Data Science for a Better World

<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">Sa</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">š</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">ka Mojsilovi</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">ć</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">led the creation of the <a href="https://soundcloud.com/ibmresearch/will-crowdsourcing-and-data-stem-the-ebola-outbreak">Ebola Open Data Jam</a> in 2014. A community effort which helped </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">to identify, inventory and classify all open data sources related to the Ebola outbreak, it provided governments, aid agencies and researchers with free and open access to valuable open data related to the epidemic on the platform <a href="http://www.eboladata.org/">EbolaData.org</a>.</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZzoZLgCztAuniuPHgf0aNBKaz0R4U__hIYzvDoMbASXtEFNGU6twNVZu-B6VGCOFSoZNTtkhWIhIZmq6EFFdoKYpVLDOD3DbeweMufXPWIBFMxXAhzMUWLNB4TAaqe_XyxcgshNUkfWU/s1600/kush_varshney1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZzoZLgCztAuniuPHgf0aNBKaz0R4U__hIYzvDoMbASXtEFNGU6twNVZu-B6VGCOFSoZNTtkhWIhIZmq6EFFdoKYpVLDOD3DbeweMufXPWIBFMxXAhzMUWLNB4TAaqe_XyxcgshNUkfWU/s1600/kush_varshney1.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">IBM Research scientist Kush Varshney</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">Kush Varshney is a data ambassador for DataKind,</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;"> an organization that brings together leading data scientists with high impact social organizations to better analyze, model and visualize data in the service of humanity. </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">He has led projects</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;"> with NGO <a href="http://www.datakind.org/projects/using-the-simple-to-be-radical"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">GiveDirectly</span></a> and <a href="http://krvarshney.github.io/pubs/GerardRSVKN_d4gx2015.pdf">Simpa Networks</a>. GiveDirectly delivers cash directly to <a href="https://soundcloud.com/ibmresearch/volunteers-and-algorithms-deliver-funds">extremely poor villagers</a> in Kenya and Uganda.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">Using a combination of volunteers, satellite imagery, image processing and a machine learning-based algorithm, the team trained a system to identify the poorest villages based on the proportion of thatch to metal roofed homes, a simple yet effective proxy for poverty. A resulting <a href="http://krvarshney.github.io/pubs/AbelsonVS_kdd2014.pdf">paper</a>on the research was awarded the best social good paper at the 2014 <a href="http://www.kdd.org/kdd2014">KDD</a> Conference.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span><br /><a name="more"></a><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://asmarterplanet.com/files/2014/04/Saska1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://asmarterplanet.com/files/2014/04/Saska1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">IBM Fellow Saška Mojsilović</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">For Sa</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">š</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">ka, an IBM Fellow (the company’s highest technical rank), putting her skills as a data scientist to societal issues is a professional responsibility. “</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">There are so many </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">disparities in the world from justice, to poverty, to hunger. We need to try to do something. If everyone did the best they could do – the world might go in a different direction. We have a responsibility as people and scientists. And we have a responsibility to raise new generations of data scientists to think and act the same.” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">For Kush, an IBM Research scientist and member of Sa</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">š</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">ka’s team, it’s also about following family example. “My grandfather was dedicated to many social causes in India throughout his life. He was an applied mathematician like me, but in his day, there was no data being collected in the social sector, so he used other means to make a difference. Today, I can use my expertise to create a better world.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">Today, their sense of purpose has led to the founding of IBM’s <a href="http://www.ibm.com/ibm/responsibility/initiatives/IBMSocialGoodFellowship.html">Social Good Fellowship Program</a>. This new initiative invites graduate and post-doctoral students to apply their computer science and statistical skills to projects that address important social issues, such as health care, equality, the environment, sustainability, disaster response and more.</span><br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><div style="text-align: right;"></div><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">As co-directors of the program, Sa</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">š</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">ka and Kush bring a tremendous amount of knowledge, relationships and experience. </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">They’re what you might call hands-on philanthropic scientists, who will pair students and scholars with IBM scientists and partner organizations to tackle some of the biggest challenges in our world.