Twilight Sparkle Math Time
by the REALamddude

As I write this, my husband Nick sits at the desk across from me studying for the GRE (for yet another degree). “Math is hard,” he complains, just like a ‘90s Barbie.

Like it or not, math is rising in importance.  The current era of big data means that in the future we will have more information to synthesize—both qualitative and yes, quantitative.  That means numbers.  That means math.  Sure, computers will do much of the work, but the ability to quickly assess a vast array of metrics will be as essential for most jobs in the next decade as typing has been in the last two (I still blame my high school career counselor for persuading me to forgo typing for a second year of French).

In the US, movements like STEM and the controversial Common Core curriculum are trying to get ahead of this curve.  The US is not alone.  A couple of weeks back I few to Brussels to speak at the European Commission’s Digital Action Day.  Like the US, many European countries are rethinking the breadth of mathematics and sciences skills required to compete globally.

The panel in which I participated focused on how Europe should best prepare for future that required advanced digital skills.  Another panelist, a senior advisor for Finland’s Ministry of Education and Culture, showed series of photos of his six-year-old son sitting in his lap interacting with a computer.  He eloquently compared his son’s instinctive and joyful experience with this rudimentary problem-solving lesson to Finland’s broader need to institutionalize such skill building in primary education.

Math has been a source of controversy throughout my life.  I was a “new math” kid*.  It came easy to me, but I remember everyone getting bent out of shape about it.  I just did my new math and stayed quiet.  It wasn’t cool to be good at math—new or otherwise.

A few years later, when I was high school, there was a school-wide assembly where the dean announced the new inductees to Mu Alpha Theta—a national honor society for those with a notable aptitude for math.  He called my name.  I was surprised but not honored.  I mean, you can’t say geek any louder than Mu Alpha Theta.  All inductees understood this, as did our classmates.  Two years later, when I chose an engineering college over liberal arts one my guidance counselor—the same one who recommended French over typing—tried to persuade me otherwise.  Thankfully, this time I didn’t listen.

It’s good to know that today’s students aren’t being discouraged from science and math.  Even if the Core Curriculum turns out to be a new new math, at least the old math is now on higher ground.

*Note: If you’ve never heard of new math, here’s a quick overview by satirist Tom Lehrer.

The Era of Big Data

A fews times recently I’ve heard someone say, “If we did nothing, our organic growth would be …” as if organic growth required no effort.  That’s like assuming that organic food grows naturally on the side of the road, or a party will organically form around a bowl of Doritos.  Organic growth does not mean it requires no assistance, but rather, according to Merriam-Webster, it is the result of a “complex structure of interdependent and subordinate elements whose relations and properties are largely determined by their function in the whole.”  The organic system’s complexity means that it’s often difficult to identify its subordinate elements, and therefore it’s difficult to measure cause and effect.  There’s the rub.

The era of big data has us all fawning over the measurable.  Me too–I’m a data geek from way back.  At the same time, I’m wary of data myopia.  Today’s obsession with data-driven efficiency eerily evokes industrial age Taylorism when assembly line mechanics were applied across industries to improve workforce productivity: if it can be measured, it can be optimized.   The non-measurable is viewed at best with skepticism, but more often left on the cutting room floor.  We do our damnedest to eliminate organic variability.  From our Fitbits to our kids’ play dates, everything is scheduled, measured, and optimized.

As the big data pendulum swings rapidly toward Brazil, let us not forget the lessons of the past.  The organic systems we are attempting to harness–be they astronomical, medical, or organizational–are living systems in a state of flux.  Their quarks, their viruses, and their virality will continue to elude us.  Observation, intuition, and empathy will forever need to balance the numbers.

Chimney Cake Festival

In December we move back to San Francisco.  It’s been a great adventure, though for much of the time it’s felt like one long business trip.  Over the last few weeks something has changed.  Budapest suddenly feels like a second home.

Maybe it’s the seasonal change.  As summer days shorten into fall, beer gardens have transformed into parking lots and the gelato trolleys have vanished.  It feels like goodbye.  But nights remain warm and people stroll.  We don’t stroll in San Francisco.

