<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0; "><div lang="EN-US" link="blue" vlink="purple"><div class="Section1"><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; "><o:p> </o:p></div><p align="center" style="text-align: center; line-height: 15.6pt; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 4.2pt; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><strong><span style="font-size: 14pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: black; ">The Open Indicators Consortium</span></strong><span style="font-size: 14pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: black; "></span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><o:p></o:p></span></p><div style="text-align: center; line-height: 15.6pt; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; "><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="text-align: center; line-height: 15.6pt; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; "><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: black; ">The University of Massachusetts Lowell announces the formation of a<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br>national open source consortium to develop a new system for<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br>integrating and visualizing neighborhood, municipal, and regional data</span><span style="font-size: 8.5pt; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="line-height: 15.6pt; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; "><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: black; "> </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "></span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="text-align: center; line-height: 15.6pt; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; "><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: black; ">Project Leaders:</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="text-align: center; line-height: 15.6pt; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; "><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: black; ">Georges Grinstein and William Mass, University of Massachusetts Lowell</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="text-align: center; line-height: 15.6pt; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; "><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: black; ">Charlotte Kahn, The Boston Foundation</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="line-height: 15.6pt; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; "><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: black; "> </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "></span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 15.6pt; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; "><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: black; ">The University of Massachusetts Lowell has announced the formation of a national consortium dedicated to improving access to important data about communities and regions. This consortium will develop a new open source software system for the analysis and visualization of economic, social, and environmental indicators at the neighborhood, municipal, county and regional levels. The effort will be led by faculty members Georges Grinstein (Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Institute for Visualization and Perception Research) and William Mass (Director of the Center for Industrial Competitiveness<strong><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">)</span></strong><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>and by Charlotte Kahn, Director of the Boston Indicators Project at The Boston Foundation. Consortium members include organizations from Greater Atlanta, Georgia; Metro Boston, Massachusetts; Columbus, Ohio; Phoenix, Arizona; Chicago, Illinois and New Haven, Connecticut. Additional partners will be announced soon.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 15.6pt; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; "><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: black; ">Up to ten founding members, each of which will contribute funding to the joint initiative, will guide development based on local preferences in order to achieve universally useful functionality. They will test progress through quarterly releases of the program, with the goal of establishing fully operational websites in each participating region by the end of 2009. In the second year of the program, additional features will be added, such as online networking, collaboration within and across regions, personalization, and user history.</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 15.6pt; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; "><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: black; ">Once complete, the open source program will be made fully available, with constraints only on commercial use. Users of the new software will likely include researchers, planners, educators, the media, and the general public. </span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 15.6pt; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; "><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: black; ">The founding members see many opportunities to use this new tool for complex data integration and visualization. Michael Rich, Director of the Emory University’s Office of University-Community Partnerships and Associate Professor of Political Science, is a lead data and technology partner for Atlanta’s Neighborhood Nexus. Rich is excited about “creating a tool that will make information about neighborhoods and communities available to a wide audience in an easily accessible format and the tremendous potential for comparative research on cities and neighborhoods to inform policy and evaluation.”</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 15.6pt; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; "><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: black; ">Joshua Connolly, Manager of Data Analysis for Arizona Indicators at Arizona State University’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy, looks forward to “filling the gap in public knowledge” so that “public policy decided through voter initiatives can be based on an accurate understanding of conditions in Arizona rather than on partisan positions.”</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 15.6pt; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; "><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: black; ">David Norris, Community Data Manager at Community Research Partners in Columbus Ohio, sees “the opportunity to benchmark across communities in ways we never could before in Central Ohio and, in the process, save a lot of money.”</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 15.6pt; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; "><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: black; ">Holly St Clair, Director of Data Services at the Boston-based Metropolitan Area Planning Council, notes that “efficiency and sustainability are key challenges facing the nation, but data centers are tightening their belts. This tool is a sophisticated yet cost-effective way to help us see how our communities are doing, despite the downturn.”</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 15.6pt; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; "><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: black; ">The product of this effort will be a high-performance, highly interactive software system that supports the analysis of local and regional datasets through a variety of visualizations such as scatter plots, bar or pie charts, line graphs, and multi-layered maps. The software will allow multiple visualizations to be displayed simultaneously, and action on any visualization will automatically update the others allowing for quick comparisons. The system’s mapping capability will cover a variety of boundaries and jurisdictions, including parcels, census tracts, voting precincts, zip codes, neighborhoods, municipalities, legislative districts, and watersheds.</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 15.6pt; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; "><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: black; ">Simplicity, ease of use, and security are key goals for the software. Different configurations will be tailored for novice, intermediate and advanced users, and individual users will be able to further personalize the site. The system will be “browser-based,” requiring no special software and facilitating collaboration by simultaneous users at different sites for joint development, technical assistance, and training. It will also support voice and chat functions to enable collaboration.</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="line-height: 15.6pt; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; "><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: black; ">The University of Massachusetts Lowell brings a wealth of talent to the task ahead, including graduate students in the departments of Computer Science and Regional Economic and Social Development as well as staff at Institute for Visualization and Perception Research and the Center for Industrial Competitiveness. This team has diverse and deep strengths in interdisciplinary collaboration, project management, programming, and data base management support. Key expertise will be provided by Computer Science faculty Cindy Chen and Jesse Heines, post-doctoral fellow Jianping Zhou, project manager Mary Beth Smrtic and project architect Alex Baumann. Several computer companies are participating as advisors to the project. </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "></span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 15.6pt; margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; "><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: black; ">The Consortium’s commitment to open source software and the democratization of data will inspire ongoing innovation among a growing community of users. The open source tools being used have already attracted large and well-established developer communities and are freely available. The Consortium is structured to promote university, community, industry, business and public partnerships, and to expand current organizational capacities. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; "><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: black; ">William Mass’ presentations for planning communities in New England and research on Indicator Projects around the country, made him aware of the potential value of new, powerful information visualization and mapping software tools for extending these organizations’ reach. Georges Grinstein, a leader in the field of information visualization and visual analytics, believes that<strong><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; "><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></strong>“this community of open source practitioners and developers will support innovation regionally, nationally and internationally and that the freely available software will have great impact on increasing the public’s access to data.” For more information contact Grinstein at</span><u><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: blue; "><a href="mailto:Grinstein@cs.uml.edu" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline; ">Grinstein@cs.uml.edu</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></u><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: black; ">or 978-934-3627 or Mass at<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><u><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: blue; "><a href="mailto:William_Mass@uml.edu" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline; ">William_Mass@uml.edu</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></u><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: black; ">or 978-934-2721.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: black; "> </span></div></div></div></span></div></body></html>