A newsletter to learn about practical ways to decolonize your research and data work-lives with byte-sized drabbles about the daily life of a data professional.

Behind-the-Scenes: February

I applied for the Creative Commons Open Culture Platform’s annual Activity Fund (this is a grant) for developing an open access activity like a workshop or conference. I submitted a virtual workshop proposal as part of a new research lab I set up. Fingers crossed that we get funded!

Most of this month was also dedicated to figuring out how to set up a remote connection to a database hosted on a virtual server without SSH key-pairs. I’m in the middle of a massive, complex data migration project for a client that expanded to all sorts of different data domains like server admin work. The Network admin was reluctant to set up the key-pairs—which is the usual way to do this—so I needed a workaround. I was on the verge of creating a StackExchange account just to say something completely incorrect so I could get angry responses for more direction. And then I figured it out!

Curated Content: Check Out this Free Professional Data Organization

Professional membership fees and subscriptions are cost prohibitive and an accessibility issue. The big data ones for the cultural heritage industry for example normally cost upwards of $3,000/year for membership, member events, etc.

Choose free stuff! I stumbled on the Cultural Safeguard Alliance today and recommend checking it out.

Some of the things I like about this professional group are:

• It’s a global network so your volunteer committees/groups will be of international peers.

• Get your membership validated and use that in your performance review.

• They have a job board!

Industry Insights: Web Analytic Tools that Aren’t Google Analytics

A lot of jobs ask you to collect data on their systems. Most places use Google Analytics because out-of-the-box it does the basics. Here’s some alternatives:

Open Web Analytics

Open Web Analytics is an open source, free analytics tool that gives you ownership of the data you’re tracking. Their website makes you feel like this tool was created for the average Internet user. They truly spell out everything it can/can’t do, which feels rare in today’s application market. Unlike Google Analytics it has a heatmap of where users click, you can view clickstream of anon users, see the search terms for referring visitors to your site, and more.

But beware! Open access platforms are great if you have the knowledge, time, and energy to set it up and sustain it.

Besides the cool name, GoatCounter is an open source web analytics tool that you can host yourself with clear documentation on what it does and how. It boasts it’s privacy-awareness and accessibility and has a minimal look. GoatCounter seems like a good tool for tracking your personal websites.

UXtweak is a user experience design research tool that tracks web analytics of how users do stuff on your websites. This looks a good choice to try out if data work involves UX testing (card sorting, first click, interviews, surveys, etc). If you’re a student or want to branch into more UX testing work, you could do use this to make a case study of a random website.

Let’s Create!

I’m open to collaborations, freelance gigs, and conversations about the ideas I shared. Feel free to get in touch and comment on the newsletter.