Women

I Wrote a Song for My Startup

/ Susan Scrupski / Leave a comment

Okay, maybe not exactly original.  Readers of this blog may not have been alive when this song was recorded or popular, so maybe I can get away with it.

My last post was a poetic, meandering bit of self-reflection about how selfish it was for me to pursue a line of work that could negatively impact the people I love the most.

Well, sorry kids.  I can’t do it.  I’m addicted to this work.

Every day, there’s another death. There’s another reason to keep going.  I realize I’m starting over, reinventing myself at the bottom of a low-paying field, yet all arguments to give up fall away in the face of the opportunity to make a real dent in this particular universe. So, I’m continuing.  I took a pause, but that was about it.  I grabbed those bootstraps and yanked harder.

Good news is coming.  I promise.  Stay tuned.

News flash: it’s not about the money.

(But, you know, we do need that to survive… so, I encourage your support.)

 

My Next Adventure: Big Mountain Data

/ Susan Scrupski / 3 Comments

YesAllWomen.006The week before I left for New York to witness my daughter getting married in Central Park and attend the Personal Democracy Forum, I was struck by the  #YesAllWomen Twitter hashtag campaign that highlighted stories of misogyny and violence against women. I wrote about it on this blog. It was essentially the SCALE of the problem that got me started thinking about big data.  I was introduced to big data concepts by my old boss, Erik Huddleston.  Erik is now CEO at Trendkite here in Austin.  I had in the back of my mind an idea that big data could be leveraged somehow to solve the intractable problems that continue to plague society in the form of family abuse.  I had begun talking to people in the field about working in this area.  As a survivor (I prefer the word “escapee”) of domestic violence, I have always been interested in developments in the field.   As an aside, women who’ve left and are successful generally don’t reveal they were once in an abusive relationship.  Society still brands these women weak, less-than, and of questionable character.  It’s disgraceful, yet I can see easily how women don’t want to be associated with that stigma.  Nonetheless, I’ve paid attention to developments in the field of domestic violence, but never really saw anything that was truly break-through.

After I’d spoken to a few more experts in the field, I asked Erik to meet with me to discuss whether this might be an area where big data/data science could make some headway. We met for drinks on August 13, 2014. It was Erik that flipped the focus for me.  He loved the idea, but said to focus on the offenders.  The more I thought about it, I realized he was onto a big idea.  If one out of every four women experiences violence in her lifetime, then the numbers are equally staggering on the flip side of that equation.   You might even say that 1 out of every 4 men is then a violent abuser.  My sense is that’s probably not true.  One repeat offender will go on to abuse many women in his lifetime.  But, who are these offenders? What are the patterns in the data?  What can we learn about these men? How can we use this data to inform law enforcement, the courts, legislators?  Further, in the meetings and interviews I had with domestic violence experts, two things became increasingly clear: 1.) there was not enough evidence-based outcomes data available to satisfy funding source donors and 2.) most attempts to rehabilitate or identify repeat offenders have failed.

Hence, Big Mountain Data, became a thing.

The universe conveniently intervened on my behalf prior to naming the business (see name explanation below).  As I said, as someone who has paid attention to the field of domestic violence, one day in July on my Facebook news feed, I noted the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence unceremoniously announced the “resignation” of its longtime Executive Director, Rita Smith.   I immediately reached out to Rita, acknowledging that she was now a free agent, and asked her if she’d be interested in advising my little startup.  I was thrilled that she agreed, and I began having conversations and email exchanges with her.  When the Ray Rice NFL scandal erupted in early September, Rita was named as one of the experts on domestic violence that would be advising Roger Goodell and his team.  (Wow!  Good for Rita!)

Of course, this was good for Big Mountain Data too.  I immediately seized upon a big data-inspired idea and built a world-class team for a project that will have great implications in the field if we secure a sponsor for it. Hopefully, this sponsor will be the NFL, but any sponsor is welcome.  So, we have our first project that is still progressing as I write this.

