Fox Valley Data Exchange and The Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region - Jason Schulist and Tammy Geenen

Score Northeast Wisconsin and WHBY are pleased to bring you Biz Talk, a chance for you to hear from entrepreneurs and professionals as they share their experiences. From starting to sustaining growth, learning the skills needed for your business to be successful. If you miss anything, you can catch the Biz Talk podcast at score.org/North East Wisconsin. And now from the Myron Construction Studio, it's Biz Talk on WHBY. Good morning everyone and welcome to another episode of Biz Talk with Score here on WHBY. My name is Mary Rody and joining me this morning for another great episode is Rick Sense. Good morning, Rick. Good morning, Mary. How you doing? Doing fabulous. I'm excited to talk with our guests here today. We are thrilled to be joined by Jason Schulis, executive director of the Fox Valley Data Exchange. And along with him will be Tammy Geenan, Vice President of Community Engagement for the Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region. Welcome and good morning to both of you. Thank you. Nice to be in the program. Good morning. All right, so let's jump into it here and let's introduce folks to the Fox Valley Data Exchange in case they may not be familiar. So Jason, do you want to kind of give us just a brief overview of what the Fox Valley Data Exchange is? Sure, the Fox Valley Data Exchange is a non-profit that formed in May of 2023 with the point to becoming a one-stop shop for community data needs. So we really serve as a centralized resource for community data. And we provide some research, some analysis, interpretation of trends. There's a long history of kind of working with data and making a difference in this community. And Tammy has been involved in that for a longer stretch. And this is kind of the next iteration of how we can bring data together to make it easy to make decisions in our community. That's fabulous. I am a big data nerd. Myself and love, I live and breathe it every single day in my normal job in the marketing world. So very much appreciate individuals like yourself who are out there seeking more data and providing it to the community. It's so valuable. So if you want to jump in here, Tammy, and you know, there's always a story behind the story, right, with everything. And so can you give us a little bit of kind of what that origin story is for the Fox Valley Data Exchange? Happy to do that. As Jason mentioned, I've been involved in some of these community data initiative types of projects going all the way back to 2001 when the Fox City's life study was launched. And life stood for leading indicators for excellence in the community. And that took a look at all aspects of community life. And just how are we doing as a Fox Valley community, Fox City's region as well? And there was great work that was done when that launched in 2001 and periodically providing updates to that data using the data to help make decisions that led to the development of some new community initiatives or services in the community. But one of the challenges over time became trying to keep the information updated and as current as possible. And as the community foundation for the Fox Valley region and United Way Fox cities were always in kind of that co-leadership role for making sure that information in the life study was not only updated, but also elevated in the community. We just found some challenges with that. And I would say a little bit before COVID in 2020, we decided that it was time to look at another way, another way of structuring the life study, getting some new partners involved, and really looking at it as an opportunity to evolve the life study to what's next with a very specific eye toward making sure we were able to access data and have it more regularly updated. And so that's eventually what led to the creation of the Fox Valley data exchange as Jason was describing. And we've continued to have many good partners involved. But the Fox cities life study, which was more focused on the Fox cities municipalities, primarily, now with the data exchange has grown into focusing on the Tri-County area, including Kelly, Met, Autogame, and Winnebago counties. So you mentioned the life study. Can you maybe give listeners that really kind of kept the finger, or the finger on the pulse of the community, the life study program, which did a great job, I think, in representing what was happening and going on in our communities. Can you talk with listeners about how you guys now are keeping the finger on the pulse of the community, what measurements, what vital conditions are you tracking in the actual process going forward with the data exchange? Yeah. So just to also kind of add on to the history too, and how we got to the vital conditions, I was working as a vice president at Bolt, kind of doing continuous improvement transformation work, but I had also been on the board of the United Way, and noticed how hard it was to get data, and how hard it was to find the data. And so what we tried to do was we got the community together to figure out what the community wanted. And that's where, as Tammy had said, we focused on all three counties. But we also wanted to, I'll call it bells and whistles, but I mean, charts and being able to look at things by geography and being able to look at things over trend and over time. And we had also, during that time, had worked around creating a community vision for the Fox cities area, and we had kind of stepped into this concept of measuring well-being. And how could we understand whether we are thriving, whether we're struggling, or whether we're suffering as a community, and as individuals, and so on and so forth. And this is the same work as the happiness report. So you can maybe have seen all the people in the Nordic region seem to be happy for some reason, and then other places are less happy. Well, we were