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">Open Data at a Tipping Point</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">The social good movement has taken root with many a corporation, entrepreneur and big thinker, with the simple aim of using technology to help create a better world. </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">Data science is one increasingly important way that social good can be made possible and an entire community has grown around it, fueled in large part by the fact we are no longer constrained by data.</span><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidFWHu_1LLP1BxwoyCiZItg9sPMmL4pHOiV-15CW2TWE-6oMmmI_PPaHPq0xSnpignViNc_H9i8oV_HbxbiqglNjXWF01d9UYYGSGq9ILsCfy50x2KYWM_Il6eeGMqt_bPdlA74USuObs/s1600/KushVarshney.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="476" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidFWHu_1LLP1BxwoyCiZItg9sPMmL4pHOiV-15CW2TWE-6oMmmI_PPaHPq0xSnpignViNc_H9i8oV_HbxbiqglNjXWF01d9UYYGSGq9ILsCfy50x2KYWM_Il6eeGMqt_bPdlA74USuObs/s640/KushVarshney.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">IBM Research scientists Raya Horesh (standing, far left), Dennis Wei (standing, center), Kush Varshney (sitting, right), and Saška Mojsilović (far right) with data science community members at the second Ebola Open Data Jam in 2015.</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">“Everything from Internet activity, satellite imagery, social media, health records, news, scientific publications, economic data, weather data, and government records is all at our fingertips, giving us an opportunity, and a responsibility, to change the world for the better using data science,” said Sa</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">š</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">ka.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">Two types of fellowships will be offered through the program. Starting this summer, IBM Research will bring on graduate students for a 12-week fellowship, and later in the year a postdoctoral scholar will be hired to complete a one-year fellowship. Each student will </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">be partnered up with one or more IBM Research mentors who will assist and guide the data scientists throughout their term. </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">Over time, Kush and Sa</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">š</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">ka hope to expand the number of hires, partners, mentors, IBM labs, and scientific disciplines that make up the program.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">What’s notable about the IBM fellowship is that it’s the first corporate program </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">aimed exclusively at data science for social good, focused on advanced students with skills in computer or data science and analytics. IBM is now joining the data for good movement, which has so far been largely shaped by startups, non-profits, hackathons/challenges and university-based programs. Friends who are active players in this community, such as the <a href="http://dssg.uchicago.edu/">University of Chicago</a> and <a href="http://www.datakind.org/">DataKind</a>, shared many lessons with Sa</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">š</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">ka and Kush that were instrumental in helping shape the creation of the IBM effort.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">Key to the success of the program is scoping. Well before any student starts, the IBM team will have worked with partners to secure and curate the relevant data, lay out the objectives and agree on outcomes.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; tab-stops: 310.0pt; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">For Kush and Sa</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">š</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">ka, this program means more than </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">giving the next generation of data scientists projects with which to hone their skills and produce publishable results. It’s also helping them make an impact on humanity by </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">addressing issues important to the general population. And then there’s another type of giving with the involvement of IBM mentors. “I can’t even explain the amount of enthusiasm we have received for this program. Everyone wants to participate,” Sa</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">š</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">ka says.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; tab-stops: 310.0pt; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">NGOs, mission driven organizations or social enterprises interested in working with IBM on this effort and g</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">raduate students interested in becoming fellows</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">, </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">please visit <a href="http://www.ibm.com/ibm/responsibility/initiatives/IBMSocialGoodFellowship.html">IBM Social Good Fellowship</a> or email <a href="mailto:good@us.ibm.com"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">good@us.ibm.com</span></a>.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;"> Sa</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">š</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">ka and Kush are also tweeting at <a href="https://twitter.com/ibmsocialgood">@IBMSocialGood</a>. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div>

