PolicyMap at the Podium!

Working with data and maps can sometimes be solitary, and sometimes it’s nice to get out and talk with people about the work we do with data and maps. This past week PolicyMap spoke at two conferences, with two very different topics — government finance and food insecurity.

Last Tuesday, I spoke in our hometown of Philadelphia at the Government Finance Officers Associations (GFOA) annual conference in a panel about data-driven decisions. The panel discussed the concepts of “big data” and “open data” and went through strategies to use data to inform policymaking. The panelists included Jonathan Feldman, Chief Information Officer from the City of Asheville, NC and Stacey Mosley, Data Services Manager with the City of Philadelphia. I rode on their coat tails, describing the work PolicyMap has done with data and mapping for the City of Philadelphia as well as The Reinvestment Fund’s Market Value Analysis (MVA) in Baltimore as well as dozens of other cities throughout the country.

On Thursday, PolicyMap member, Kristin Crandall, had the pleasure of speaking at the 2015 Marketing and Public Policy Conference, held by the American Marketing Association in Washington, D.C.  Kristin presented alongside Sonya Grier (American University) and Lauren Block (City University of New York) in a session about Food Insecurity, Waste, and Disparities.  She explained TRF’s Limited Supermarket Access (LSA) study and shared ways that PolicyMap is being used around the country to advance healthy food access work. The theme for this year’s conference was “Marketing and Public Policy as a Force for Social Change.”