TuringDataStories: An open community creating “Data Stories”: A mix of open data, code, narrative 💬, visuals 📊📈 and knowledge 🧠 to help understand the world around us.
This is a proposal that the Turing Data Stories introduce an annual "Hut 8" award for the data story that best fulfils the mission of the Alan Turing Institute for reproducibility in research and of the Turing Data Stories for inspiring curiosity and motivation in experimenting with open source data.
The field of entries for the award could initially be limited to only Turing Data Story proposals of the last 12 months, but could later be expanded to include data stories in media or personal blogs in the United Kingdom, or the world. If 12 months is insufficient for an initial field of entries, the time frame could initially be expanded to include all Turing Data Stories published thus far.
The award would carry a nominal cash prize with funding secured from corporate sponsorship.
The award would be named for the original building and section in which Alan Turing, Hugh Alexander and his codebreaking associates carried out their work during World War II to decrypt German naval (Kriegsmarine) Enigma messages.
There exists excellent precedent for such an award. Several data science organizations already sponsor and present such an award, but no award today has as its criterion the critical issue of reproducibility and motivation to explore. Thus, this award's eligibility requirements would make it unique among current visualization awards.
Some examples of such awards include:
The Playfair Prize, designed by U.K. economics journalists Richard Davies and Ed Conway, and named for the founder of the modern information graphic:
https://www.playfairprize.com/mission
One might imagine that a large amount of staff would be needed to administer and referee this award. Unavoidably, there would be a need to publicize, judge, and administer the award, but the staffing needs, while real, need not be too prohibitive.
Some of the judging could initially be done by Turing Data Stories readers, by virtue of which stories generated the most visits. That could be a significant deciding factor in to whom to present the award.
A large part of the work would need to be devoted to the building of a website to present the criteria and motivation for the award. This would require careful planning.
Who can help?
Corporate sponsorship would be critical, both in staffing and in funding the monetary portion of the award itself.
More staff than currently exists would be needed to plan, administer, judge and publicize the award.
The benefits
This kind of award could generate needed attention to the Turing Data Stories and foster a renewed interest in designing Jupyter notebooks that achieve the goals of the Alan Turing Institute.
If this proposal were to be adopted, the Turing Data Stories should be careful to note that the Stories themselves are not intended as a competition but rather a forum for quality experimentation with open source data in a spirit of cooperation rather than of gamesmanship, that the Hut 8 Awards would be only one element of the Stories to inspire interest in submissions, and that, on account of the scrutiny of its review process, every published Story is in fact a 'winner' on some level.
Summary
This is a proposal that the Turing Data Stories introduce an annual "Hut 8" award for the data story that best fulfils the mission of the Alan Turing Institute for reproducibility in research and of the Turing Data Stories for inspiring curiosity and motivation in experimenting with open source data.
For more on the The Turing Institute's vision of better reproducibility, see: https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/39806/pdf/
The field of entries for the award could initially be limited to only Turing Data Story proposals of the last 12 months, but could later be expanded to include data stories in media or personal blogs in the United Kingdom, or the world. If 12 months is insufficient for an initial field of entries, the time frame could initially be expanded to include all Turing Data Stories published thus far.
The award would carry a nominal cash prize with funding secured from corporate sponsorship.
The award would be named for the original building and section in which Alan Turing, Hugh Alexander and his codebreaking associates carried out their work during World War II to decrypt German naval (Kriegsmarine) Enigma messages.
For more on the history of Hut 8, see http://www.ellsbury.com/hut8/hut8-003.htm.
There exists excellent precedent for such an award. Several data science organizations already sponsor and present such an award, but no award today has as its criterion the critical issue of reproducibility and motivation to explore. Thus, this award's eligibility requirements would make it unique among current visualization awards.
Some examples of such awards include:
The Playfair Prize, designed by U.K. economics journalists Richard Davies and Ed Conway, and named for the founder of the modern information graphic: https://www.playfairprize.com/mission
The National Science Foundation (U.S.) Vizzies Award: https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/scivis/pdf/ForUpload_Vizzies-ParticipantsGuide_16Jan2018.pdf
The World Government Summit World Visualization Prize https://informationisbeautiful.net/wdvp/
What needs to be done?
One might imagine that a large amount of staff would be needed to administer and referee this award. Unavoidably, there would be a need to publicize, judge, and administer the award, but the staffing needs, while real, need not be too prohibitive.
Some of the judging could initially be done by Turing Data Stories readers, by virtue of which stories generated the most visits. That could be a significant deciding factor in to whom to present the award.
A large part of the work would need to be devoted to the building of a website to present the criteria and motivation for the award. This would require careful planning.
Who can help?
Corporate sponsorship would be critical, both in staffing and in funding the monetary portion of the award itself. More staff than currently exists would be needed to plan, administer, judge and publicize the award.
The benefits
This kind of award could generate needed attention to the Turing Data Stories and foster a renewed interest in designing Jupyter notebooks that achieve the goals of the Alan Turing Institute.
If this proposal were to be adopted, the Turing Data Stories should be careful to note that the Stories themselves are not intended as a competition but rather a forum for quality experimentation with open source data in a spirit of cooperation rather than of gamesmanship, that the Hut 8 Awards would be only one element of the Stories to inspire interest in submissions, and that, on account of the scrutiny of its review process, every published Story is in fact a 'winner' on some level.
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