Guest Post by Dan Siroker, Co-Founder & CEO, Optimizely, Inc.

Data has gone Big. The last year has seen explosive growth in the amount of new data created and has brought into the mainstream the reality of our ever-growing, globally connected digital world.
Last year, an IDC and EMC study projected 1.8 zettabytes of data were expected to be created and replicated in 2011. For some perspective, as Mashable published, this is equivalent to 57.5 billion 32GB iPads packed full of data (which evidently could be stacked to 25 times as high as Mt. Fuji). Needless to say, it’s easy to get overwhelmed.

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What do Isadora Duncan, Steve Jobs, Maya Angelou and Ansel Adams have in common?

They were all hall of fame level game-changers and each one called the San Francisco Bay Area home.

This year we've embraced GameChangers as the theme for the 2012 IS Annual Conference and are thrilled to call the Hilton San Francisco Union Square our home for Veterans Day weekend, November 11 & 12.

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Guest Post by David Kroodsma

Anyone poking around online newspapers has noticed a proliferation of info-graphics and maps. If these graphics are done well, they can tell a story much more quickly than a series of paragraphs. Introducing data journalism – the newest form of online communication, and also a great way to get eyeballs on your website. For much of 2011, I worked as a data journalist for Climate Central, where I attempted to tell stories about climate change and energy through both articles and data-driven graphics.

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Guest post by Jacqueline Quintanilla Aker, Senior Vice President, Health & Multicultural Marketing at Edelman

Every public engagement campaign should be grounded in research data. Impact is built on the foundation of learning and understanding your audience, and on achieving real, measurable change. Data allows us to develop strategies that can change behaviors, influence opinions, motivate a community to action, and shift social norms. Data enables an organization to deliver the right message, at the right time, in the right place, and from the right messenger – a trusted source with the power to persuade action. This is done by listening to your audience and identifying the best way to reach them, whether it’s through an article in a newspaper, an event in their local community, or an online social community.

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Guest Post By Sarah Hunter, a Behavioral Scientist at the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research organization.

One of my interests is building evaluation capacity within nonprofit community service organizations to increase impact. The model RAND uses for this work is called Getting To Outcomes (GTO), a free program management tool with demonstrated success in improving program performance.

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