“I keep saying the sexy job in the next ten years will be statisticians. People think I’m joking, but who would’ve guessed that computer engineers would’ve been the sexy job of the 1990s?

“The ability to take data – to be able to understand it, to process it, to extract value from it, to visualize it, to communicate it, is going to be a hugely important skill in the next decades…”

Hal Varian, The McKinsey Quarterly, January 2009

Data is increasingly being used to tell stories in different and more interesting ways.
I very much enjoy what Feltron is doing. You may not be interested in his Personal Annual Reports from 05 – 09, but they do demonstrate the expressive language of data (making the previously uninteresting, interesting).
Feltron is self admittedly only a couple of steps ahead of a future world packed with sensors and people who have taken ‘the red pill’ (i.e. those who have started digitalising their life for posterity).

News teams are craving this sort of trackable storytelling, looking forward to a time when people will be able to experience news on a different level, interactively and in real time.  For news junkies, this is incredibly exciting.  Imagine being able to read a story on the BBC News website and then being able to delve deeper into it to find out more about the subject. For example, if a headline reads WHO declares swine flu pandemic, the article might also include the latest WHO data for people to explore.

Giving the reader more power, adding transparency to institutions and enabling stories and comments to evolve from this, will allow the internet to become the great leveller.

We iz facin wicked economic times (I’ll calm the Ali G references down, I promise.)

Business is in a bit of a state. Simon Watson, partner at BDO warned: “Although we hope this recession may be over, the consequences still remain. We are going through a period of profound societal and technological change, which will mean that some business models will wither away and die.” Change must occur to thrive and grow.

I propose, in true Ali G fashion, that what this country needs indahouse to strengthen the economy is indapreneurs.

What on earth is an indapreneur I hear you ask?  Much like an entrepreneur, an indapreneur is an individual with great business and entrepreneurial nouse, but who works within an organisation as opposed to for themselves. These indapreneurs would  have a primary focus on data, to  set key performance indicators for their organisation.

But why do we need them?   In the current environment it’s more important than ever that any investment’s ROI is clear, so it comes as some surprise to learn that businesses aren’t investing more to educate their employees about the power of data.

As part of his ‘President’s Prize’ award-winning IPA Excellence Diploma paper, Matt Sadler surveyed 122 people across creative, media, direct, digital and PR agencies. Respondents agreed that reliance on data was increasing (rating it an average 4.1 out of 5), yet employers weren’t seen to be committed to training staff to use it effectively (with employer commitment rated an average of 2.5 out of 5).

The challenge of indapreneurs would be to demonstrate the importance of data, and banish the prevailing perception that data is “boring”, “cold” and “limiting to creativity”.

• Clear feedback

You remember when we all went to school and university. It was pretty good having that instant feedback from everything you did comparatively to all your peers. You knew exactly where you stood in terms of achievement and progress. E2E.LT brings back this clarity and transparency.

• A sense of progress

Throughout all the years of school and university when you’re continuously being graded and tracked you can clearly see how you’re doing over time. This is another important aspect E2E.LT makes possible throughout life. Not only that but when generations before you have complete LT you are able to compare yourself to them and clearly set benchmarks.

• The possibility of success

With the above two points personal success becomes more tangible. Life aspirations now become more visually defined.

• Satisfy your curiosity

How you have managed to achieve in the past can be clarified, how you got there and how you can keep consistent.

• Chance to solve a problem

If you want to inflict more pleasure or deflect pain this is where you can, from looking at the previous points and solving any issues that the data has highlighted.
Here’s a widespread list of some steps towards E2E.LT to explore: 
Fitness - Nike +
Adding scores, challenges, trophies, and competitions to what would otherwise be just a running self-tracker.

Health - Health Month
Let‘s you set up rules for your own health behaviour for one month, and then win loose points and badges (and cheer and be cheered by others) based on those rules.

Finance - Mint.com
Allows you to set yourself financial goals and track your progress towards them.

Sustainability - My Leaf
Allows you to compete with other drivers regionally as well as globally on how energy efficient you are driving your car.

Entertainment - Club Psych
In the media industry, companies try to make their online properties more sticky and engaging by adding minigames, challenges,(redeemable) points and leaderboards to them, as in the case of the USA Network show Psych.