using the same survey questions for understanding that. And what we found is working with a foundation called the Ripple Foundation outside of our area. They had created a model around the seven vital conditions for well-being. So the hypothesis is, if you work on these seven vital conditions, you will improve your well-being score overall, and they have a bunch of modeling they do and do that. But what we decided to do is also align all of our data alongside these seven vital conditions for well-being. By doing that, we could stay aligned with a national framework, but then also be a leader in helping to understand how we do the work we need to do in our communities related to the vital conditions and related to well-being. So as you look at those, what are the ones that jump out at you is that kind of stand out that are really leading indicators to the community as far as the happiness side of things? Yeah, so what I can give you the seven vital conditions for well-being and kind of tell you which ones we have seen, we think make a pretty big impact in our community. So first one is basic needs for health and safety. So if you think about how we do, you know, the general health that we have, this is mental health month. Mental health is one of the basic needs for health and safety that we focus on. Humane housing, you probably heard a lot about housing in our area and the lack of affordable housing and the lack of housing units as a whole. If we don't have humane housing, it's really hard for everybody to be happy in our community. A meaningful work in wealth. How do we have economic prosperity in our community? How do we know whether we can hit our living wage? And what is that living wage? And how can we ensure that people in our community can have a living wage? So there's lots of different ways to measure that that we can look at. Life-long learning is another one. So it's not just, are you ready for kindergarten? But is it all the way to, what do you do after you've graduated from college? And how do we continue to have a life-long learning approach? Reliable transportation. So do we have the transportation we need to get around our community? Are we walkable? Do we have good bike paths? Things of that nature? Thriving natural world. So that's all about our environment. Do we have good air? Do we have good water quality? And then finally, the one that we found both in taking surveys, as well as in this model. We call it a toofr. So it's twice as important. And it's belonging and civic muscle. And so do we feel like we belong to our community? And do we take action and work our civic action to make a difference in our community? And so when you look at all of the information, blind civic muscle and basic needs for health and safety have showed up as the two things that hinder our ability to thrive and also enhance our ability to thrive. So if you look at both the positive and negative side, those are the two to focus on humane housing is pretty close behind that as an issue to work on. And if I could jump in, Jason, as you're describing those vital conditions, and I remember some of the workshops that we would do even with ripple foundation and some other members of the community in trying to take a look at all of these different vital conditions. I remember one exercise where the the visual representation had belonging and civic muscle in the center. And then all of the the other six vital conditions were all connected around it. And so for me, that was a really helpful and striking visual. I'm in a great reminder. I still have with me today and just how that is at the center of the vital conditions. As we have a website at fvdex.org on our front page, you'll see this vital conditions framework right on that page. Okay. Yeah, I really love how you broke these out into the seven seven areas. These are things that are truly community changing, life changing for some to really focus in on some of these that really can speak to a lot of different things that a lot of different organizations are trying to accomplish throughout the community. So certainly efforts like this take many, many hands and as a heavy lift at times. So can you describe to us a little bit kind of how your organization is structured? Who's who's all involved and how does the work truly get done? Yes. So we have one employee and that is myself related to the Fox Valley Data Exchange. Our goal is to try to be as most cost effective as possible for our community. The idea is we create a free resource for the entire community use. So if you go to Fox Valley, the fvdex.org, which is the Fox Valley Data Exchange's website, it's all free. And you can see everything out there for free. So data is free, but it's not free to make data free. So we have to we create a nonprofit that would allow us to be kind of neutral to all the parties that are in the community and to create a place where we can find good, reliable, clean data that people can use to make decisions. So the way we we started this entire process is we asked the community what they wanted for a data exchange. So there are about 40 of these data exchanges around the United States. One of them is in Milwaukee. It's called data you can use. So we went and benchmarked all these various data exchanges and then asked the community what do you want and that's where we got to three counties. They wanted charts. They went easily downloadable data. They wanted to use the vital conditions framework as a way to organize the data. But it was 40 people and that was back during back during COVID. So we were doing Zoom calls to try to facilitate how people wanted to figure out what Tammy would affectionately call a minimal viable product or the ability to create something that's the first case and the first set. So we did that and we had to find a third party provider to kind of organize and structure our data. We didn't have to but we found that it was more expensive and more