In January 2020 we launched the Civic Innovation Fellowship program to support local individuals seeking to improve our community through innovative, community-led projects. Each fellow received a $1000 stipend to support their work. The Fellowship program was originally planned to conclude with an in-person public showcase in May. This showcase was intended to allow each[…]
Data Feminism (2020) by Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein provides an important perspective about data and power. Those in power use data, intentionally or unintentionally, to maintain the status quo and oppress marginalized people. Yet data is a two-edged sword and those without power can use it to challenge the status quo. While inspired[…]
Like many non-profits, the pandemic continues to have a profound impact on our ability to achieve our objectives in 2020. Mostly notable, our desire to expand and grow the Center for Civic Innovation (CCI), our primary project. At it’s core, the CCI is a public space that thrives on human interaction and in-person events. This[…]
Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals (2015) by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic is the current #1 Bestseller in Information Management on Amazon for good reason. The book is a clear guide to chart design, helping readers move quickly from basic graphs to engaging and informative displays. Knaflic’s software-agnostic book will benefit all[…]
An innovative University of Virginia capstone team recently published a study called Flood Monitoring and Mitigation Strategies for Flood-Prone Urban Areas. The capstone went far beyond a traditional academic exercise. Supported by Professor Jonathan Goodall, Smart Cville’s Center for Civic Innovation, and the City of Charlottesville, this team was able to bring its capstone into[…]
This is the second in a series of book reviews about data dashboards. In the first review, we looked at Information Dashboard Design: Displaying data for at-a-glance monitoring by Stephen Few. The Big Book of Dashboards: Visualizing Your Data Using Real-World Business Scenarios (2017) is the perfect complement to Stephen Few’s Information Dashboard Design. While[…]
Airbnb/Rental Supply Data Collaborative Project Sponsor: Charlottesville HAC (via Chris Meyer, Heather Hill, Sally Hudson) Project team: Nathan Day, Matt Thomas, Courtney Whalen The below report was submitted to HAC for its meeting packet in March (just as COVID-19 shut downs were beginning). That meeting did not happen but may this July. Not submitted to[…]
2020 is the year of the dashboard! This is not because dashboards are new, but rather their use has exploded as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 Dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University remains the most popular dashboard, recording more than 4.5 billion views in a[…]