Shopping - Barcodehero
In retail shopping, companies like BarcodeHero bring the concept of ‘checking in’ from Foursquare or Gowalla to stores or products in stores, again complete with points, leaderboards and other game elements.

Productivity - Play Nice.ly
And even in the productivity space, several companies have set up services to add game elements to work tasks, as in the case of Play Nice.ly, which gameifies software debugging with points and badges earned for the number and quality of bugs you report.

Service vendors and agencies - Bunchball, BigDoor, Badgeville and GetGlue
Finally, a couple of service vendors and agencies have sprung up that offer game elements (points, badges, …) as a service layer to integrate into your site, as well as gamification design.

Often people find it’s better to avoid predicting the future in case  you  end up looking foolish: “Next Christmas the iPod will be dead, finished, gone, kaput” – Sir Alan Sugar, 2005

“We’ll kill spam in two years” – Bill Gates, 2004

“We stand on the threshold of rocket mail” – U.S. postmaster general, Arthur Summerfield, 1959

“Britain doesn’t need telephones” – Chief engineer at the Post Office, Sir William Preece, 1878

With the speed that technology is evolving it’s becoming even harder to know what is going to happen next week, let alone in the next 10 years. But we need not accept defeat.

When predicting the future, the singularity can assist us.  By practicing predictions from accelerated feedback loops, we can begin to grasp a tighter understanding of future events. Accelerated feedback loops were especially helpful for the development of the mobile web following the fixed line, with smart devices leading to a digitally responsive generation producing comprehensive records of their lives’ activities.

With this in mind, I predict that within the next ten years we’ll be tracking our lives end-to-end with a multitude of personal sensors – think Nike+ – and openly sharing the information. The opportunity for data gathering from this would be huge, making the loyalty schemes of today appear insignificant.

Here are a few feedback loops for you to explore:

WiFi body scales – WiFi blood pressure – Mass market sensors – Life achievement apps – Life achievement visualisations – Rewards for being active

If you’re thinking this all seems rather Orwellian, let me try to convince you otherwise.  I believe with an enhanced understanding of our lives, we will be better equipped to seek out the things that make us happy, and avoid those which cause us pain.  

As stated in Good to Great, the best businesses find concrete numbers to judge and manage themselves by, why then, not apply this to our lives?

However, I’m also inclined to agree with Alan Kay that “The best way to predict the future is to invent it”.

Since joining Fuel and speaking to friends, family and colleagues about my new role, I‘ve noticed a certain amount of “data distancing”. Even for so-called “diagonal thinkers”, data can be seen as scary stuff, and it’s not surprising considering the outdated image data has in this digital and visual age. This is changing though, with new terms such as “Infomagination”, research carried out by UCL shown here and the World Wide Web Consortiums’ Linked Data project shown here.

I’m by no means a mathematician as a new edition to this award winning team, with my past comfortably lying in strategic marketing. It’s just the opportunity Fuel has within the marketing space, supporting clients and enhancing creativity, is too big to miss. My data epiphany was sparked by the awesome series back in January that was The Virtual Revolution, demonstrating the impact of the web and its might as an empowerment tool. Particularly poignant for me was the idea that whilst this empowerment is deemed to be free, it does bide by the laws of economics, and there is certainly a cost attached. Whilst the exchange isn’t monetary, we are paying with our privacy and that is arguably more valuable.

The Fuel of my excitement:

The web based processing power of “the cloud”, mass adoption of smart devices and the growing development of augmented reality is bringing business intelligence to a new level. It’s leading to a deeper relationship between company and consumer and the ability for companies not just to understand consumers better but react to their behaviour in real time to optimize performance  and with mobile accessible data solutions.

Google’s Eric Schmidt talks frequently of “Consumer Nowness” and  “Mobile First” and that is no surprise considering  that in many European countries there are more mobile phones than humans, with the Mobile web (last estimates I saw) growing 8 times faster than the equivalent fixed line web. When developing this it’s the data that drives the change becoming intertwined with your day-to-day like threads in a fabric.

Undoubtedly it’s an exciting time in digital. I however, am more excited by what lays beneath the surface of this and that is the much misunderstood world of data. Via this exchange of privacy and soaring adoption the “infomagination” can be developed to enhance market understanding. The untrackable is becoming trackable. The technology allows for it and is putting an end to the above the line stranglehold.