cost effective. But we had a team of about 12 people that were in a room trying to figure out which technology to use. Now we have what we call action advisory teams. So we currently have 30 volunteers that work with the Fox Valley Data Exchange somewhere on the board like Tammy. Some are on a communications committee that helps us to look at our social media and looks at our communication plan and another what we call the data frameworks and I guess we call the data frameworks group action advisory committee and structure group. So there's a group of people like you, Mary, who are really nerdy in the data and like to go structure data and figure out how to organize it and then we have a group that kind of advocates on behalf of our community. So we have eight different stakeholder groups across the three counties and they come together and say, you know, we'd really like to add this data into the data exchange or we'd really like to focus on this area of of data in the vital conditions. And so we listen to the community and let the community make the decisions to drive our work. But we do most of that work as volunteers. That's great. That's got to be great to have that continual and constant feedback to truly better the product that you're outputting, right? Tammy, what is the role that I certainly yourself, I know Jason mentioned you're on the board, but additional to that, what role do you play in especially the community foundation for the Fox Valley region? Yeah, my role at the community foundation is as vice president of community engagement, which encompasses community initiatives, grant making programs and has also included some communications and marketing work too. I've been with the foundation for 26 years and bring this breadth of all that experience, not only to my role within the foundation and in the community, but related to this specific project. Just bring a lot of different lenses lenses to it. So really serving number one on the on the board of directors, as Jason mentioned with some other people that represent a variety of aspects of sectors across the three counties. And so we help with some of that organizational and operational kind of structure, support for Jason as the executive director, do the strategic planning. And then I also work closely with the communications committee that Jason mentioned, even though I love data, I always feel like I know the least about data in the room when I get together with that data committee. They are amazing, super smart volunteers and I learn every time I'm together together with them, but it's really interesting, again, in that role of, you know, looking at communications and data and the structure of the organization, how to also bring it back around to the people and the stories throughout the region and, you know, what are they truly experiencing and living and how do you lift up and tell those stories in ways that you start with that solid data and then build and build and grow from there and trying to lift up and uncover challenges and opportunities to improve life in the community for everyone. All right, we've come to the point where we're going to take our first break this morning. You're listening to this talk on WHBY and we'll be right back after these messages. Welcome back to this talk with SCORE on WHBY on Everick Sense, along with Mary Rodi today, and we are talking with our friends at the Fox Valley Data Exchange, Jason Schulisden, who's executive director and Tammy Yeenan, who's vice president of community engagement for the community foundation for the Fox Valley region and a board member of the Fox Valley Data Exchange. But before we get back to that conversation, I'd just like to take a moment to talk to you and give you a little bit more information about SCORE Northeast Wisconsin. SCORE Northeast Wisconsin serves an 18 county area in Northeast Wisconsin and also the county of Monomony and Michigan. We have over 50 volunteers, each and expert in their field and they offer entrepreneurs no cost and confidential mentoring. The areas of expertise include IT, social media, marketing, cash flow, accounting, strategic planning, workflow, human resources, retail, best practices, and many, many others. To register or for a no cost, a confidential mentoring session, and or to learn more about SCORE Northeast Wisconsin, please visit our website at score.org/northespisconson. You can learn more about how the SCORE chapter can assist you with starting and/or growing your business and you can complete an application for a mentoring session. Simply complete the online form and submit it to SCORE. Within a few days, a SCORE mentor will be contacting you to set up a meeting. Remember, SCORE is no cost and offers experts who can offer you assistance in many different areas. To get started, visit our website at score.org/northespisconson. And to support small business people, SCORE Northeast Wisconsin is always looking for new mentors. If you have experience that you would like to share with others, we would love to talk to you. We welcome volunteers with experience in all aspects of business. Small business owners need your help and your experience can make a real difference in their success. Go to score.org/northespisconson. Click on the volunteer button and fill out the short application and we'll get back to you to explain more. So thanks again for joining us on Biz Talk and I'll turn to you, Mary. Great. Thanks so much, Rick. Jason and Tammy, in the previous segment, we touched a little bit on some of the stories that come from this data. Certainly, it's great to have numbers on a page and charts on a page, but I don't truly tell the story behind those charts and numbers, right? And so let's dig in a little bit. Let's talk about some of the organizations that utilize the data and let's dive a little deeper into one of those specific stories. Sounds good. I think since May is mental health awareness month, it's a great