“I love to travel” is such a platitude these days, usually synonymous with “I like to go on vacation in faraway places.” But the best travel I have found often starts locally, with those quirky places you drive by all the time and never take the time to stop by and explore.
I have been on a kick recently adding these kinds of places to the Atlas Obscura, a site dedicated to chronicling the world’s unusual sites. So, while I have never been to Scandinavia, I did travel less than an hour away to the Finnish Heritage Museum, became a friend to my local Finnish community, and wrote a post about it which has received nearly 500 shares on Atlas Obscura.
Not bad for no jet lag, right?
Firsthand experience is also data
This blog’s mission is to help analysts tackle their data such that they have more time to “get out of the building” and think creatively. Research often requires not just spreadsheets and models but in-the-field reporting and experience.
Unfortunately too many analysts are given virtually no time to experience firsthand the transactions or products for which they spend their days reporting data about. If you’ve got a chance to walk through a location or experience a customer’s journey, do it — you’ll learn a ton, and hey, you’ve got to do something with that time you’re saving with your reports automated, right?
Visiting and writing about obscure local places has benefited me greatly in this aspect of being a good analyst. Here’s how:
I learn to be resourceful locally.
“I have traveled far and wide in Concord,” Henry David Thoreau stated. Although a well-traveled individual, Thoreau was most proud of becoming a frequent traveler in his own hometown.
“The grass is always greener” and we often apply this to both our personal and professional pursuits. Perhaps there is a way to “travel far and wide” in your own organization or profession? Sometimes your business does need a “paradigm shift” — expanding into new markets, adopting new software, etc. Maybe you do really need to relocate to really make it in X or Y profession. But often the most fulfilling “travel” is the most local.
For me, visiting odd local places has reminded me to leave no stone unturned and to assume nothing when approaching a new business challenge. Become familiar enough with something and you will assume it can’t surprise you. Look more closely and you may indeed be surprised.
I learn to work across media.
As an analyst you normally don’t have to make sure that you understand the data but also your manager, co-workers in other departments, executives, etc. And for this you need to master presentation of information in multiple media, whether it is via a dashboard, a presentation, or a written report.
If there is one thing I’ve learned from visiting odd sites it’s that information must be gleaned from a variety of media. Talk to people. Sit silently in a corner and reflect. Take pictures. Sketch. These different data points are going to intersect to make some interesting findings.
But findings are really nothing without an audience and here you must take this variety of “raw” data and synthesize it yet again into some other media that your audience will understand.
My Atlas Obscura posts are a combination of photographs, web-based research and first-hand experience which come together and form a web of information which future visitors can learn from.
I get out of the building.
This is Steve Blank’s famous dictum for entrepreneurs and it holds up for people in any business capacity. As I mentioned earlier I find in-the-fiend research critical for analysts, but unfortunately they are bound in a straitjacket of difficult-to-produce spreadsheets and reports.
It’s one thing to know a product’s selling price and turnover, but what’s it like to go to the store, purchase one and watch a loved one unwrap it for their birthday? Big data is becoming increasingly sophisticated at analyzing so-called “unstructured” data like online reviews that might shed some light on it. There is still a ton to learn from directly experiencing this process. 
This means for me, visiting obscure places has encouraged me to seek firsthand experience of that which I am modelling.
Everywhere an analyst
To me an analyst is ultimately one who senses patterns across multiple media and uses this information toward a stated goal. By this end an analyst is not only interested in the world of spreadsheets and reporting but in any data sources that may provide insights. Firsthand experience is a powerful information source which the practice of visiting and writing about obscure local places has sharpened.
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