Joanna Massie of The RSA recently created a location ‘heat map’, helping visualise the locations of Fellows in the East of England. Some interesting patterns, some densely populated areas and a few empty landscapes emerged.
(Joanna is our Regional Manager in the East of England, and we offer our thanks for her permission to publish the images here on conversationsEAST).
You can view, print or download a larger image of the map here…(jpeg file)
The visual display shows some interesting, even expected distributions. The Norwich Fellows Group gives the region a bold standing in central Norfolk.
There is a strong A12 ‘corridor’ of Fellows from North East London up to, and including Ipswich. Cambridge offers the region a high density of Fellows in residence, as to be expected.
Hertfordshire and the North West corner of London offer up a surprising density of Fellows too. With, we suspect, the ‘London effect’ coming into play.
Despite the region’s strong showing in Norwich, the west of the county, and the centre, offer a paucity of Fellows. Likewise, the North Norfolk coast has little ‘heat’ on the map.
When thinking about the blank spots, is it that potential Fellowship members exist in these cooler areas? Are they prime areas for some gentle Fellowship activity to stir up interest in membership of the Society?
Joanna used, we believe, discrete and secure postcode analysis to generate the map. It would be interesting to do the exercise again and overlay the original source data with specialisation of interest, for example. Where do the philosophers live, where are the concentrations of technologists and coders, and whither the historians, for example?
Creating heat maps from data?
There are a variety of free on-line tools to help you create ‘heat’ for your project or membership database. Try, for example…
OpenHeatMap – see http://www.openheatmap.com/ Not the most sophisticated web site, but useful as a tool and advice source.
Target Map – see http://www.targetmap.com/ A more complex set of tools, from the free to subscription model.
FusionTables – see https://support.google.com/fusiontables/answer/2571232 An experiment from Google Labs. Sophisticated and powerful, as you might expect.
An interesting and illuminating piece of work about the Fellowship from The RSA.
Thank you.