ebola givedirectly IBM Social Good Fellowship social engagement Data Science for a Better World

Sa š ka Mojsilovi ć led the creation of the Ebola Open Data Jam in 2014. A community effort which helped to identify, inventory and classif...

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Meet IBM researcher Shiri Kremer-Davidson

<div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">A social media maven whose dashboard can score your social engagement</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio7jcqzrWG0h_kj96eyqY7leBPkq05Sv-vNPBmeltgO2JPOA2kKAYfYCYPFIxWnjOSo3jA0sI-N20q9YpOHGR24-YXbL1eqpsq0ELfjm8H1S-mC8GdVp3dYjX7Er41uufxELRs1H2Qfo0/s1600/shiri.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio7jcqzrWG0h_kj96eyqY7leBPkq05Sv-vNPBmeltgO2JPOA2kKAYfYCYPFIxWnjOSo3jA0sI-N20q9YpOHGR24-YXbL1eqpsq0ELfjm8H1S-mC8GdVp3dYjX7Er41uufxELRs1H2Qfo0/s200/shiri.jpg" width="164" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shiri Kremer-Davidson</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Editor’s note: </span></i><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/view.php?person=il-SHIRI"><i>Shiri Kremer-Davidson</i></a><i> is a specialist in graph-based social analytics at IBM Research - Haifa</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">What do you do at IBM?</span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />I’m part of a cross organizational team that built the <a href="http://www.ibm.com/engage">Personal Social Dashboard.</a> It’s a pilot web application that provides employees with an engagement score along with insights on their individual social activity within the organization. It helps people understand how their activity is being consumed and how they are perceived by their colleagues – something we generally are unaware of.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I lead the engagement analytics that produce the resulting scores and evidence shown in the application. With new studies showing how important it is to raise the level of employee engagement inside the enterprise, it’s crucial to have a way to let employees and managers know how they’re doing.</span><br /><a name="more"></a><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Why is this project interesting for you?</span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">For me, this is a fascinating journey into learning how IBMers socially engage and how they use our internal social network, IBM <a href="http://www-03.ibm.com/software/products/en/conn">Connections</a>. I was also keen on identifying success stories and extracting personalized recommendations on how people can grow their voice inside the enterprise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you’re motivated to increase your digital presence, the dashboard gives you feedback on how people are reacting to you and what you’re sharing. It helps you see whether you’re on the right track.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Personally, I wasn’t publicly active enough on social media before this project. This tool is also helping me increase my social presence within IBM. </span><br /><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">What insights did you discover as part of creating this tool?</span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">We had a client engagement this year with a large European bank where we deployed the dashboard. We wanted to help in areas such as: increase adoption of Connections; provide input for organizational changes; get an indication of the collaboration across and between different divisions.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Using the dashboard’s analytics along with an enterprise graph, we found: how and what different divisions are interacting and the strength of those connections; how information flows within the organization; who are the primary influencers and brokers within and between the organizations, and more.</span><b><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></b><br /><br /><b><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">How did this dashboard get started?</span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It all started with a project called <i>Breadcrumbs, </i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">led </span>by Analytics Strategist</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://allthingsanalytics.com/"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Marie Wallace</span></a>. We built an enterprise graph over all the social activities done on <a href="http://www-03.ibm.com/software/products/en/conn">Connections</a> inside IBM. It included historic and current data for hundreds of thousands of employees. We also built a Big Data infrastructure that would allow us to perform a wide range of analytics over it. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">What were you looking for, initially?</span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">First, we started looking at how social activity patterns over time can serve as a clue for who is staying and who might be leaving the company. Next, we began working with the CIO to develop a solution that could empower employees with knowledge on their social eminence, and guide them on how to improve it. In parallel, we wanted to help management understand how their employees engage socially – but without exploiting the privacy of employees.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Since I had done <a href="http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2531667">research on social reputation</a><span class="MsoHyperlink">,</span> the idea of incorporating my experience into such a social engagement dashboard was intriguing. It was fun working together with teams across IBM. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">How does your dashboard measure social eminence?</span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The dashboard gives you four scores: Activity, Reaction, Eminence, and Network. All scores are relative inside the organization.</span></div><ul><li><b><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Activity</span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">is a score that goes up or down depending on how active you are.</span></li><li><b><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Reaction</span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">on your content takes into account likes, reads, shares, comments, and so on. </span></li><li><span dir="LTR"></span><b><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Eminence</span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">reflects the amount of people trying to interact with you and your content – following you, sharing files with you, etc. </span></li><li><span dir="LTR"></span><b><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Network</span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">scoring indicates how many followers and colleagues you have. </span></li></ul><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8yYO-dsg5YqySDnJn9ut8brog1Wu-91ssD4tHAjH6AhtPOLV_s25D28VBypVpXx-beUFWPPNQBI9bxr7RQxRDUSRi4UDoD6Ndin5BmK3QpL0BwCEzzfZ-mzc-DyzfAidnmS8Bsa9LT7s/s1600/dashboard.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="252" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8yYO-dsg5YqySDnJn9ut8brog1Wu-91ssD4tHAjH6AhtPOLV_s25D28VBypVpXx-beUFWPPNQBI9bxr7RQxRDUSRi4UDoD6Ndin5BmK3QpL0BwCEzzfZ-mzc-DyzfAidnmS8Bsa9LT7s/s400/dashboard.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Capture of my page in the Personal Social Dashboard</td></tr></tbody></table></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The dashboard scores are periodically refreshed and we improve the algorithms regularly. Ultimately, we’d like to add personalized recommendations to guide employees on how to raise their eminence and how to make their voice more prominent inside the organization.</span><b><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></b><br /><br /><b><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">What are your future plans?</span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">We are getting a lot of positive feedback for the pilot. Employees feel that it is helping them understand their social presence and increase their voice in the enterprise. Our pilot currently has more than 9,000 users and is rapidly growing.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In the future we plan to integrate additional data sets into the tool and add features our user community finds important such as personalized recommendations.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Find more information <a href="http://www-01.ibm.com/software/ebusiness/jstart/sna/">on IBM JStart</a> and on <a href="http://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/view.php?person=il-SHIRI">Shiri’s web page</a>. </span></i></div>

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A social media maven whose dashboard can score your social engagement Shiri Kremer-Davidson Editor’s note: Shiri Kremer-Davidson is a speci...

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