Our life is slower here.  Being nine hours ahead is far more accommodating than being nine hours behind.  Especially for an insomiac.

Mornings linger.  We wake to the light.  Over coffee, I check email; Nick, Facebook.  We play Smooth Morning on Spotify.  The city rumbles outside our window.  After morning meetings with Korea and Australia I gear up for my 5-minute commute.

Our days and nights are just as predicable.  The biggest variable is whether or not to go to the gym.  I always protest but inevitably give in.  For dinner we have our go-to recipes (different from our San Francisco ones) and favorite restaurants.  We order lemonade more often than wine, foie gras more often than we should, and goose leg on a regular basis.  It shows.  We’ll need to course correct upon our return.

On weekends we stroll down our street to parliament building—a breathtaking sight, day or night.  We rarely take the short cut.  We cross Kossuth Square and over to Culinaris, the fancy grocery store for expats.  I tease Nick about the Bi-Rite prices but never suggest an alternative.

This was our last unscheduled weekend.  Yesterday we walked over to Margit Island.  We joined the crowed at the zenélő szökőkút (music fountain) and watched the dancing water for a few songs before napping in on one the island’s many open fields.  Today was the kürtőskalács fesztivál (chimney cake festival) in City Park.  More course correction needed.

Our last two months are scheduled to the hilt.  I have a few business trips and Nick has his research to compile and school applications to complete.  Additionally, we’re planning farewell activities with friends, old and new.  In our prolonged goodbye, we are squeezing Budapest tight and already feeling that longing evoked from a distance we’ve yet to cross.

Rick Dees & the Disco Duck

A Prezi colleague recently asked about my most awkward onstage presentation experience.  When I told her, she insisted I post it.

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Memphis TN, 1976.  It’s a hot summer day at Libertyland, Memphis’s ironically named theme park.  Some friends and I swelter in packed concert tent waiting to see Rick Dees.  God knows why.  Another friend who works for Rick (as the Dis-Gorilla) finds me in the crowd and tells me the Disco Duck called in sick.  Desperate, he asks me to fill in.  I’m 15 — a shy, nerdy kid who avoids any limelight.  I decline.  My friends heckle me into accepting.

The stage is massive, the audience in the thousands.  My friend rushes me backstage and, with some concert roadies, zips me into an enormous, suffocating duck suit.  It’s August, well into the 90s.  I sweat profusely as I rehearse the duet I’m about to fake sing with Rick.  The exaggerated quack-nod is hard to master because any movement of my gargantuan duck head causes my glasses to slide down my sweaty nose.  I can’t adjust them because I don’t have hands, only big furry wings.  I tilt my head back to balance the glasses on the bridge of my nose to stop them from slipping further (and to see—I’m legally blind).

It’s time.  My pulse throbs in my ears.  As I part the heavy curtain to walk on stage, I become paralyzed.  Sweat and a bad lens angle blur my vision as I peer out from my beak into sea of expectant faces.  I feel sick.

Either friend or roadie pushes through the curtain.  The audience roars in expectation.  I waddle over the wire-covered floor to my microphone.  The music starts.  Miraculously, I lean in to the microphone on cue for my lyrical quacks and rhythmic nods.  The first quack dislodges my glasses.  My anxiety shifts from the crowd to my glasses.  With every quack-nod they slide farther down my nose and I tilt my head farther back to compensate.  Suddenly, the music stops.  My glasses rest on the tip of my nose.  I made it.

As the applause wanes I realize I have no idea what to do next.  No one told me how to get off the stage.  My head is titled so far back all I see are the stage lights overhead.  I think Rick has already gone, but I’m not sure.  I hear a loud groan and turn toward it.

Something slams into me.  My glasses go flying out my beak as I’m knocked to the ground.  The audience thunders with laughter as I roll over and blindly crawl across the mesh of speaker wires to the curtain opening, where the now-suited Dis-Gorilla grabs me by the wings and drags me through it.

