We started IEI in 2007 with a simple premise: To help the folks running online information services make sure their data were never out of date so their clients always had a great user experience. After almost eight years in business, we have achieved our goal and we thought we’d share our perspective on the trends we’ve seen from our vantage point in the data trenches.
- Big data is global: We have had dozens of customers use our services, most of them in the US, but we’ve also had Canadian, European, Indian, and Australian customers.
- Everybody’s got data: The types of firms we’ve worked for have included public companies, private firms, start-ups, academic institutions, and non-profits.
- Nobody’s got enough metadata: The ever-growing oceans of audio/video content aren’t searchable without accurate metadata. The work to append this information has only just begun.
- The government data is coming!: A tsunami of open government data will become more usable over the next couple of years. The race is on to add value and commercialize these massive datasets.
- Crowdsourcing is here to stay: Despite a recent legal setback, the volume of crowdsourcing work will continue to grow, especially with overseas workers, as the amount of work required to make data usable continues to grow.
If you’re curious about whether your data management processes are in line with these trends, drop us a line and we’ll be happy to share the best practices we’re seeing emerge. If there’s anything we know about keeping databases up to date, it’s that the tools keep getting better, cheaper, and faster and the work to stay on top of the latest technical developments never ends.