I’m particularly pleased to be working on this business with my talented daughter, Lisa. We both have a long history with the ravages of what domestic violence can do to a family. It’s difficult for both of us to work on this, but what we lack in expertise in the field, we possess in first-hand experience which maybe trumps degrees and certifications. As I like to say, we have skin in the game.

Why Big Mountain Data?

Big Mountain Data logo

My sense is there are already mountains and mountains of data collected in the intimate partner violence (IPV) and abuse field. In my research, I’ve seen a lot of this data locked up in PDFs and reports that get distributed around the field, but I’ve not seen an open data source where all interested parties could have access to data files in many formats for reuse and remix.  If I learned anything at the Personal Democracy Forum, it’s that civic hackers need to have easy access to data in standard formats to do their magic.

As it turns out, there is a conference in Utah called, you guessed it, Big Mountain Data Conference.  It draws scores of data scientists and developers, so I’m hopeful I can make a connection there and find some recruits to work on our projects.  I’ve also reached out to Bayes Impact, an awesome data science for social good YC startup that does exceptional work for a great price. I was fortunate to buy the company domain from Jon Clayton, an Internet solutions provider, who now hosts www.bigmountaindata.com. I’ve also been in touch here in Austin with David Waldron who runs the ATX Hack for Change every summer as part of the Obama administration’s national day of civic hacking.  Dave has been wonderfully supportive and encouraged me to submit a project for the next hackathon.  I’ll also be attending SAP’s TechEd this month where I will be leaning on my SAP friends to see how I might be able to enlist some talent within SAP’s large civic hacker developer network.

What’s Next?

I have a couple projects in the works, including the project we are pitching to the NFL now.  I’ve been spending a lot of time talking to, well, customers.  Customers in this sense means organizations who’d be willing to pay for services where data science can solve a problem or provide unique insights.  On my list have been women’s shelters, domestic violence experts, law enforcement, academics, and think tanks.  I’m hoping now that I’m announcing what I’m up to, I can start reaching out to my contacts I have in the open data / opengov and civic hacking communities to understand the dynamics of working with them.

So It’s a journey. A new chapter for me. I’m asking all my friends, fans, followers, even my hatrs to get behind this new venture and offer any assists you can within your networks or capabilities.  I will probably try to get some startup social impact funding too as I get closer to identifying specific use cases for the business.  So, any ideas along those lines or contacts is equally beneficial.  To my friends whom I’ve already spoken to about this, including my amazing and heroic partners and members at Change Agents Worldwide, thank you so much for your support.  I will do my best to make a difference in this new area. You can count on it.

If you want to keep up to date on what I’m doing, I won’t be chronicling our progress on a blog. I’m going to use an email newsletter to send detailed updates on what we’re doing. Please subscribe if you’re interested in this work and our mission.

My Social Web Odyssey

/ Susan Scrupski / Leave a comment

The bizarre convergence of a few unrelated events is prompting me to write a mini-essay on how I’ve evolved personally on my social web odyssey.  It also serves as a prelude to my next post that announces a new chapter for me in my career.

Computer technology fascinated me as a young girl.  In those early days, we didn’t have a “no women in tech” problem, because we didn’t have anyone in tech.  I was in the very first computer programming class in my high school .  I didn’t notice I was a girl, and neither did anyone else.  I always (seriously, always) saw technology as a means to improve life on the planet.  But, I think it was the Unix operating system (circa 1985 for me) that really opened theOgilvy floodgates of possibility for me.  I remember thinking how democratic it was. When I went into advertising, and I was responsible for explaining the significance of UNIX System V to creative directors and copywriters on the AT&T account, I recall describing it as “socialized computing”  – the Glasnost for technology that would bring us to a more connected, transparent, equal world.  It was a poetic, impassioned speech I gave in that 1988 Reagan era O&M conference room. When Steve Jobs would later announce the NeXT computer that year, I was even more mystical in my descriptions of what the import would be for this new technology.

