New U.S. Gross National Happiness Index Implemented!

We've talked about Bhutan's Gross National Happiness Index before. Now we have a Gross National Happiness Index for the United States, updated on a daily basis, brought to us free ... by Facebook.

Here's how it works:

Every day, millions of people share how they feel with the people who matter the most in their lives through status updates on Facebook. These updates are tiny windows into how people are doing. They're brief, to the point and descriptive of what's going on this week, today or right now. Grouped together, these updates are indicative of how we are collectively feeling. Measuring how well-off, happy or satisfied with life the citizens of a nation are is part of the Gross National Happiness movement. When people in their status updates use more positive words--or fewer negative words--then that day as a whole is counted as happier than usual. (To protect your privacy, no one at Facebook actually reads the status updates in the process of doing this research; instead, our computers do the word counting after all personally identifiable information has been removed.)

The New York Times quotes Adam D. I. Kramer, the creator of the index, as saying: “When people in their status updates use more positive words — or fewer negative words — then that day as a whole is counted as happier than usual.”

Adam explains the methodology for the index in this Facebook blog post. Check it out and see what you think.

(Hat tip: ISQOLS)

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For Facebook Afficionados

I'm still exploring social networking software, and I'm wondering how many of this blog's readers use Facebook. If you do, would you like to join a Community Indicators Group on Facebook?

Please let me know what you think of the idea.

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Beta IndicatorsCommunity.Com Now Live

My other project, indicatorscommunity.com, is now moving into its beta version. Thanks to those who provided feedback so far on which tools/widgets to provide, the interlinkages with www.communityindicators.net, and the need for clearer Help and FAQ pages.

Now I need people willing to register a user ID and start commenting on posts, adding their own information, promoting their own projects, creating their own groups, starting their own wiki pages, launching a new forum, pulling their blog in through RSS feeds, or anything else that strike their fancy. The goal of the project is to have a one-stop networking hub that links all of the good work out there on the web in relation to community indicators (and government performance measures and sustainability indicators and triple bottom line work and all the interrelated ways we're using data and indicators to make change and measure performance.)

This past not-quite-a-year on this blog has convinced me that there's a lot of folk doing a lot of really good work that ought to be able to connect with each other. Much of that work is happening outside my own country (US), and so I'm hoping the language tools built into the new site will allow people to connect and discuss their work in their language(s) of choice -- the platform should allow that, but again I'm looking for people to join in and help me see where any bugs might be.

The formal roll-out of the site is expected to happen in June. Between now and then, I need some hardy pioneers -- some folks who want to get in early on the conversation and help create the network's "culture" of interactions.

If you're interested, go to indicatorscommunity.com, pick a user name, and sign in. It should be that easy. (If it's not, let me know how I can make it easier.)

Thanks for the help!

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Living Inside Networks of Knowledge

Nick Chrisman has an interesting article in ArcNews in the Fall 2007 issue (which just showed up in my inbox -- don't know how long someone else had been reading it). The article, Living Inside Networks of Knowledge, begins by discussing the history of the architecture of the Internet. He makes the point that:

The Internet was not unprecedented. Connecting a significant portion of the world's population to an integrated network of communication is something our society has done over and over again. The telegraph system was one such system. From its inception in the mid-19th century, the telegraph provided light-speed communications from place to place. It remained centralized, and the last mile involved boys on bicycles, but the overall increase in speed was enormous. The telegraph was followed by the telephone, bringing the equipment right into each house. In a sober analysis, the Internet, as most people use it, simply makes another transition in the details of the connection.

He argues for a transformation in the way we think about knowledge distribution. GIS, which is his subject, is still "living out the original dreams of the 1960s" – we're still using 1974 technology in File Transfer Protocols (FTP) to take a worldwide interconnected network of information providers and users and force onto it the centralized model of the telegraph office.

Here's the exciting part:

As long as the current distribution of geographic power revolves around being a gatekeeper, a custodian of data, the potential of the distributed sensor network is diminished. What is required is an escape from the "Prisoner's Dilemma." [Note: This dilemma comes from game theory: many situations are structured to disfavor cooperation.] And there are glimmers of hope in this regard. In the tightest of information economies, there are "Free Data Movements."

How do we make use of the real power of the internet? Reshaping the "data economy" is a human issue, not a technical one, he says. "Knowledge networks have escaped from the hierarchical structure." Spatial search is a step forward, but even Google Earth misses the social networking side. But the data movement is marching on.

One of the key elements of the technology is the empowerment of citizens to produce their own spatial information, then to present it publicly. This overthrows the specialist model of the centralized model from decades past.

If social networking is the transformative future of the web, then licensing/closed shop/restricted access to tools and data is standing in the way of progress. (You do remember that this newsletter/newspaper is published by ESRI?) This is an incredibly important message, and one that ought to be transforming the way we do our work in community indicators. How open is our information? How open source our software? Are we gatekeepers and presenters of data, or are we part of a network that allows for everyone to be part of both providing and using information?

The knowledge networks of the web contain their own challenges. How do we know which information to trust? How well do we provide metadata so that others can trust the information we provide? How collaborative are we in engaging to build networks of data users and providers?

Read the article at http://www.esri.com/news/arcnews/fall07articles/living-inside.html and then comment here. This conversation needs to be louder and more of us need to join in.

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More Data Sources

I'm becoming a big fan of del.icio.us tags for organizing web-based material, and for discovering other people who have tagged and organized material for you.

Thanks to the folks at this blog, I found the tag listings of Jon Udell. Jon's been trying to pull together public data sources, and has added quite a few interesting ones.

