

My startup functional equivalent, mapping human impacts on the ocean - scw

I'm one of the authors on a paper published in Science Magazine on mapping human impacts on the ocean, this is my first publication and I've been excited to see the process. A number of my coworkers and I are fans of PG's work, I thought it would be interesting to examine our project from a start-up perspective:<p>Human capital: 
First, we had an amazing 'long view' leader who ran the show. He saw the project at a higher level of abstraction, could understand the details but didn't get bogged down in them. The work was both motivating and inspiring, this intrinsic motivation is critical to finishing a project of this scope (4 years in duration).<p>Requires dedication and sacrifice from the key participants, all of which is much easier to gain when you're working on a consciousness raising activity that gets people up in the morning.<p>Required deep negotiation to collaborate with data providers, having someone who can drive these talks is key.  A mental map of the data landscape is similarly important: where can you use public data, and reuse what has already been done?<p>Requires you can learn new skills as you go along and perform tasks well outside your area of expertise. Constant learning isn't optional.<p>Filling a need: 
On many levels, but key is understanding how we effect our planet.  Having a clear way to communicate your idea mattered, in our case a map: 
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/02/25/science/earth/20080225_COAST_GRAPHIC.html<p>Getting the job done:<p>Your initial idea is nothing like the final result: the seed question turned out to be the wrong one, and the project shifted in response. Ideas are cheap, but good implementations are expensive.<p>Scaling is critical, constantly amassing new data to improve the analysis, and tuning what you're measuring. Running the model once after optimization took 18 hours, we scaled horizontally to compute Monte Carlo simulations.<p>Much guidance provided by highly experienced participants early on in the project, helping shape it and form critical networking links, similar to the role played by YC. Rely on existing relationships when you need help, and look to others who can help.  Going it alone has merit, but rely on existing relationships for help when you can. Ultimately what matters is getting the job done.<p>Positive feedback is a strong motivator, which is good as high levels of motivation are necessary to beat out both internal and external obstacles. Capital is limited: this is the economic law of gravity, bootstrap or climb your way out of it.<p>Where it differs:<p>Do everything yourself: would be nigh impossible without heavy collaboration and synthetic effort, blazing your own trail wouldn't get you to the same endpoint.  Strong bilateral agreements are the only thing that flies here.<p>Release early, release often: while internal updates to the group were critical, the system doesn't reward openness early in a project, and the public face is nothing till the publication date.<p>The business model: in a startup, you have hard numbers to measure returns. Science measures returns in indirect ways, and the time scale for realizing those returns is generally much longer. Traffic isn't a good metric for this project, but is interesting: in two weeks, our website has seen 30k uniques, with another 22k uniques to the KML file. These results were mostly due to the press coverage from big players such as NYT, NPR, NatGeo, MSNBC and a few social media sites.<p>Our project website:
  http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/GlobalMarine
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rrhyne
Wow. I feel this is the most important problem anyone could be working on
right now. I love the fact that you turned toward the startup culture to get
advice, so here's mine:

Show people in the planets terms possible, what their impact is... as a
nation, as states, consumers of certain products, etc.

Defining the problems isn't enough. You need to provide solutions as well. You
can invoke change if you provide solutions.

Your map went viral quickly and it's a great tool. Do it again, with more
minute detail and also provide solutions.

1\. The growing deadspots. Define them, then map them all. Show what they'll
be like in 10 years at current growth rates. Then try to display what would
happen in 5 years if all farms went organic and stopped using chemical
fertilizers.

2\. Overfishing. Map severity of fish stock depletion. Show percentage of fish
consumption of diet for each country. Map what could happen to fish stocks if
people swapped 5% of the fish they eat for organic vegitables.

Build some snazzy interface to allow users to affect the change on the maps
themselves. A slider that changes peoples diets or something.

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hhm
Very interesting, thanks for this information!

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curi
Here is the same sort of advice I'd give a web startup:

make it really clear what the point is, on the front page.

You have a pretty, color picture. Good start. It has a legend which pairs
colors to numbers.

But what do the numbers mean, in useful terms? I looked a bit and did not find
out. Does 20 mean we're all going to die, or the price of pet fish will go up
20%, or what?

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scw
I'm not sure if you're referring to the NYT image or our site, the site itself
does a much better job of giving context:
<http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/GlobalMarine>

The 'How did we create this map?' header lays out our process and what the
colors quantify, in reasonably clear language. Our page also contains a link
to the paper itself, for those who want to understand how to interpret the
results.

The results are the first attempt to systematically quantify the effect humans
have on the species living in the ocean, and doesn't cover what those effects
might drive in the markets. Hopefully an economist will build on our data to
answer the kinds of questions you raised.

~~~
curi
I'm on your site, and read that section, and it does not tell me what the
difference between a 5 and a 15 is. If you want users, don't make them read
the paper itself to find out. In other words, it's not obvious what units the
numbers are in.

Edit:

Tried reading paper. Still not sure. It looks like you picked an equation that
divides the scores into 6 sections. the top one being 15-90 and the rest much
smaller ranges. i don't understand why that division maps to "high impact" etc
terms, nor still precisely what that is supposed to mean. but there's a
footnote:

[http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/319/5865/948?ijke...](http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/319/5865/948?ijkey=.QBRU7cadgPCc&keytype=ref&siteid=sci#REF17)

17\. Materials and methods are available as supporting material on Science
Online.

in those materials, i find a chart saying the top section means > 90% degraded
ocean. so ... does that mean 90% of the water there has turned to sludge? 90%
of the animals are dead? something like that? if so, that's plenty easy to
understand and could be made more prominent.

~~~
scw
Curi, thanks for the helpful advice. I'll update the page to clarify the
process and what the numbers mean. The numbers themselves are unitless; they
represent the cumulative impact level from all threats combined.

What degradation means and how it effects our map should be illustrated,
likely in a simple conceptual diagram showing how the color classification
maps onto coral states.

