Kissing sxsw g'bye!
SXSW 2019 has come and gone.
So, what did we see and hear? Alongside talks on AI (minority report anyone?) and blockchain (crypto bros were literally everywhere) there was a lot of talk about humanity, empathy and inclusion.
The best thing I heard, by far, came from fashion designer and kickass business consultant Gretchen Jones;
“Because we are creators, we think that whatever we put out there deserves to be there. And that is wildly egotistical.”
When we get caught up in ourselves, we’re not acting with empathy towards those we’re creating for - but rather, for us. There is a certain reciprocity or balance we have to achieve, between our creative selves and those who will engage with what we create.
To do this requires us all to listen humbly to what others have to say. Now, I know what you’re going to say. We are listening! We have whole teams dedicated analytics and business intelligence (BI). But listening is about more than aimlessly scraping data and hoping you get something worthwhile.
So, I’m calling it now, big data is out and thick data is in.
If it lives in a spreadsheet or you can buy it from Google, it’s not thick data.
So, what is thick data?
This is thick data:
And this is 100% thick data:
And this is might be the thickest data I’ve seen in a while:
Thick data is people over data