Showing posts with label georgesgrinstein. Show all posts
Showing posts with label georgesgrinstein. Show all posts

Monday

Georges Grinstein unveils a powerful data visualization application that will be free to nonprofits!

We'd like to invite you to attend our next session:

Tuesday, November 16th, 2010
4:30 - 6:30 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square
Cambridge, MA 02138, USA

Featured guest: Georges Grinstein, Open Indicators Consortium, and UMass-Lowell
Topic: Launch of the WEAVE ((Web-based Analysis and Visualization Environment) platform

Here's a little bit about Georges:
Georges Grinstein is Professor of Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, head of its Bioinformatics Program, Co-director of its Institute for Visualization and Perception Research, and of its Center for Biomolecular and Medical Informatics. He received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Rochester in 1978.

His work is broad and interdisciplinary, ranging from perceptual foundations of visualization to techniques for high-dimensional visualization, with the emphasis on the modeling, visualization, and analysis of complex information systems.

He has over 30 years in academia with extensive private consulting, over 100 research grants, products in use nationally and internationally, several patents, numerous publications in journals and conferences, a new book on interactive data visualization, founded several companies, and has been the organizer or chair of national and international conferences and workshops in Computer Graphics, in Visualization, in Visual Analytics and in Data Mining. He has mentored over 25 doctoral students and hundreds of graduate students. He has been on the editorial boards of several journals in Computer Graphics and Data Mining, a member of ANSI and ISO, a NATO Expert, and a technology consultant for various public agencies.

Here's a little bit about WEAVE:

After two years of development at the University of Massachusetts Lowell supported and guided by eight Founding Members, the Open Indicators Consortium (OIC) will release the code for version 1.0 of the data visualization platform Weave (Web-based Analysis and Visualization Environment) free to public and nonprofit users. A hard launch is planned for early 2011, by which time the Founding Members will be showing new websites showcasing Weave's full capacity as expressed by four states, four US regions and many municipal and sub-municipal geographies.

Weave allows a range of users to explore, analyze, visualize and disseminate data on-line from any location at any time. The platform offers multiple levels of user proficiency from novices to advanced researchers, advanced security features, and the ability to integrate, disseminate and visualize economic, social and environmental data and indicators at "nested" levels of geography-from micro to macro.

We will highlight the key aspects of Weave using partner indicator projects examples and others. We will discuss Weave's groundbreaking technologies making it one of the most flexible interactive visualization system.

Partner indicator projects and planning agencies from Arizona, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Atlanta/Metropolitan Atlanta, Boston/Metropolitan Boston, Metropolitan Chicago and Columbus/Central Ohio invested substantial funds to create the Consortium and guide the software development. Together with the UMass Lowell leadership (Georges Grinstein, an internationally recognized expert in analysis and visualization, and William Mass, a leader in the field of regional and industrial economic development), they govern the Consortium, support and shape design priorities and provide continuous testing and feedback to advance Weave's software development.

At the conclusion of our Ethos Roundtable session, we will stroll down the hall to enjoy the good company, charming venue, and free food at the 501 Tech Club, which is generously underwritten by TechFoundation. The 501 Tech Club is the monthly gathering of technology professionals who work with nonprofit organizations.

All Ethos Roundtable attendees are welcome at the Boston 501 Tech Club, and vice versa.

Please remember that there's never any need to make a reservation to attend Ethos Roundtable events. Just come if you can, and feel free to invite others! However, if you're planning to attend the Boston 501 Tech Club event at 6:00 pm, we ask that you send an email to Kathleen Sherwin of TechFoundation (ksherwin AT techfoundation DOT org). Since TechFoundation is providing the free food, it's both courteous and prudent to let her know how much to order.

See you in November!

Wednesday

News you can use from the Open Indicators Consortium

Please join us in March at the Ethos Roundtable!

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

Featured guests: Georges Grinstein and Mary Beth Smrtic, Open Indicators Consortium

We'll have more details as soon as our featured guests send them along, but in the meantime, here's a little bit about the consortium:
"The Open Indicators Consortium is an international consortium dedicated to improving access to data about communities and regions. The Consortium is developing an open source software system for the analysis and visualization of economic, social and environmental indicators at the neighborhood, municipal, county, regional, national and international levels. The effort is led by University of Massachusetts Lowell faculty members Georges Grinstein (Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Institute for Visualization and Perception Research) and William Mass (Director of the Center for Industrial Competitiveness), and by Charlotte Kahn, Director of the Boston Indicators Project at the Boston Foundation.

"The mission of the Open Indicators Consortium is to transform publicly available data into visually compelling and actionable indicators, to inform public policy, research and decision making. The Consortium brings together technical and academic experts, data providers and users, to create and sustain a highly interactive, high-performance, open source platform for measures, indicators and data. Numerous tools are available and being developed for personalization, customization, collaboration, uploading data sets, session history, and generating modern interactive web-based reports."

And when the Open Indicators Consortium promises you "visually compelling and actionable indicators," they are not making frivolous promises. I've already seen a demo, and can assure that this is amazing and powerful software for individuals and organizations that care about positive social change.

At the conclusion of our Ethos Roundtable session, we will stroll down the hall to enjoy the good company, charming venue, and free food at the 501 Tech Club, which is generously underwritten by TechFoundation. The 501 Tech Club is the monthly gathering of technology professionals who work with nonprofit organizations.

All Ethos Roundtable attendees are welcome at the Boston 501 Tech Club, and vice versa.

Please remember that there's never any need to make a reservation to attend Ethos Roundtable events. Just come if you can, and feel free to invite others! However, if you're planning to attend the Boston 501 Tech Club event at 6:00 pm, we ask that you send an email to Kathleen Sherwin of TechFoundation (ksherwin AT techfoundation DOT org). Since TechFoundation is providing the free food, it's courteous to let them know how much to order.

See you in March!

Monday

Ringing in 2010 with the Ethos Roundtable

We have some wonderful Ethos Roundtable sessions lined up for the new year, and hope that you'll join us!

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

Featured guest: Clay Ward, developer of Procrasdonate

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

Featured guests: Tom Pollak and Doug Denatale, developers of the Massachusetts Nonprofit Database

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

Featured guests: Georges Grinstein and Mary Beth Smrtic, Open Indicators Consortium

Tuesday, April 20th, 2010
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

Featured guests, Kenny Weill and Gavin Murphy, developers of NPO Connect

Remember, no reservations are required. Just show up, and feel free to invite others.