opportunity to take a look at this aspect of quality of life in the community. This is a topic that comes up over and over as being a priority area in the community and I think all of us, myself included, can think of, think of whether it's within our own families or within our friends. You know, there's people that have struggled with their mental health and have needed to access resources and to really understand how to get plugged into the community. So there are there's an effort underway for our public health systems and our health care public health departments rather and health care systems to work together on implementing some community health improvement plans and the two top topic areas that they're focusing on include mental health and also belonging and that civic muscle that was tied to that as mentioned as a vital condition. But belonging and mental health are really a high focus for those efforts and so in order to think about what happens when you start to bring sector representatives together from all over the community to start to dig in and understand what's happening in the community. What are our friends? You need to have really good data sources to be able to inform decisions that are going to happen in those areas and how to listen to the stories of the people with lived experience in the community and then tying that together with data. Jason, I'll let you pick it up from there and how to tie the work of the data exchange as some of these conversations and collaborative efforts are happening to focus on mental health. Yeah, so the Fox Valley Data Exchange has been a supporter and a partner in this tri-county effort to work on a health care and health improvement plan and we find we have a few sources about mental health in the Fox Valley Data Exchange website. So if you're looking at anything from binge drinking to drug overdose mortality to people who actually measure their poor self-reported mental health, you can find out in detail both geographically and in some slicing and dicing who is doing well and who might might be struggling related to their mental health. And so that that group also just recently did a survey of the tri-county to understand the wellness happiness but also have questions around a sensible longing, a sense of mental health. And then the Northeast, Wisconsin mental health connection also does a mind-year wellness survey and currently we do not have that survey on the Fox Valley Data Exchange but we will be integrating that in the near future so we can get more local data to help people understand where the gaps are and how they can address those gaps. And that's really important both for the nonprofits it's for the foundations to understand kind of where to invest and also for businesses to understand what needs to happen in those areas. That's wonderful and certainly so timely as you mentioned Tammy with it being mental health awareness month. So we're going to leave that conversation where it is but we'll pick it back up here in the next segment. You're listening to Biz Talk with SCORE on WHBY and we'll be back after a short commercial break. Welcome back to Biz Talk with SCORE on WHBY. I'm Rick Senson with Mary Rodi this morning and we are talking with folks from Fox Valley Data Exchange, Jason Shulis who's executive director and Tammy Geenan who is a member of the board and also as vice president of community engagement for the community foundation for the Fox Valley region. It's been a very interesting discussion so far but I always have that sense of somebody from Missouri is listening in and just wanting to understand this idea of so why is this necessary? Why does there need to be a Fox Valley Data Exchange? Yes I can tell you about that a little bit. One when we originally were picking at this problem what we realized is that we realized in the Fox cities about 27 people were looking and scrounging around for data in that area alone it wasn't all three counties and we're like well could we make it easier and make it simpler for people to find things and to use it and not spend all this time scrounging around for data. As a matter of fact I was one time I was consulted to go find data on databases with a company in the local area which now you could just get for free on here so I guess I took myself out of one job and brought myself into another but what we've we've realized is there are eight different kind of stakeholder groups maybe nine if you count the citizen that wants to be from Missouri or from anywhere to understand why would I use this data exchange at all? One the foundations foundations are trying to really allocate funds in ways that address the problems of the community so the better we understand those problems the better we organize those funds the the nonprofits well nonprofits have to go for grants and it's really hard sometimes to get the data to demonstrate what problem they're working on and then to create a chart you have to go and to exile or some other place to create it you can do one click you get a chart exactly what you want and you can explain your problem really easy but we talked about hospitals and public health they have to do some work you know by law they have to create these community improvement plans but they have other ways that they can use the data on the data exchange to make good decisions around health and health care governments themselves the go I was actually I went to talk to a grand shoot and win a county in the last month and just kind of showing them what's on the site and what they can use to help their constituents relate it to various demographics business business uses this to understand one can we attract and retain people into our community and show kind of the strengths of our community we have a we have use cases that we do or videos that's kind of show what what the value is of the data exchange for some of these groups and in business the bank of kakana will be having