Data is increasingly being used to make decisions that impact our everyday lives. But who is actually making the decisions, and are they truly representative of the people whose lives they are affecting?

In my latest post for the IAPA Advancing Analytics conference taking place in Melbourne on October 18 I had the opportunity to ask the speakers about the importance of diversity in data projects. One of the great dangers is that the people construcing the tools and programs fail to understand how they might impact specific groups in the community – especially those unintended consequences that mono-cultures design teams can fail to identify.

There is nothing new about the tech industry overhyping its latest developments, as eager proponents seek to raise awareness, along with investment dollars and – ultimately – revenue. And in 2017 it has been AI’s turn to experience the hype treatment. But while hyping a new tech can lead to unmet expectations in the short term, it can also serve to overshadow some much-needed debates that might be vital in the long term. Such debates are likely to prove critical for AI, where the possible outcomes truly do lie in the realm of the unforeseeable.

Hype in AI has been the first subject for a series of blog posts I’ve been asked to create for Institute of Analytics Professionals Australia, in support of its upcoming Advancing Analytics conference, taking place in Melbourne on October 18. I’ll do my best to post the rest up online, but you can check them out here as they are posted online.

I first met social entrepreneur Tania de Jong a few years ago through her work in bringing together the Creative Innovation festival.

Now she has set a goal of reshaping Australia’s social sector by taking a leaf out of the books of Uber and Airbnb.

De Jong is chief executive officer of Creativity Australia and founder of With One Voice, a charitable organisation that brings together disadvantaged people from across a spectrum of circumstances to sing together in weekly choir communities with people from more fortunate backgrounds.

People within the program nominate a wish they hope to see fulfilled, which can range from helping with a resume to purchasing a new appliance, with more than 500 wishes granted through 2014.

“They request from one another what they need in life, and miraculously enough people put up their hand and say they can help,” de Jong says. “Over the past five years, hundreds of people have got new skills and jobs. It is about creating meaningful outcomes so people can be contributing participants to society.”

Speaking ahead of her keynote presentation at the Ci2015 conference happening in Melbourne from March 23, de Jong says the With One Voice program represents a new model for the Australian social sector, which she says isolates problems into siloes and funds them in a very top-down manner.

She says this approach is at odds with the sharing economy now being defined by companies such as Uber and Airbnb, which excel at connecting individuals with needs to those who can service them.

“It is a model that needs to be adopted across the community sector, because there are all of these 20^th century top-down institutional models, and the world is no longer in that mode,” de Jong says. “We are now in a mode where it is all about the individual, not about organisations.

“We are moving from a top-down centralised model to distributed connected communities, we are moving from consumption to collaboration, and from assets to access. But how do we achieve this for all communities?”

Executive and former Coles Myer executive Paul Kronborg admits he was sceptical when he turned up to his first choir six years ago, but now attends as many as he can.

“I now have some very deep understandings of actually what it is like to be a refugee, and what it is like to be strapped in a wheelchair, or be unemployed,” Kronborg says. “Spending time with the disabled or people who are gravely ill or bound in their beds brings a different level of understanding to the experience and the connection.”

With One Voice now convenes choirs in 11 locations around Australia, and is actively recruiting more.

De Jong says the group receives support from numerous commercial organisations, including law firms and health providers.

The deputy chief executive officer of Geelong healthcare provider Barwon Health Paul Cohen says a number of his staff attend choirs regularly,

“You see the benefit that they get out of it both from singing and the joyousness that comes from that,” Cohen says. “And there is also a benefit in working with others from different backgrounds and disadvantaged backgrounds.

“Organisations that participate in community programs through volunteerism get back a disproportionate value and benefit into their own organisations – all the research says there is absolutely a commercial benefit.”

De Jong says With One Voice has proven popular because it gives individuals a real chance to connect with the people they are helping.

“A lot of corporates donate to charity in quite a tokenistic way,” de Jong says. “If we really want to solve some of our entrenched social problems, then it is about much more than just a charity day – it is about people giving of their time and their business skills to help solve some of these problems in their community.

“So this is about enabling and empowering individuals and building communities and social cohesion. Everything is moving to the individuals and the power of collaborative communities.”

ENDS

I decided to sit back and enjoy the arts-related presentations that followed on from lunch, so sorry for not posting any thoughts on those four presentations.