–

A half-hour later, de-costumed and deflated, I sit alone backstage and wait for a break in the show to retrieve my glasses.  I finally muster the courage to ask the roadies when happened.  The fact that I don’t know triggers a long bout of uncontrollable laughter.

Apparently, after my song was over, the main entertainment of the evening, Lou Ferrigno (aka, the Hulk), appeared on stage in full regalia.  I just stood there in my giant duck costume towering over him.  So he rushed at me to scare me off stage.  When I turned toward him with my head titled back, it appeared that I was challenging him.  He had no other option but to tackle me.

I’ve had many presentation snafus since, but I have never again been rendered prone and blind by a faux superhero.

_

PS The song Disco Duck was a #1 Billboard hit in 1976 and even made the top 100 songs that year.  Unfortunately, I do not have a video of my performance (what I would give …), but if you’ve never heard the song and feel like writhing in pain, here you go.

PPS Dis-Gorilla was a follow-up flop.

Click on Map to View Prezi

Back in mid-2011, I sat on a data visualization panel at the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in Washington, DC.  One of the other panelists was Jer Thorp, Data Artist in Residence at The New York Times.  Having spent a decade at SGI, I was acutely aware of the media’s growing adoption of dataviz, but Jer took it to a new level.  See Jer’s 2011 TEDxVancouver talk “Making data more human.”

The media’s use of visual communication is on the rise.  Static infographics and digital weather maps have given way to rich, interactive data visualizations.  It helps that there are tools out there like Prezi enabling journalists to create their own visual assets without relying on a dataviz team.

It was after my NAS panel appearance that I first saw a prezi in the media.  In July, 2011, after South Sudan gained its independence, Simon Rogers (then graphics editor at the Guardian, now data editor at Twitter) used an embedded prezi to publish a new world map that Guardian readers could freely navigate.  It was a simple but effective use of Prezi’s pan and zoom features.

In the subsequent three years global media has upped its Prezi use in frequency and sophistication.

• In 2012, Bloomberg journalist Lara Setrakian co-founded a vertical news site, Syria Deeply, to report on the Syrian crisis.  On this site, she uses Prezi as a visual storytelling tool to simplify the historical context behind the regional conflict.

• Earlier this year prominent Mexican journalist Carmen Aristegui broke a nationwide political prostitution scandal with a prezi that incorporated a strong visual metaphor that framed her story.

• Recently, I came across this clip from a Canadian television news show where the reporter, Michael Hainsworth, uses Prezi to dynamically visualize market data.

From online to broadcast,  I look forward to seeing where the media takes Prezi next.

My 25th MIT Reunion Prezi

A few weeks ago I spoke at my 25^th b-school reunion.  The topic was no surprise to anyone who knows me: Visual Communications.  In developing the presentation, I realized it was MIT where I first experienced the unique interdisciplinary mix that I would eventually come to associate with visual communications: technology, mathematics, design, and linguistics.

I still remember my first visit to MIT as a 24-yr-old Sloan candidate attending a system dynamics lecture.  It felt right.  I didn’t get it then, but after 10 years at SGI and now 3.5 at Prezi, I finally put together the pieces.  Who knows—now that I understand this obsession a bit better, maybe I can take it to the next level.

Below are links to my prezi and the video of my presenting this prezi at my reunion.

Presentation

Video (mid-page Videos tab, 6th video down)

ASCII.jp

As an engineer, I’ve always been skeptical of tech PR.  Sure, at some point it makes sense—when your product-driven success has sparked a social and media frenzy that you need to manage.  But is it cost-effective or even possible to spark a frenzy with proactive PR?

One of the great things about running International is that each market is a petri dish where you can isolate and see the impact of various activities.  Two weeks ago I had my first undeniable proof point that local PR can move the needle.

In the Japanese market, two new Prezi books debuted in the same week as three articles were published in notable Japanese press: Nikkei Trendy, ASCII, TechCrunch.  Prezi’s Japanese weekly new registrations and trials more than doubled—the largest non-seasonal jump (e.g. fluctuation that is not the result of a holiday period) in the last several years, when larger numbers have made these kinds of multiples almost unthinkable.  And last week, these metrics remained strong, even over Easter.