a video coming out talking about how they can find underserved demographics to kind of look at their loan portfolio and help to create good loans for for people and find that our education systems are using it so we we're doing work with Lawrence University and with Fox Bellitech have done some work with UW Ashkash to try to to understand both what to bring in to the community and then what are some of the gaps that they can help to serve and then finally a faith communities so many faith communities are trying to reimagine the space that they have that they might have a lot more space than they actually use today what does the community want and what does their community need in their local area they can go to the data exchange find some of that information and then help them to understand how to reimagine their campus that's wonderful so as someone who in my day job is one of those data scroungers that you mentioned before and as often fumbling around trying to figure out and find all the sources and all the information you your organization has made that much easier so let's talk about fvdex.org or fvdex.org for radio listeners and talk about the website walk me through it how can people use it and access it and get some of the information that they're searching for yep first to remind it's a free resource for everybody so you can download data you can download charts all that's free you don't have to pay for anything but we have two things one we have some videos and some standardized work if people want to understand how to use the site you can find that right on our website so that you can walk through that we've taken the metrics and we have 120 different indicators with 414 thousand data points in our system right now and they're all aligned to these vital conditions so if you're looking for something around housing you can either type it right in and say I want to look for housing and I'll give you all the metrics we have on housing or you can go to the humane housing area and then you can click on one of those metrics it'll bring you right up to the geography so you can see the differences between the three counties between cities between zip codes between census tracts which are like the smallest a level that we like to focus on and you can also see treads so you can click a click there and you'll find the charts so you can look at bar charts or line charts or any kind of charts that you want for for those that love data we also have a ability to compare areas one to another so you can rank and see well how are we doing on college education in my town compared to the other towns in the three counties and then finally we have a whole tab just on the sources so if person wants to understand where it's coming from they don't have to worry about you know that it's that it's some just crazy website that has random data we have all the sources on there what table it might come from and where where you can can use it but very simple easy click way to use the website so navigating it sounds easy but what about not understanding what I'm looking for and how to figure that out is there a spot somewhere out there that will kind of provide me tutorials that will show me and lead me through process of access and information on the data exchange yep so we have a how to use area and that how to use area has a bunch of videos so you can kind of walk yourself through them and then we also have these quick reference guides so if you're looking at a space you can say oh what do I do what does this button do and so on and so forth there's a quick start so you can search any place in the area and you can search any topic and it'll come up you just view the map or view the chart and there's a one click to do that so if you're like saying I want to know about poverty this type of poverty and you'll find the seven or eight different metrics that you might want to pick so when you like when you go in it'll actually describe exactly what you're talking about so it's it gives you a little description on the top as well when you do that since there's no cost to use it how is the data exchange how does the Fox Valley data exchange funded how does it but it does exist yeah currently the funding is comes from grants and so we're grant funded we are also in the process of working through a couple projects where we can quote unquote product ties what we're doing here in our area and then sell that knowledge to other communities so we're we're working on a couple projects that way right now one with Lawrence University to kind of help us create indices for each one of the vital conditions that we can look at all the way down to the census tract level and so that is something that other communities are interested in in being able to do and we can help them do that but primarily right now it is a grand-based I'm supporting and how is how is the how has it been received by those other communities so far by the other communities related to these products there there some of these are excited about that we've benchmarked and worked with a bunch of other communities so we all kind of know what each each other are doing and we're trying to just help and support different communities so that they can have the same functionality this this vital condition index project we're doing we'd be the only ones in the world that would have this index geography set so that that we would know how is one county doing compared to the other related to housing how is it doing related to reliable transportation so we that's unique work that we're developing that them other other communities could then also take advantage of and use and we could package that for them for a small fee I would think that would be incredibly valuable information as communities are continuing to evolve and grow and and looking at different ways that they can exist and different things they can do as a as a community as a municipality so best of luck with that