Interpreting corporate data can help us understand a huge range of subjects including political impact, environmental concerns, investment decisions, ethical issues, and improving sales processes. Previously the time and energy required to collect and interpret this data was beyond the reach of most individuals and even corporations found it difficult to justify the investment in a data-driven approach.

There are now many sources of cool data from the government, non-profit organizations, and even companies themselves that can be downloaded, combined, and mined. Unfortunately, these data sources aren’t well advertised and can be hard to interpret. In this talk, Segaran will give you some ideas of what’s out there and some ideas of how you can use it to do interesting things.

We’ll explore:

Politicians and their relationships with various companies
Data from SEC filings, NAICS codes, and the U.S. Census Bureau
Automatically finding the “buzz” about different companies
Ways to visualize different sources to know the right questions to ask
Generating implied social networks
Specialized data from other agencies like the FDA and the USPTO
Combining data from many sources to learn new things