“Data literacy.”

I didn’t know it was a thing either, not when we started Enolytics and not even a few years in. But over the past year or so the idea of it – the very exciting, very resonant, bigger picture nature of it – has captured a significant portion of my imagination.

You may remember my mentioning it a few months ago in a post about our Virtual Analyst for ecommerce, when we already knew “data literacy” would be our words of the year for 2021. That’s when our commitment solidified to partner with Valerie Logan (formerly VP Analyst at Gartner) and The Data Lodge to introduce the concept to the world of wine and spirits.

In fact, it’s more than introducing the concept of data literacy for wine and spirits. We are advocating for it, training around it, mentoring through it and championing it. We believe it matters, now and for the future, both personally and in our professional lives.

Let me back up a moment and lay some groundwork.

What is data literacy, exactly?

In general, it’s about comfort and confidence in speaking the language of data. It’s about cracking this elusive “data culture code.” It’s about making data relevant and approachable, friendly even. It’s about reading, writing and communicating around data in its correct context. It’s about a common understanding of what we mean by “data,” and how useful it can be in our lives.

Data literacy is about boosting the skillset around one of the most significant paradigms for our future. As Valerie has stated in her pioneering and award-winning work, data literacy is not just a work skill.

It’s a life skill.

Without it, we’re being left further and further behind. That’s the far bigger play here, beyond data and beyond wine and spirits. Away from our desks and outside of our (home) offices, we’re witnessing the gaps grow and the divide that’s being created between people and businesses who proactively engage data, and those who don’t. We also know that, together, we have the methods and tools to halt that divide and redirect it.

Valerie laid the foundation for it long before we met, when she established the concept of ISL, or Information as a Second Language®. It nurtures the “speaking of data” through Data Literacy Program Leads across commercial, nonprofit and public sectors.

Although wine and spirits has so far been largely outside of that reach, we recognize that it’s a tenuous position for us to be in, particularly in the interest of our industry’s shorter- and longer-term prosperity.

That’s why The Data Lodge and Enolytics have been working together to develop the “Information as a Second Language (ISL) dialect for the wine and spirits industry.” Imagine updating the language section of your LinkedIn profile to show maybe English, French, and Wine Data. Valerie’s the domain expert for data literacy. We’re domain experts in applying data to wine and spirits.

We’re collaborating to set our industry on firmer ground in this area through education, training and advocacy.

If there’s anything we’ve seen these past few years of Enolytics, it’s that there’s a desire and a thirst in our industry for smart, data-based analysis that goes beyond just lists, numbers and where-we’ve-been reporting. Our businesses simply perform far better when there’s a dynamic, responsive and compassionate synthesis in play.

That’s the bigger picture, and we’re thrilled to partner with Valerie and The Data Lodge to build the bridge to broader understanding and usage of data in wine and spirits. It’s our industry’s own ISL dialect. Our sincere hope is to move the needle on this front, both for the industry and our colleagues who want to make a difference.

At this stage in our collective journey, it feels like the next right thing to do.

Interested in learning more? Please let me know. I’d love to share more details, and hear your ideas.

Thank you, as always, for reading.

Cathy

PS Thank you also for your fun responses to last week’s playful post about wine being romantic but data being sexy! Valentine’s Day is Sunday, so you might want to plan on showing a (wine) data scientist some love. #justsayin