For example, the Human Development Report has customizable tables from countries around the world that you can download in spreadsheet format. That's from well over 100 indicators. (You can also read their report, but free access to customizable data sets is much more exciting to me, which obviously means I need to get out more.)

Then look at all pages tagged with 'publicdata' on del.icio.us. More gems emerge, including GeoHive and WorldMapper.

So poke around, and join in the tagging fun -- make your own del.icio.us account, and when you identify really neat public data sites, tag them accordingly.

(There's also a community_indicators tag you may want to check out and add to.)

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Blog Action Day

This site will be participating, and would like to invite other bloggers to join in.

BLOGGERS TO UNITE ON BLOG ACTION DAY

All Blogs Invited to Take Part in Joining Voices to Help Environment

An international initiative of bloggers known as "Blog Action Day" launched today, with the aim of uniting thousands of blogging voices, talking about one issue for one day. This year on Blog Action Day, which is slated for Oct. 15, 2007, bloggers will be discussing the environment.



Major blogs have signed up to participate, including Lifehacker, Dumb Little Man, Lifehack.org, Get Rich Slowly, Web Worker Daily, GigaOm, The Simple Dollar, Zen Habits, Freelance Switch, LifeClever, Unclutterer, Pronet Advertising, Wise Bread and many more.



"For just one day, we'd like to unite as many of the millions of bloggers around the world and speak about one issue - the environment," said Collis Ta'eed, an Australian blogger from FreelanceSwitch.com, and a cofounder of Blog Action Day. "We want to display the potential and the power of the blogging community, which is a disparate community but one with an amazing size, breadth and diversity. By bringing everyone together for one day, we can see just how much can be achieved, and how much we can be heard."


Blog Action Day is a non-profit initiative, and will be an annual event. As an alternative to blogging about the environment on Blog Action Day, bloggers can opt to participate by donating their blog's proceeds from Oct. 15 to one of several environmental organizations chosen for this purpose: Greenpeace International, The Nature Conservancy, the National Wildlife Federation (NWF), the Conservation Fund, and the Sierra Club.



Bloggers who would like to participate in Blog Action Day should visit BlogActionDay.org or email Collis Ta'eed at collis@eden.cc, so they can be listed on the Blog Action Day site. To participate, a blog just needs to write about the issue of the environment on Oct. 15, 2007, or donate its proceeds for the day to one of the chosen environmental organizations.

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Exciting News from Redefining Progress

Here's an update from the amazing folks at Redefining Progress:

We have a new website! Our new look features fresh content, better navigation, and in-depth information about Redefining Progress and how we find solutions that balance economic well-being, environmental preservation, and social justice.

I’m also excited about The 11th Hour, a film in which Michel Gelobter, Redefining Progress’ President, appears. The 11th Hour, produced by Leonardo DeCaprio, features some of the world's most prominent thinkers and activists as they offer hope and solutions for a planet in crisis.

Before you leave the website, be sure to browse our research and publications, sign up to receive the RP newsletter or make a generous donation toward creating a sustainable economy.

Please let me know what you think!

PS. Our new website is the result of a generous Service Grant from the Taproot Foundation, a pro-bono service that matches skilled professionals with nonprofit organizations. Thanks, Taproot!

Visit the web address below to tell your friends about this. Tell-a-friend!

If you received this message from a friend, you can sign up for Redefining Progress.

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Data Discussions

With the growth of innovative technologies, opportunities to connect with people and discuss interesting topics keep expanding. For those of us who find data discussions fascinating, here are some of the types of places I've been noticing where people are talking about data.

Swivel: Swivel groups form around shared data sets (or sets of sets). The It's Official! group is a pretty good example of what this means: The group, created last week by United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), "aims to improve communication between users and producers of official statistics. Producers are invited to show their wares, particularly any new or innovative data. Users, please let us know what you think about our products, and what sort of data you really need." Check it out and add your input to the discussion.

Many Eyes: Many Eyes has topic hubs that include discussions, visualizations, and data sets. An example of this is the topic hub around global warming: here's an opportunity to look at data, reshape it into graphs, and talk to others interested in the data and its presentation.

What other discussion groups do you participate in that include conversations around data, indicators, and statistics?

On a separate subject, take a look at the 16 data visualization tools (plus a few more in the comments section) in this article -- really interesting stuff. Let me know if you have others to add, or can figure out how to use one of these tools in a community indicator project.

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Measuring Community Well-Being

On the rethos.com blog, Chris Advansun makes an interesting observation about community well-being based on his living experiences in Harlem and Toronto.

After sharing his descriptions of both places, he concludes with the following:

The United Nations’ Human Development Index, widely used to compare and contrast standards of living between countries across the globe, integrates literacy, life expectancy, education and gross domestic product (GDP) into its formula. This is a good start, but still fails to measure certain aspects of well-being, such as those concluded in the Harlem vs. suburbs exercise. How close do citizens feel to their neighbors, how much use do they make of their neighborhood and how interwoven is their community?

Perhaps reducing well-being to one universal formula is impossible, because different populations would disagree with the very indicators upon which the formula is based. Harlem would perhaps value community and open block parties more than the suburbs, which would place privacy and personal security at a higher importance. But at the very least, we must use more diverse indicators to measure and understand well-being. The suburbs may enjoy higher rates of employment, but if they come second to the inner-city on community indicators, who’s better off?

You may want to take a look at what they're trying to build at rethos.com. The founders are trying to create an online social network "to be the platform for individuals, non-profit organizations and socially responsible companies to rethink their role in the world, the urgency of issues facing our planet, and the real ability we have to unite to affect change."

It's one of a number of new attempts to leverage the "Web 2.0" for social change. I'll try to pass along those I run across that seem to have intersection points with community indicators. Please share any others you find as well.

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