The first presentation after the afternoon tea break was from Michael Naimark (@naimark), whose presentation on The Google Glass Controversy took the audience on a rapid ride through the history of interactive technology. He focused specifically on how wearable technology will further accelerate the growth in creation of online data, as the barriers to its creation will fall dramatically.

He also talked about how a failure in communication led to the world believing that Google’s StreetView cars killed a donkey in Botswana. Failure to learn lessons in communication may lead to similar controversies at the company rolls out Google Glass.

The next presentation was from College of Fine Arts dean Prof Ross Harley whose discussion of how the STEM concept needs to be augmented with an ‘A’ and turned into STEAM again raised the question of what can artists do – his answer being ‘anything’.

Ars Electronica Future Lab director Horst Hortner (@hoho101) who told the story of the Future Lab as well as showing  a project which will use unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to create illuminated images in the sky, including a Starfleet logo in the night skies over London.

The first speaker for the session session at #KR8Vsydney was Alvin Wang Graylin (@Agraylin), the co-founder of China’s Number 1 mobile search and advertising company myinfo. He started by playing a video for his company which actually used the tune from the Dumb Ways to Die campaign, which was interesting to show how that one piece of creative content has worked its way around the world in many different forms. Alvin talked about his career as an entrepreneur, from starting his first computer service business in college with his roommates in 1990 to working at IBM in various roles. Much of his talk focused on the issues that entrepreneurs face in building belief and raising capital, and the struggles they will experience along the way.

Alvin was followed by the chief operating officer of Abu Dhabi-based twofour54, Wayne Borg, who talked about the creative revolution that is sweeping the Arab world as a result of digital technology. He talked about how Saudi Arabia is now the number one market for mobile YouTube downloads, as young people use it as a means to create and express themselves, and how citizen journalism is now a phenomenon in Egypt. 360 million people now live in the Middle East and North Africa, and 55 percent are under the age of 25, while smartphone and mobile penetration is now at 230 percent across the region, creating huge opportunities to develop content.  Borg spoke of how creative and media industries are now one of the key investment areas for the Abu Dhabi government, and his own organisations has been put in place to help develop a talent pool in that sector.

The third speaker was Protein One founder, Galvin Scott Davis (@galvinsd), creator of the Number 1 lifestyle app, business app and kids game on the iPhone in Australia, who talked about the value of asking the question ‘why not?’. His latest app is Dandelion, which grew out of a children’s story that he created and evolved into a digital app.

The final speaker for the session was Adam Good, director of digital media and content at Telstra Media, who talked about creative leadership. He talked about how many companies are simply not planning for changes to come, and hence may not exist by the time 2020 rolls around. He encouraged the audience to listen more to find new opportunities that will work.

I’m currently sitting in the audience of X Media Lab’s KR8V Creative Leadership Edition at the Museum of Contemporary Arts in Sydney, and will be taking notes throughout the day, some of which I hope to post here.

The first speaker for the day was former BBC and Al Jazeera digital producer Kristen Taylor (@kthread). Her presentation on storytelling and community management talked about the nature of knowledge, and posited that the Internet runs on kindness, which is what gives the network the ability to heal itself.

The second presentation was delivered by Professor Martin Zimper (@doktorZ) , director of Cast/Audiovisual Media at the Zurich University of Art, who demonstrated that the rules of storytelling set out by Aristotle thousands of years ago still hold true today.

“We need old craft for new media,” he said. “Writing is a technique, writing is a craft … and even if we look to Hollywood it is old European knowledge that they use.”

His thesis – that a lot of successful online videos show people exceeding thresholds.

The third presentation of the first session was from dirtgirlworld creator and Interactive Emmy Award winner Cate McQuillen (@dirtgirlworld). McQuillen talked about the creation of relevant and creative children’s entertainment, and her mission to influence a generation to understand the need to love and look after the world.

“We believe that little things and little people can make a big difference,” she said, adding her team has had great success in encouraging kids to learn about recycling and composting. Dirtgirl often makes live appearances now, and a dirtgirl album was nominated for an ARIA Award.

The final speaker for the session was Dom Knight, radio broadcaster and writer for The Chaser, who talked about storytelling models, and specifically the Hero’s Journey and its various elements. While ideas are constantly rehashed due to their tendency to work, and the elements can be modified through changing settings and situations, creating interesting characters and dialogue, and through observation. And of course the newest variation is media. He also talked about how truly great storytellers can break the rules entirely, as George RR Martin has done with Game of Thrones, or Quentin Tarantino with Pulp Fiction.