The early days of computing led to the commercialization of the business, where the conversation shifted from what we could create to what empires we could build.  I spent a long time studying and reporting on the massive amounts of money that were horse-traded on the public markets in my narrow sector of tech (IT services), by focusing on people who made the market move. It was an interesting exploration into power, control, and influence on a global scale, but it was far afield from my original desire to explore and imagine how computer technology could improve life on the planet. That phase of my career grotesquely improved the lives of a handful of people white men and their families I knew, but not so much for the rest of us, or society in general.  I did get to fly first class many times to Europe, however.  Exposure to how seriously wealthy people lived was eye-opening.

When the first generation Internet started gaining steam, and the land rush to secure dotcom addresses and launch startups collided with my sleepy sector of the tech market, I was instantly transformed.  Seduced even.  It was that same feeling that Unix had awakened in me.  This. This is what we have been waiting for. I abandoned my old tribe and started tracking the new space. The Internet was changing everything. I was early to market in studying the firms that were building the dotcoms and introducing e-everything to large enterprise.  I eventually joined a dotcom startup myself.

Then the dotcom crash

Then 9/11 and losing someone I knew.

Then, me giving up my foolish beliefs in trying to change the world, and retreating to suburbia to raise my kids for 5 years.

Then the divorce, and the sudden panicked realization I now had to support my children single-handedly, get them to college, and fight to keep my home in the wake of the housing meltdown.

The 2006 web 2.0 (aka social web) movement was a godsend in several ways. I could pick up where I had left off in 2001 and quickly reclaim a voice in the market without missing much of a beat.  Blogging gave me agency, relevance, and connected me to a network around the world who saw so much promise, so much potential to finally make inroads on changing the world for the better. For me, I saw three opportunities to make a difference: consumers & society, government & NGOs, and Big Business.  Big Business was the only area where I had relationships, a modicum of credibility,  and enough expertise to influence the discussion and assert my will.  One thing led to another, and I found myself embedded, and leading in many ways, the Enterprise 2.0 movement with a global circle of r/evolutionaries who wanted to change the way business operated by introducing the values of the social web.  That original tribe has reconfigured to pursue a few different divergent paths, but many of the people who’ve remained true to the original promise of #e20 are still aligned.

After eight years, I am pleased and honored to have been apart of so many stories of “changing the world of work.”  Even if I was just a little voice whispering in the background, even if it was just me shining a light on someone who was doing amazing work, I take great pride in these accomplishments.  I’ve done my part to capture the brilliance, the passion, and the courage it takes to do this game-changing (in the purest sense) work.   There are hundreds and hundreds of individuals whose stories I’ve witnessed or even helped advance in a network-centric way. It’s been seriously rewarding, except maybe financially, but that was never the goal for me.  Fame and fortune were never on my bucket list.  I wanted to invest my time and energy into incubating change agents.  And I’ve done that.   The return on that investment has been unreal and infinitely rewarding.  I imagine it’s the same gratification a longtime professor receives seeing his/her students go on to achieve magnificent accomplishments in their chosen fields.

Despite this amazing and rewarding success,  that niggling reminder that there is so much more to do, so much more to fix in the world, always haunted me.  Two events coincided for me early this summer (2014), that captured my focus and attention.  The first is that my youngest child, my son, graduated high school and was set to head off to college in the fall, leaving me in the uneasy discomfort of an empty nest.  The second was I attended the Personal Democracy Forum in NYC.  If you’re not familiar with the PDM community, you ought to be.  This is the place where, “networked voices are reviving the civic conversation.”  As I watched speaker after speaker stand up on that PDF stage, changing the world in their small and large ways, I knew in that moment, Tech was calling me to do something even bigger, something even more important.  Staring down that opportunity will the most difficult challenge I’ve undertaken to date, because it integrates both of my lived experiences, professionally and personally.

My next post will describe my next chapter and what I’m attempting to achieve with my new organization.