Hans Rosling: How not to be ignorant about the world

by | Feb 24, 2017 | 0 comments

By Jacqueline Koch

Hans Rosling, unlikely storyteller that gave data a soul and a mission

Want to understand climate trends, ocean acidification, HIV and the global disease burden, economics or pandemics? Hardly a day goes by without a mention of big data and the promise it holds. Even for those us who are daunted—the volume, complex statistical formulas and the labyrinthine spreadsheets—can understand the essential role data plays in revealing the mysteries of the world we live in. And it’s for this reason the passing of Hans Rosling is such a tremendous loss.

Best known for transforming statistics and data into colorful, dancing bubbles choreographed seamlessly across a screen, Hans Rosling, Director, Gapminder Foundation and Professor, Global Health, Karolinska Institutet, was a pioneer and unexpected storytelling master. Crunching numbers and assembling statistics, while expertly harnessing new techno-color data display technology, Rosling had a gift. And he deployed it for crafting a fantastic tale, complete with an engaging narrative arc to explain global issues such as child mortality, poverty, vaccines and income disparity. His passion for a “fact-based world view,” was matched by an off-beat sense of humor. Quirky meets convincing, he made us all fall in love with data and statistics, his bubbles and with Rosling himself.

Hans Rosling

Rosling didn’t consider himself optimist or a pessimist, but instead a “very serious possibilist.” Well known for a number of TED talks and featured in a BBC documentary for the “Joy of Stats,” Rosling created a considerable library of compelling videos. They were his megaphone.

In one TED talk he defends the washing machine as the game-changer in the industrial revolution. In another, game-show style, he and Bill Gates discuss childhood vaccines as the “demographic party trick.” Moving away from high-tech data display and bright bubbles on a screen, he managed to explain population growth using IKEA boxes. Creative and always wildly gesticulating, Rosling’s capacity to entertain—making numbers fun—was limitless. And while it may be a noble effort to try explain his videos, it’s not worth it. They generally fall into one category: “Just watch, you’ll see what I mean.”

When I saw my first Rosling video, I was hooked. It was in the midst of the Swine Flu outbreak in 2009. Hysteria, fanned by shrill media headlines, grew exponentially day by day. While only 31 people died of Swine Flu, more than 63,000 had died of TB during the same 13-day period. Guerilla style and with his laptop video web camera rolling, Rosling set red bubbles in motion, migrating across a globe. His goal: to open our eyes to both an unwarranted public health panic and recognize a far greater global health foe, TB. In the video, Rosling coined the term “news per death ratio” and chose an ironic title —“Swine Flu Alert”— to open our eyes to painful truths about our relationship with media. Watch it, you’ll see what I mean.

Hans Rosling

While Rosling was a nerdy and captivating storyteller, his bubble stories were anything but cursory. Consider his take on the worldwide advances in maternal and newborn health. In one global health summit, he explained how these issues are shaped by a plethora of converging factors: fertility rates, investments in vaccines, improved nutrition, family planning, per capita income and access to electricity. Following the narrative arc, beginning, middle and end, and magically marching backward and forward across the decades, he built in a villain—the lack of infrastructure—and a potential hero, the mobile phone technology.

Rosling’s charisma flowed only from the power of animated graphics and great imagination, but also his personal crusade, “How not to be ignorant about the world.” Fellow TED speaker, Brené Brown said “Maybe stories are just data with a soul.” In any case, it was certainly Rosling that gave data a soul.

Boost! Collective is a story-driven marketing and communications firm. We discover, create and tell the powerful stories that drive deep engagement with your audiences.

 

 

 

 

The power of an unexpected story to bring ideas to life

by | Feb 14, 2017 | 0 comments

By Janinne Brunyee

“Over the years, my hair has changed a lot. I’ve done wigs, weaves and pony tails. Because it changed every week, it got to the point where my coworkers didn’t know if my hair was real or fake.”

This is how Teresa Schribner, an award-winning media teacher at Cleveland High School in Seattle started her 5-minute, 20-slide talk at Ignite Education Lab last week. Schribner was one the eleven speakers who participated in “Unexpected adventures in learning,” a special edition of Seattle Town Hall’s Ignite series hosted by The Seattle Times Education Lab.

But what does Schribner’s hair have to do with inspiring ideas in education? It turns out it was a critical part of her personal journey from trying to build a reputation as a hard teacher to building real relationships with her students.

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Schribner said that like many African American women, for years, she treated her hair with toxic chemicals to assimilate to the culture around her. It had become part of her professional outfit.

“When I became a teacher,” she said, “it became about respect and I decided to grow out my natural hair.” The result was not quite what she had expected.  “Instead of a big beautiful head of hair, I discovered that I had incredibly thick, comb-breaking hair. The rain was not my friend.”

As the process of growing her hair out progressed, Schribner continued to wear wigs and weaves. Eventually, once she realized that her hair was wearing her out, she nervously decided to wear her hair in all its natural glory.

Black hair matters

On her way into school on that first day, Schribner ran into a student who saw her and exclaimed “Miss Schribner!” before running off. “I was preparing myself for the worst but then later that day, she came to my classroom to tell me that she loved my natural hair and asked if I would be wearing it natural for graduation – which was many months and many potential new hairstyles away.”

When Schribner asked the student why she was required to wearing her hair as an afro, the student replied, “Us black women need to stuck together.”  That’s when Schribner realized that her black hair mattered to the student.

“That conversation changed my whole teaching practice because I realized that I was being admired for something that I felt vulnerable about,” she said. Schribner said she is much more relaxed in the classroom now.

“I don’t know what happened that day, but the moment I decided to let my hair down was the moment I decided to let students in,” she said. “I know the way I look matters to them and they matter to me.”

From bad student to badass teacher

The importance of relationships as a force for learning was a key theme for many of the speakers.  Rachel Wiley, secondary English teacher in the Puyallup School District shared her story about how she transitioned from ”bad kid to badass teacher.”

 

“The irony of the fact that I am an English teacher who failed my 9th grade English glass is not lost on me,” said Wiley.  Wiley’s life as a “bad” kid changed course when she switched to an alternative high school rather than dropping out of school all together. There she met Rachel Johnson. “Ms Johnson was the first adult who believed in me. She cared about me and supported me and is still doing it 12 years later,” she said.

At college, Wiley decided she wanted to be a teacher, just like Ms Johnson. “I knew I could be a badass teacher who breaks down walls for kids.”

Now Wiley gets to give and receive new life-giving messages and can tell students that they are enough exactly the way they are.

“Where we change lives for the better, we change the world for the better and that is pretty badass,” she concluded.

Boost! Collective is a story-driven marketing and communications firm. We discover, create and tell the powerful stories that drive deep engagement with your audiences.