that sounds very exciting with as score focuses so much on the small businesses supporting those small businesses mentoring those small businesses Tammy what are some ways that those entrepreneurs those brand new small businesses how they could utilize the Fox Valley data exchange yeah some some things that that I would think would be helpful and please you know chime in and let me know if if this is if this is resonating but even thinking about the demographic information that's available so if someone is looking to start or expand a business understanding well what what are the demographics look like what do housing starts look like um you know where um where are there opportunities um again to look at you know depending who the target audiences are you know where where are those target audiences one of the trends been um and just even kind of looking at overall economic data or community health data related to you know what is in a target market or specific geographies could be could be very helpful Jason anything you would add you would add there yeah I was thinking of um you know for example we have median household income down to the census tract level and so depending on what um an entrepreneur service might be if it's actually direct to customer um you you might be able to tune right in um we actually are on another project I was working on with a church was trying to understand um understand their community and kind of what the dynamics of the community were in it was interesting because on one side of the street they had one dynamic on the other side of the street there's a different dynamic and so how that church serves their community um we looked at this kind of like flourishing desert analysis to understand where people were flourishing and not flourishing related to income related to other things so you so you could find target markets um that way I think you might also find um you know kind of just the costs that that we have we don't have any like like discrete data related to like um the cost of retailer commercial space at the moment but those are some of the things that obviously are important to a small business so it's it appears from from my point my vantage point that this is there's this is off to a really great start um and there's been a lot of early successes what challenges are you facing with this program so far yeah I mean I mean one challenge I'll say is you know funding is always important and as a nonprofit it's important to have funding while the data is free for our community if there's a cost to make that possible so um our speed of local data integration so we we create a system where we can add local data and it doesn't cost us any more outside of our community we we develop it and then we can put it right up on the site and many of the other third-party providers you they charge you and they put you on a waiting list well um one of our desires is to to uh add a data director either a part-time or full-time that can accelerate the ability for us to put the data up on the website that's local um we're only going as fast as our volunteers um so we rallied the troops take them up for tacos from time to time and get them to go and help us uh get to get this great local data in um so it's really about the speed of us getting more and more information so that we can continue to make better decisions as a community. Tammy as a board member from your perspective but you know being a volunteer what kind of challenges what kind of things are you guys looking at as a board that you're focusing on and trying to help smooth out for the organization. I think in addition to the topic of funding and you know the community foundation for the Fox Family Region and United Way Fox cities have been strong co-leaders in the funding space um along with our colleagues um and uh in Ashgrasch with the Community Foundation and United Way and many other corporate um partners. I think one of the one of the things we talk about is you know once once people start seeing um the data exchange and how easy it is to use um how accessible it is the information is updated as soon as new data becomes available as other communities um other municipalities are seeing it um they're saying hey can we get that here and so it's also trying to manage that that growth or expansion even from a geography perspective and trying to say okay yes and we still have you know we still have some work to do to you know make sure that uh that the primary um the primary kind of goal is met in the in the tri-county area and still looking with an eye to the future um but it's it's a great uh it's a great problem to have where you have so much positive positive feedback and interaction that that's unlike everyone's like like we want this we want this here um so that's something where we're always trying to be mindful of of what's possible or back to date uh Jason's point two about you know really wanting to get um to get a process developed for adding local data and you know again how fast volunteers can move um in some of these cases um it's a it's a a balance in that in that strategic direction going forward certainly the um that all that positive feedback that you've received uh i'm sure just ensures that you're making such a positive impact on the communities that you serve and and that the the information you're providing is needed um and it's it's very easy for Rick and I both to feel the passion that you both have um for the mission of the faxbatic um fax cities did it did fax valley data exchange excuse me um but let's what are some of the lessons that you've learned really since it's inception and and um also what are some of those some of those joys that you've personally received uh as you've um continued providing this information i can go first um so the so lessons learned one um this is the first time that i've run a non-profit so i'm learning a whole bunch about starting a non-profit for example