About Albany Data Stories

Albany Data Stories uses public data to create non-partisan, unbiased stories about our government and our community of Albany, NY.  We are launching with a dozen stories and will be adding new stories as we conduct additional analysis.  

Albany Data Stories is inspired by USAFacts.  If you’re not familiar with USAFacts, it is a non-profit started in 2017 - their mission is interesting:

“No one at USAFacts is trying to convince you of anything. The only opinion we have is that government data should be easier to access. Our entire mission is to provide you with facts about the United States that are rooted in data. We believe once you have the solid, unbiased numbers behind the issues you can make up your own mind.”

Albany Data Stories is an independent site and not affiliated with or controlled by the City of Albany.

All content on Albany Data Stories is distributed with a Creative Commons Share-Alike license which lets you freely Share and Adapt the content, given the Terms of the license.

I’m Karl Urich, creator of Albany Data Stories, 30 year resident of the City of Albany, I live in the Buckingham Pond neighborhood.   The origin of Albany Data Stories is straightforward - I’m a data and analytics professional (my background on LinkedIn if that’s of interest); I have been using that experience to examine Albany’s open data and public data to understand our city.   From there I’ve been testing what it means to write articles that examine and explain our city using data.

What do I like about USAFacts that I want to replicate with Albany Data Stories?  USAFacts has published data and analysis that I use to:

• validate what I know and inform what I suspect
• challenge my beliefs that turn out to wrong when presented with data
• provide insight on subjects that I've never thought about at all

Albany Data Stories team members include Adam Daskalakis and Keith Gargiulo.

Albany Data Stories is also a test site for a concept: is it possible to create a collaborative community (governed by a non-profit org) that supports similar data storytelling nationwide (and globally!)?   Can this collaborative community help citizens with all phases of creating data-driven stories - envisioning, accessing public data, analyzing data, authoring, creating data visualizations, editing for clarity and consistency, publishing and more…   Creating the initial stories for Albany Data Stories has helped me to understand what this would mean in practical terms. 

A lot of ambition here!  I’ll be updating Albany Data Stories with new stories and improvements in the coming days/weeks/months.  While I’ve created the first set of stories as a solo project I would enjoy anyone who wants to collaborate on storytelling that turns open & public data into insight on and for our community.  

Whether or not you’re an Albany resident, if any of the above interests you and you have ideas, thoughts, whatever… feel free to get connected to me on LinkedIn and DM me, or drop an email to AlbanyDataStories@gmail.com.