A Direction for Big Data

There’s a growing trend for countries to measure how they’re doing using Happiness Indexes/Indicators, or metrics of well-being that reflect multiple aspects of citizen’s lives. These Indicators are an evolution of GDP, which has been a common global metric to measure a form of value for decades. But GDP isn’t a sufficient measure to fully understand what comprises the value of a country in the same way that knowing someone’s net worth won’t tell you if they’re happy.

It’s Time to Hack Happiness.Our mobile phones and other sensors allow us to track our behavior, health, location, and well-being in ways that didn’t exist even a year ago. Our words, actions, and interactions are being quantified and broadcast as a portrait of who we are as revealed in Data. Our Virtual Identity is being created in ways we don’t fully understand, and this lack of ethical clarity calls for immediate attention.

It’s in this context we want to provide a Direction for Big Data. We feel the Measure of a human should come within the framework of serving a greater purpose: understand your data, and use it for good.

Our epiphany – Why not help people measure their actions while improving their own lives, their social circles, and the world at large? If Happiness Indicators are being used to analyze well-being, lets Geek it Up a notch and utilize the tools already tracking our behavior (GPS, NFC, Sensors) to discover the positive patterns we can amplify to bring positive change to the world. The H(app)athon Project Toolkit, v1

www.happathon.com

We Invite you to Join Us. On March 20th, 2013 (“World Happiness Day” as created by the United Nations) we’ll be running H(app)athons in London and New York City. We want to show people the synergies we see between well-being, emerging media, and Happiness Indicators. We’ve also created this simple format so you can run your own event to teach people about these ideas. We’ll be collecting your contributions and publishing them via our site, a future conference, and a book to help prove how viewing Well-Being through Decoded Data will help us change the world.

The H(app)athon Event Format:

• Please email john@happathon.com to register your event. We’ll try to have a Committee Member available as a resource for your event (virtually or live) and to help you broadcast your answers as part of our overall Project). We’ll also send you our official H(app)athon Project web badge as a thank you for your participation.

• Identify Experts to talk about the following areas: • How people are tracking their behavior via mobile phones/sensors• How Big Data works and why it’s become so important• What Well-Being Means (Science of Happiness, Subjective Well-Being)• Why Happiness Indicators are Important (how to measure Data to affect

policy) -We have links to videos on these subjects HERE if needed.

• Run the H(app)etizer Workshop:

• This is a gamified way to teach people about these concepts• We’ve created an imaginary country (Eudaimonia) and Indicators as a

backdrop/setting for the Workshop. • Note – if you’re prefer using actual an actual Index for the exercise, you

can use this page on Wikipedia and plug in your own statistics. • Teams at your event break into groups and envision Solutions for

Happiness that can measure and improve the citizens of Eudaimonia’s well-being.

• Teams present their ideas live at their event; vote on a winner!• Send any/all results to john@happathon.com to feature on our site• Tout your ideas (create short videos via www.tout.com with the

#happathon hashtag)• Tweet with #happathon hashtag and share copiously.

• Be Festive. (Music, beverages – you get the picture).

• Check out Site. We’ll post people’s responses on our blog (available by end of January, 2013) to feature your winners, thoughts, and ideas.

The H(app)athon Project Toolkit, v1 www.happathon.com

The country of Eudaimonia is in trouble. While household incomes are steady, employment is dropping and housing costs are increasing. People generally are unhappy at work, and not overly satisfied with their lives. However, their health is higher than average, they have strong civic engagement, and have a good availability of green space for citizens (being outdoors increases happiness).

Time for some H(app)etizers!Take 60-90 minutes to brainstorm short, sweet (but meaty) ideas on how Eudaimonites can attain higher levels of well-being for their citizens. Here are some tools/samples to get your ideas flowing:

(Surveys for subjective data, Sensors to measure heart-rate/health, RFID to measure machine data, Smartphones to measure GPS, voice recognition, Accelerometer data, Blue-Tooth for NFC)

Sample H(app)etizer: Create wearable-sensor clothing for employees to analyze when they’re happiest at work (raised heart rate, increased positive tweets, voice recognition registers positive via mobile phone mic). Have them finish out their days outdoors in skype-enabled treehouse pods.

Eudaimonia

Happiness/Well-Being Indicators

Income: (Average Annual) $38,500 USD (equiv)Employment Rate: 65% (since previous year)Housing: (35% of average income) Work Satisfaction: (59% happy at work)Health: (self reported) 80% satisfactionEducational Attainment: (goals/level) 65%Community: (social network penetration) 85%Civic Engagement: (voting) 76%Environment: (prox to green space) 65%Life Satisfaction: 59%

The H(app)athon Project Toolkit, v1 www.happathon.com

Next StepsOnce you’ve created your H(app)etizers, please do the following: • Sign up for our newsletter and to take our Mobile Happiness

Indicator Survey.• Email us your thoughts/ideas – john@happathon.com.• Comment via a blog post on our site – www.happathon.com.

(Full site live by end of January, 2013). • Tweet your idea (it may take a few) using #happathon• Use tout.com to record your ideas using #happathon

We’ll be featuring H(app)etizer ideas on our site in an ongoing effort to show the world how articulated whimsy can provide inspiration to change how we view data/behavior.

Other steps on our end: • We’re planning a large-scale conference in NYC on 3/20/2014• We’ll show (with your permission) your ideas/H(app)etizers at

the event• We’ll feature H(app)etizers in the book we’re writing for

Tarcher/Penguin• We’ll list your H(app)etizers on the Wiki we’ve created you can

visit now.

Where can I read more about how The H(app)athon Project began? You can see our slideshare presentation HERE and read our Founder’s Mashable article, The Value of a Happiness Economy that inspired the idea.

What’s with Eudaimonia? Why not use a real country or Indicator? Eudaimonia is a Greek word reflecting Aristotelian ethics (heady, we know) that roughly translates to a concept of well being, flourishing and wisdom. We used it for a fake country along with an Indicator so people wouldn’t get caught up in an existing methodology as much as focus on how they can be used. But as mentioned above, if you want to use an existing Indicator, great.

If I participate, how will you use my ideas? We’ll share them as we’ve listed above (online/publicly). If you’re uncomfortable sharing your ideas, we recommend you keep your event private.

Other questions/thoughts? Please email – john@happathon.com.

The H(app)athon Project Toolkit, v1 www.happathon.com