2009 NTC Preview: Kurt Voelker on Data Visualization

Here's the thing, guys: we don't use data as well as we could.

Sure, we report a lot of things -- how many people we fed, how many students attend our classes -- but we rarely use data to talk about what matters: Are we ending hunger? Are our students learning? 

Worse yet, we're not looking beyond our OWN data to see how our works compares to the need or to the work of other organizations.

Why? Because numbers don't tell a story. We have a hard time translating numbers into real stories. But turning those numbers into pictures changes all that, so data visualization is going to be key to our ability to amplify our effectiveness.

That's the topic Kurt Voelker of Forum One Communications will tackle at the 2009 NTC in his session, "Gobs and Gobs of Data: Strategies for Visualizing, Mapping, and Sharing Policy Content". I talked to him about his session, and my fear of numbers.

You can also read his recent article on the subject, published in our blog.