Data & Stuff // Neil Houston

It’s been a while hasn’t it? Some of you more observant folks will have noticed that I’ve not been in Birmingham that much over the last few months, and instead seem to be a roving traveller across London, Prague and Birmingham.

A schedule that means I’m never sure where I am more than a week in advance, means that I’ve been a bit bad at keeping in touch. I’m sorry for all the meetings, catchups and coffees I’ve meant to have had as of late, it’s just a bit hard to cram everything in (and do nothing some days) when I’m back in Birmingham!

As well as ‘proper’ work, I’ve been kept busy with a few side projects.

• Kitecrowd has grown over the last two months to achieving aroun37,000 unique visitors for each month. Further detailed breakdowns can be seen here. It’s great to see the community grow, and be nurtured by the great moderation team. It’s also doing well at becoming sustainable cost wise, with advertisers coming on board
• YetAnotherGin has been really attracting the traffic, last month it saw over 2,000 unique visitors, a whole 1,000 visitors up from the previous month! There has been some great feedback, interactions with brand PR companies, many a cocktail imbibed too.
• I decided to make a ‘web app’ and created an online spirits, wine, champagne price comparison site: Tipplepicker, it’s still very early days but a lot of the core functionality is there.

I also found out that a talk/proposal for SXSW that I submitted did get through to the ‘PanelPicker’ stage, but alas not in the first draw of items for the schedule (there is the potential it could still go ahead though!). You can read the proposal, as it’s online: ‘Online Communities, Get Them Growing, and Money Making‘.

I don’t know when I’ll be back settled in one place for a more consistant time, but hopefully I will be. After all I’m writing this in a hotel room, on my seventh trip to Prague in four months. It will be great to see the Birmingham faces on a more regular basis, but hey I’ll still be around on Twitter.

Spotted: January 25th – February 11th:

• Twitter / Working at Twitter – Twitter are after recruiting people to assist with Data Visualisation – just shows a peak into what they may be thinking for the future.
• New car park in illegal parking hotspot | birminghamnewsroom.com – Birmingham City Council announce new parking area in most ticketed street – interesting to note thst a carpark will be in place which will still equal tickets (as per Livery St Carpark, the second most ticketed spot in 2008-2009 in Birmingham)
• An Annual Report on One Man’s Life – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com – The NYTimes talks to Feltron, about his annual life reports.
• Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms – A Gartner report, detailing the players within the Business Intelligence Market. I'm a fan of Tableau, from an analysis and ad-hoc point of view, and they get some good coverage. Alongside other more familiar, and unfamiliar vendors. Worth a scan through.
• Nicholas Felton | Feltron.com – Nicholas Feltron Report for 2009 – His life, as an infographic. Also take a look at the others that have been produced since 2006.

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