Histoires de données : Les leaders au travail est un podcast hebdomadaire proposé par Audiense. Animé par Rahul Jerome, fondateur de insight-intelligence.comla série présente des anecdotes personnelles et des faits marquants de la carrière de certains des esprits les plus talentueux et les plus brillants du secteur de la recherche et de l'intelligence économique.
On the third episode of the Data Stories: Leaders at Work podcast, Rahul talks to Jackie Cuyvers, CEO and co-founder of Convosphere, a social intelligence company that helps businesses see the value of social intelligence.
With a background in art history and using the scientific method to analyze methods and materials, Jackie has long been interested in the intersection of art and science. She even spent some time while at university using forensic methods to discover fakes in the art world. She ended up staying in the US for a decade before returning to the UK in 2011. In the London office, she managed a social insights team.
She suggests that most people come to social intelligence in a variety of ways, but she cites her exposure to social insights as a necessity. She worked with marketing agencies to understand digital marketing before the days of social media. It suddenly became apparent that there was a ton of value in leveraging social media for marketing and communications purposes. In a lot of ways, Jackie had to intuit how to take these insights and deliver them into actionable items.
From a researcher’s perspective, the idea of ethics and accuracy weren’t immediately apparent. But as regulators continue to shape the way that we can interact with private information online, it is suddenly in the best interest of insights researchers to figure out what this will mean for businesses with a digital footprint moving forward. And these insights will likely change as the industry changes.
Moving to a discussion of Jackie’s business spirit, she shares that her parents were entrepreneurial. Back in 2002, she grew a monthly newsletter to 10,000 subscribers—even before she really even knew how to do it. She points to the grit and determination that her parents watered in her that allowed her to even pull something like that off. She taught herself to use Photoshop, PHP and CSS. Now, she’s taking Python classes and R classes to be able to analyze social research data sets.
The need for delivering deep social intelligence is so important. When talking about delivering results from a dataset on a project in Slovenia, she says “You can’t just run these things through Google translate and expect to learn the language.”
Her office is in London, but her workers are all over the world. The importance of understanding the cultural and regional platforms is paramount. She says, “I wouldn’t be a good researcher for an American project because I don’t have the cultural literacy to really deliver meaningful data insights.”
Jackie says that she likes to wake up “happy and nerdy” to provide solutions for her clients. That’s the bug that keeps her going.
Moving on to the Q&A fun rapid round, she provides the following insights:
Jackie has also owned female-led incubators, as well as sponsored events to grow female-owned businesses. The female entrepreneurship is what Jackie is most passionate about.
The full version of the podcast with Jackie Cuyvers can be listened here: