Submission 4: TrendsOnline

@jenniferzawacki "Re: more about the existing Trends Report (how is data collected, processed, and presented?):" It's a 20-year indicators project with data on more than 150 measures of the quality of life. Print version here: http://www.commfound.org/trendsmagazine
We publish 8K, put it online as published, then present it in person to civic groups, policy leaders, and nonprofit leaders. To bring it into its future, we would be delighted to make it robust, constantly updated and accessible for all.

It appreciate the thought that's gone into hitting a few of the key themes (information sharing and monitoring) but I would disagree that publishing data automatically leads to improved resilience or engagement. There's clearly been some thinking about measuring impact, which would help answer this question over time. I also think having either a dedicated user or a concrete use case that shows how the data would could lead to the changes suggested would strengthen this idea.

@shadrockroberts I'm sharing this response from Erika Stutzman, who is traveling today. From @erikastutzman "At a political debate Weds night, the moderator (not affiliated with Community Foundation) used data contained in Trends report to ask the candidates a question about how to address the problem of growing inequality in Boulder County. That shows that the data can be used in a relevant way, but the moderator happened to attend an in-person Trends presentation. We have 8,000 copies and one staff member who does all of the presentations in person. That's not a 2015 way of spreading information."

@shadrockroberts Sharing more from @erikastutzman – an example of use of data to improve engagement, leading to increased resilience from chronic stressors: "The achievement gap data sparked the school readiness initiative. A program born from that data that works directly with Latino families in our communities to get their children ready for school. We used the data to raise funds for the program, and the families use the data literally going door to door talking about the importance of early childhood education and reading to children, etc. They hold house parties where they talk about the achievement gap and how to bridge it. But we're limited in size and scope to using the data for our own leadership programs and sharing it with our partners. Unleashing the data to the way people actually access information today means there could be several entrepreneurial or startup ideas by groups of people who aren't our current partners."

@gerimb that's great to hear! I would suggest that if you have a confirmed user or use case that you include that in your pitch. I've seen lots of very good open data go unused because there was no, confirmed, user or use case. This is just my opinion, however: I'm not on the final jury! So just sharing my observations here.

@shadrockroberts We are fortunate to have a known user base for the Trends publication. Primary users include: nonprofit organizations (usually development staff using the data for grant applications), civic groups/leaders, journalists, local policymakers, city planners, and faith organization members. These users already rely on Trends data to support their own work in the community. People will migrate to TrendsOnline instead of reading through the publication or reaching out through email or phone, as they do today. In addition, an important success factor is that TrendsOnline increase the number and diversity of people that are currently being reached, example personas we have in this category are "young startup worker" and "Max's mom".