Writing up the data management plan has really organized what types of data we will be needing for our project. As the data lead, I think it was a great way to showcase my expertise but also learn new ways/skills to organize our data.

A few weeks ago, I thought our only pieces of data were the carousel metadata (like address, fees, etc.), the carousel spatial data, and the demographic data. Now, after listening to our guest, Stephen Zweibel, our team realized the photos, videos, our and the snippet of our individual visiting experience and review is also considered to be data.

Zweibel made me rethink what data is, it can be anything we use to make conclusions, visualizations, etc. Thinking about the stages of our data also helped make our data management plan, and also for me to add to our work plan. Thinking of cleaning the demographic data and adding time to do so, I thought of the step to be minimal and quick – but after our guest’s lecture, cleaning is a heavy task and requires attention to detail and time like other parts of our project.

Although, data is my strong suit – I always welcome the opportunity to learn from others in the field to continue to keep rethinking ways I use data.