SmartData Collective began life in the fall of 2007, under the sponsorship of Teradata, joining the other “collaboration” sites that make up the Social Media Today family. As we near the end of SmartData Collective’s first full year in existence, we can happily report we have enjoyed significant growth in the past twelve months: growth in members, growth in bloggers, growth in traffic, and more.

By any measure, it was a very good year. It was an interesting one, too, as throughout the year—thanks, as always, to the efforts of our bloggers—SmartData Collective served as a window into many of the changes taking place in a world that can simply be summarized by the word “data.”

Of course, “data” covers a lot. And as the year unfolded, our bloggers brought us not only practical insights into managing data and extracting value from it, but also news of emerging trends—in social networking, mobile technology, web analytics, sentiment analysis, search engine technology, “big data,” cloud computing, and more. Some bloggers also reminded us that, at the end of the day, technology is naught without the right people, culture, organizational structure, and management.   

We thank our bloggers for sharing with us their many stimulating posts. We thank our members for reading these posts, commenting on them, and participating in our podcasts and webinars—we hope we have served you well this past year and will endeavor to serve you even better in the coming year. And we thank, of course, our sponsor Teradata for its continued support.

The year ahead? Well, to borrow Steve Sarsfield’s phrase, ours is a world “addicted to data”—which would seem to auger well for all those working with data in some fashion, whether it be housing it, cleaning it, massaging it, integrating it, analyzing it, mastering it—you name it. The year ahead will be a world of data. Of course, not just data. Smart data.

As the new year approaches, we plan a number of changes for the SmartData Collective community. To mention just one for now, we will be guided in 2010 by our recently created board of advisors, which consists of four of our more prolific bloggers: James Taylor, Jim Harris, Gary Cokins and Stephen Baker. We’re excited about this new board and we’ll talk more about its function and goals in a future post.

Meantime, our thanks, again, to our bloggers, our members, and our sponsor Teradata -- here’s wishing you all a Happy Holiday Season and a Prosperous, and Data-filled, New Year!