i remember i think the first time you know i kind of had left corporation and i'm like okay Tammy i'm ready to start and she's like so do you have any money i'm like oh i guess i got to go raise some money for that so i mean so just learning that whole process and how how it works from the non-profit and i spent 30 some years and kind of corporations um in that process so i've learned a lot that way and and what needs to be done really how do you engage the community so it's really important to get as many people involved and engaged at many stakeholders across all three communities so we're not just fox cities you know that means we're ashcash we're chilton we're new london um we're seymour we're winnacani so it's we're we're off the tri-county effort so i've spent a lot of time learning what the different needs are of the different communities um from a joy perspective i like innovation and so um thriving add this opportunity where they took their analytics team from across the nation and helped us do some projects to analyze some of our data and to make some uh recommendations of what data we might want to add to our our none you know to add to our website and then loran's university is about to do this vital conditions index project and so creating these new spaces kind of give me joy you know using my six sigma black belt you know head i can you know have the joy of kind of playing in the data and creating things that are new all right we are arrived at a time where we're going to take our third and final break this morning uh it's been a pleasure having that this conversation this morning uh and if you have not been able to or or had the time to access and check out this awesome awesome service for the community uh encouraging you to check out the fox fight data exchanges website and and just kind of take a stab at some of the things that are out there that you'd like to try and learn about more as you go forward so uh we'll be right back after this break and you're listening to biz talk with score on w-h-b-y welcome back to biz talk with score on w-h-b-y this morning uh mary rody and i are talking with our friends at the fox valley data exchange and uh jason truest who's the executive director and tammie geek who's on their board have been kind enough to spend part of their Saturday morning with us and um i just would like to before we get back to the conversation spend a minute talking to you and thinking our sponsors um our sponsors and donors are who brings biz talk with score to you each weekend we couldn't present biz talk without their generous support thank you to hailing and associates hailing and associates helps small businesses and individuals not just prepared tax returns but plan ahead helping you minimize taxes for this year and beyond hailing and associates personal connection positive results thank you to johnson financial group wherever you are in your life or the life of your business johnson financial group works with you to understand your goals matching the right banking and wealth services to help you complete your mission thanks to the business news for promoting our program in the biweekly business newspaper serving northeast risconsin paper is delivered biweekly and contains relevant and useful information about the business community in northeast risconsin we would also like to recognize the david el and reena elson fund within the community foundation for the fox valley region for their generous donation in support of biz talk and score northeast risconsin so thanks again to all of our sponsors and and um jason and tammie i'll turn to you and just ask how can people learn more where can they get more information about fox valley data exchange they can go to the website fvdex.org and there is a tab called get involved and there are options listed for ways to volunteer how to donate to support the ongoing effort um and you can also engage with us um in our social media spaces but the best first place to go is on the website to be get involved area and to submit your name and contact information and jason will be happy to connect with you so as we kind of wrap up our awesome conversation here today sharing so many details about the fox valley data exchange how incredibly valuable it is to the tri-county area what's next right there's there's always that question of what's on the horizon yes so um so two major things we're working on right now is creating this uh vital conditions index with uh lorence university support and so that that will be a great thing for us we're also adding much more local data into our um upcoming uh you know into the website so we're continuing to add local data integration and then finally um we're planning to kind of convene again later at towards the end of the year just kind of give an update to the community how are things going and what can what you know what's what's changed and what does the community want because we want to make sure this is always community centered and uh just a real quick follow up to that question is that going to be a community event in person the plan is to be in person we did a launch last October and so we're going to be working towards getting getting people convened again in person as well as they could come in on like a remote line as well okay awesome well thank you again Tammy and thank you Jason for being part of the show this morning uh it's certainly an interesting endeavor that's been undertaken here in our community and uh we wish you all a success in the world as you see it through um and uh listeners thank you again for taking the time out of your Saturday morning to listen to us here on WHBY and if you'd like what you heard today and you want to follow up and hear it again you can certainly listen to our podcast starting on Wednesday this will be re broadcast but until uh next week we will let you go this weekend and enjoy your rest of your Saturday and uh thanks again for tuning in