… "in every heart, there is power to do it," writer Marianne Williamson said.

So true, and as I wind down my role as a US Commerce Department official who has been privileged to lead our mission to advance data equality in America, I've been thinking about what "community" means today given the classic Digital Age conundrum.

Across America, a trend in planning, development and land use has been fast changing the way many people live. Call it mixed-use development, walkable communities or New Urbanism, the trend is moving people—and their work, lives and neighbors—closer together.

The Census Bureau has long provided deep and mature sets of data on population trends, including population density, jobs data, and earnings information, that can help realize the impact and implications of this trend.

“We can each define ambition and progress for ourselves. The goal is to work toward a world where expectations are not set by the stereotypes that hold us back, but by our personal passion, talents and interests.”—Sheryl Sandberg

As we bring private-sector innovators and technologies into our challenge to use public data to solve public problems, it’s striking how many are finding new ways to break through and apply their passions, talents and interests:

• We have one company that is making our data available free and open on a platform with 700,00 data scientists.
• We have another company that is wrangling, integrating, and presenting our data with information from a number of other public sources.
• A third is making Commerce data more accessible via interactive visualizations and filters.

Leonardo DaVinci.  Paul Revere.  Ben Franklin.  Vincent Van Gogh.  Elvis Presley.  David Beede.  April Blair. William Hawk. Andrea Julca.  Karlheinz Skowronek. Patricia Tomczyszyn.

Which names don’t seem to belong with the others?  Trick question.  While DaVinci and other names obviously are famous, the backgrounds of all of these women and men have something major in common: They trained as apprentices.