Carleton College’s weekly convocation, entitled “Using Data for the Greater Good,” will be presented by data scientist Jake Porway on Friday, Oct. 10 at 10:50 a.m. in the Skinner Memorial Chapel. Porway’s presentation proposes using the power of data analysis to bring about positive change in the world. This event is free and open to the public. Convocations are also recorded and archived online at go.carleton.edu/convo/.
Jake Porway is the founder and executive director of DataKind, who describes himself as a “learning machine and technology enthusiast who loves nothing more than seeing good values in data.”
Porway is also a matchmaker. He sees social change organizations working hard to make the world a better place, collecting mountains of data, but lacking skills and resources to understand and use that wealth of information to advance their mission. He sees data scientists with amazing skills and cutting-edge tools eager to use their talent to accomplish something meaningful, yet cut off from channels that would allow them to do so. He sees governments ready to make unprecedented amounts of data open and available, but disconnected from people who need it. For Porway, it's a match waiting to happen and exactly why he founded DataKind (formerly Data Without Borders). They connect nonprofits, NGOs, and other data-rich social change organizations with data scientists willing to donate their time and knowledge to solve social, environmental, and community problems. Porway points out that there are dozens of apps to help us find movies or choose restaurants. Nice, but isn’t that really just making very comfortable lives slightly more comfortable? What if we also used the power of data analysis to do something that could change the world? More at www.datakind.org.
This event is sponsored by the Carleton College Convocations Committee. For more information, including disability accommodations, call (507) 222-4308. The Skinner Memorial Chapel is located on First and College Streets in Northfield.
