Info 202 Fall 2011

In the 2009 Feltron Annual Report, Nicholas Felton presented meet up experiences between himself and others from family to friends, or random acquaintances in the format of infographics. 

Nicolas Felton is the arthur/maker of the Feltron Annual Report. He created the first Feltron Annual Report in 2005 about his personal life in the past year after he collected and aggregated his personal records such as music, , photos, books, and airline tickets. Ever since the first report, The ongoing data collecting and report creation continues. 

The 2009, Felton asked every person whom he had meaningful encounters with to submit records of the meeting through an online survey. He then spend three years and designed the 2009 FAR(Feltron Annual Report) based on the responses. Data are organized based on categories rather than spatially or chronologically, such as response distribution, relationships between him and the others, activities, locations, etc.. The data is then presented in graphs or text alone with questions and sample answers. Some information is highlighted in numbers, percentages, some are recorded specific to responses. 

This is an interesting organization concept of personal information. The data inputs are through the crowd. As Felton himself stated, the data set was messy and overwhelming. Presenting the result can be difficult because each of the person he interacted with respond to the survey based on their individual choices such as experiences and relationships. Compared to recording these meeting on his own, collecting data from others is more subjective and reduces the amount of the time spent in the creation of data. Some responses may contain details that Felton omits consciously or subconsciously. 

The FARs benefits Felton himself in gaining better understandings of things and events related to the overall well-being and goal fulfillment. The visualization simplifies the complicated data and offers a more efficient information retrieval. With technologies today, perhaps we can make more value of 'check-ins' on social networking sites and make the data collection meaningful. 

Please read more at: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/an-annual-report-on-one-mans-life/

and listen to a related Podcast from 99% Invisible: http://invisible99.podbean.com/2011/07/13/99-invisible-31-feltron-annual-report/