Simple Open Data that impresses

This BA campaign (already from some years ago) is one of the coolest things I have seen with Open Data. On a huge screen on Piccadilly Circus in London, a boy stands up and points to an overflying plane only and only if it is a BA flight and it can be seen (i.e. there are no clouds). This ad is based on bringing together three data sources, all publicly available: GPS data, data about tracking planes and data about the weather. This work illustrates the power of open data when combined with creativity.

Sustainable data ...

We live in an era of big data. And this will continue for some time to come. Data and its analysis will keep increasing. Indeed, there are huge opportunities and much value to create from data; it can be used for targeted advertising, to find out how many international tourists visit countries, to reduce churn, to upsell customers, to personalize content, to recommend videos, etc, etc, and even to improve the world.

While we see a proliferation of data usage, the issue arises whether all this usage of data is sustainable, i.e., whether it is based on a responsible use of data and will endure over time (just like sustainable agriculture or renewable energy). In the following posts, I will discuss different data usages and how they score, in my opinion, with respect to sustainability. Categories of data usage include: data for advertising, data to optimize business, data to generate insights to help other industries, the personal data economy, data for innovative new products, and data for improving the world.

Stay tuned .....