a major data nerd. It may have all started when I took my first Access class and our instructor finished the course with his favorite database joke: What does Hugh Hefner have in common with relational database? One-to-many relationships! – ba-dum-ching! Whatever the reason, this new world of data, databases and visualizations has become a mild obsession. So yes, I was digging on Wednesday’s sessions.

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Four Students, Four Countries, Four Perspectives: A Roundtable Discussion of Technology, Business, and Youth in Namibia, Ghana, Cameroon, and South Africa.

Mobile phones represent more than 90% of all telephone lines in Africa. With access to mobile data growth at 129% per year and a growing online subscriber base, the internet and mobile technology is having a transformative effect on the lives of millions of Africans.

Image courtesy of kiwanja.net

This Wednesday, October 26, the University of Washington’s African Studies Program is hosting a rare opportunity to hear from three students and one graduate of UW’s Masters of Communication in Digital Media program who have first hand experience of the ways in which the digital world is creating new opportunities and realities throughout sub-Saharan Africa. MCDM Associate Director, Anita Verna Crofts, will moderate the panel.

Current MCDM students Shelby Barnes, Pam Kahl, and Joseph Pavey recently spent time in Namibia, Ghana and Cameroon respectively, while MCDM graduate Alvin Singh lives and works in South Africa. Their experiences offer different perspectives on how digital media and information and communications technology (ICT) is affecting young people, culture, and business on a daily basis.

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It’s no secret that getting medical care to many millions of Africans remains one of the biggest challenges facing the continent today. For example in Kenya, one of the more progressive and economically sound African nations, according to the World Health Organization there are only 140 doctors for every 100,000 people. Compare that to 2,600 for every 100,000 people in the USA. As the Kenyan government also bans doctors from advertising their services, there is little way for ordinary Kenyans to find out who might be able to help them with their medical needs. Consequently, many people go without any kind of medical care and are vulnerable to a large army of “quacks” who operate in the vacuum.

Mobile technology is the preeminent form of digital communication in Africa and is growing rapidly. As a result of the increasing connectivity that mobile technology has bought to sub-Saharan Africa, there is a lot of buzz around innovative applications and technologies that are making quality information much more accessible to millions of Africans. Read more…

Join us for cocktails and conversation tonight at Flowers on the corner of 42nd and University Way.  Meet fellow MCDMers working at FtM and share a story idea or two.  6:00pm-8:00pm .

You know, we often talk intergenerationally about what technologies did and didn’t exist “in my day.” It’s kind of the modern parenting version of walking to school “uphill, in the snow, both ways… BAREFOOT.” We tell the children around us how lucky they are that they have the miraculous digital toys that are widely available today, and joke with other adults about raising kids who never had a plug-in telephone in their house.

But rarely do we think about this topic from the child’s perspective. Here, a toddler shows us what happens when high-tech babies and old media collide…

We here at FtM Central like infographics. A blend of design, information, and (these days) digital media—what’s not to love about them? In fact, they are so quintessentially the distillation of information into small, easily digested bites, that we’d love to run one by you on a regular basis, analyzing what does and doesn’t work for each one. There’s an interesting hitch to the idea of running a regular column, though…

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If Netflix planned to grab media attention the way it has in recent weeks, it certainly has succeeded brilliantly, multiple times. While the real stories may not be known for a while yet, one thing is certain: Netflix has made itself a permanent case study in business communication classes.

Confusion and mishaps aside, Netflix did succeed in carrying out a couple of major tasks: it separated its DVD by mail service financially from its streaming service, and it raised the price of both its services significantly.

Recently, there have been rumors of a failed courtship between Netflix’s and Amazon. Wall Street speculates that Netflix split up in order to sell, and reversed that decision when the merger fell through. While nothing can be confirmed, the sudden announcement of Qwikster and the subsequent hasty change of heart certainly suggests there was perhaps more drama behind the scenes than what the audience saw. Read more…

Last week Hari Sreenivasan the Director of Digital Partnerships at PBS and at PBS NewsHour correspondent appeared at a special event hosted by Seattle’s KCTS 9 public television station.  Held a stone’s throw from the Space Needle–Seattle’s iconic architectural monument to progress–at the small station’s studios, this was a special event for students in the University of Washington Master of Communication in Digital Media program and was followed by an interview and event with station donors.

A video of highlights from the conversation with MCDM students and a complete transcript are available on the KCTS 9 website.

According to Sreenivasan, who is a proponent of the growing “slow news” movement, “The value of breaking news is going down faster than you can post it.”
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