This was general press—not a specific marketing campaign or the promotion of a new product or feature.  Therefore the market reaction is almost certainly attributable to the PR alone.

I don’t always need to know the exact cause of an effect.  In fact, obsessing on overly deconstructed metrics can be as misleading as blind faith—a topic of another post.  Still, a direct correlation for an often unmeasurable endeavor is comforting.

Prezi, már magyarul is

Yesterday, Prezi celebrated its 5^th birthday by localizing in Hungarian.  Unless you’re familiar with the Prezi founding story, you may not realize that Prezi was founded by three Hungarian entrepreneurs (except maybe if you’re cultural anthropologist and recognize Prezi’s mathematically influenced design as quintessentially Hungarian).  Now, at least, there will be some who see Magyar in Prezi.com’s footer and deduce Prezi’s Hungarian roots.

We broadened last night’s birthday party to celebrate Hungarian innovation.  Other tech companies were there (Google, Ustream etc.), as were social entrepreneurs, artists, linguists, embassy representatives from the US and Israel, and Ernö Rubik, inventor of the Rubik’s Cube, which is celebrating its 40^th anniversary this year.

While I spend 99% of my time working to fuel Prezi’s global adoption beyond Hungary’s boarders, it was nice to take 1% to celebrate our Hungarian heritage. 

Prezi in Canada

Like real clouds, the cloud isn’t so easy to pin down.

Last week we launched in Canada.  What does it mean for a cloud-base software to launch in a country where there are already a million+ users?  Launching is especially tricky when language localization is not your central message.  Don’t get me wrong, we used our recent French localization as a cornerstone of the Canadian launch, but French-speaking Canadians are only a quarter of the country’s population.  As we turn our eyes to the UK and Australia, where there is zero language localization hook, I’m grappling to come up with a launch story.

Pre-cloud, launching locally meant you hired a country manager and built out sales, operations, reseller relationships, etc. to establish a grounded presence in the country or region.  For cloud-based software, none of these decisions are obvious.  Hell, even language localization isn’t obvious.  English has become the dominant language of global business.  Especially in the cloud.  Is it necessary to localize in Swedish when 86% of the population speaks English?  I’m not sure.

But this doesn’t mean localization isn’t alive and well.  Understanding local adoption factors is as important as ever, as is showcasing local use cases that inspire others.  Also, for Prezi there’s the local ecosystem of educational and conference use, as well as local independent Prezi designers and trainers that fuel virality.  This Prezi in Canada prezi reveals this ecosystem and inspiring use cases that impact Prezi’s growth.

So while you can’t pin the cloud down, understanding how it is viewed from the ground is still critical to global adoption.

In-Depth Social Media Activism

From Arab Spring to Crimea, social media has empowered political activism.  But what if the goal is not to overthrow, but to enlighten?  Are 140 characters sufficient?

Today, Hungary went to the polls to reelect Fidesz.  Most of my Hungarian friends worry about Fidesz’s increasing conservatism and abuse of its supermajority power over last four years.  From draconian redistricting to ousting the Supreme Court’s chief justice to a plethora of freedom-restricting constitutional amendments, Fidesz has enacted its agenda without oversight.  Still, none of these friends would say that Fidesz should be overthrown.  Nor were they overly concerned about the party’s imminent reelection today.  But they do consistently complain about the government’s lack of transparency.

Take the reconstruction of Budapest’s Városliget park.  Few understand the reasoning for this expensive and disruptive decision.  But how does an activist who takes the time to do the investigative legwork educate the public on the complexities of the issue?  Before rallying the troops with a Facebook page or Twitter feed, one needs to enlighten a social network that is accustomed to sound bites, selfies, and cat videos.

Here is a blog post that embeds a prezi to engage a visually minded audience, exposing the plan and suggesting an alternative.  I don’t read Hungarian but have been told by my colleagues that the post, though biased toward the author’s recommended changes, is comprehensive.

Who knows whether it will influence changes to the plan, but this post is a good example of using in-depth social media for early-stage activism.