Putting a Human Face on Big Data at the Social Innovation Summit

Today, everyone at Cisco is excited about the release of a new book — “The Human Face of Big Data” by Rick Smolan, a former Time, Life, and National Geographic photographer best known as the creator of the “Day in the Life” book series.

Cisco is a sponsor of the Human Face of Big Data Project, which also inlcudes a “Data Detectives” youth program and a smart phone application that allows users to compare their answers to questions about health, family, dating, dreams and more to 3 million other people around the world.

The book captures in photographs, essays, and infographics how the real-time collection, analysis, and visualization of vast amounts of information is enabling people to address some of the world’s biggest challenges.

Today the book is being delivered to 10,000 of the world’s most influential people, including speakers at the Cisco-sponsored Social Innovation Summit in Mountain View, California.

Stories featured in the book inlcude satellites being used to target mosquitoes, an SMS system that is preventing the sale of counterfeit medicines in Ghana; and pills that transmit information directly from a patient’s body to a physician.

Through its Corprorate Social Responsibility (CSR) efforts, Cisco supports many programs that use Big Data for social good. For example, grants from the Cisco Foundation have helped the Grameen Foundation develop its Progress Out of Poverty Index, which pro-poor organizations use to assess their effectiveness at moving clients out of poverty and design products and services accordingly.

And, Cisco helped the Blue Planet Network develop AnalytiX, an online database that members can use to monitor, evaluate, and report on project outcomes. Blue Planet Network partners in India, Vietnam, Uganda, Nicaragua, Egypt, and Guatemala use AnalytiX to upload information on more than 250 projects totaling over $3 million.

Learn more about these and other similar contributions in our 2012 CSR Report.