Thinknum Seeks to Grow Alt Data ‘Community’

New York-based alternative data vendor Thinknum has set up a consortium of alternative data providers and consumers to promote the use of alternative data across the financial industry via an online community platform, as well as monthly live events and meetups.

Michael Hochstat, CIO at Thinknum, says the aim of the group is to bring alt data professionals together with their peers to solve challenges affecting the alt data industry as a whole, and to encourage vendors to work together to better promote the value of alternative data.

“We wanted to get people away from their devices to meet people in person, and have a conversation with peers who you can’t meet anywhere else,” Hochstat says.

Interested parties can join the group—which already has around 1,000 members—free of charge at altdatacommunity.com, where they will also be able to find upcoming event details, relevant news, job listings, and profiles of individuals and companies in the alt data space.

The group has held events in January and February. The next event, on the topic of knowledge graphs, will take place on March 10 in New York, and will feature guest speaker Francois Scharffe, vice president of knowledge graphs at Jefferies, who also serves as a senior lecturer in data analytics at Columbia University, and is founder of consultancy The Data Chefs.

So far, the group has attracted members from the data vendor, end-user, and academic communities. Hochstat says Thinknum is now trying to get other professional groups and user communities involved, and solicit input from members on how they would like the community to evolve. In the near term, he hopes to attract more contributed content to the site, and—subject to privacy concerns—create a directory of members.

“We’re trying to get alt data into more people’s workflows, and get them ready for the deluge of data. The more information they have available, the better prepared they are for that,” he says. “We’re not trying to change the world; we’re just trying to make things more open and start a discussion.”