You scoff, but I have the proof, in the form of a video of Hans Rosling, Professor of International Health and Director of the Gapminder Foundation, talking about stuff.

The stuff in question is all to do with child mortality rates around the world and variances in the data and lots of other interesting things that I didn’t sleep through, because Hans made it sexy!

So what?

Well, sometimes the usefulness of data can be obscured by its more… soporific qualities. If you give someone a list of data in a table form they will be less moved by it than they would by the same data in a graphical format. It’s just the way our brain works. One of the most important lessons you learn at school is that stuff is boring unless it’s brightly colored and conformed into interesting shapes.

At Westbury we pride ourselves on the fact that our solution is – in part – based around Business Objects, the industry leading Business Intelligence tool. We’re proud because we know that once you get your data out of Service Manager or ServiceCenter, the BO front-end will let you present it in a sexier way than a plain ol’ list, table or spreadsheet. We think that’s important, and you will too when you find your boss, asleep at his desk and drooling onto your latest workgroup performance report.

Anyway, the point of this blog entry was really to pay it forward with the sexy data video, so here’s Hans in all his sexy loveliness. Take it away, Hans!