Starting on Wednesday, March 28, Social Explorer will be served from the Amazon Cloud through Amazon Web Services. We have run extensive testing and expect that most users will not even notice the change. If you experience any access or other issues, please let us know at support@socialexplorer.com immediately.

This move is necessary as we begin to add world wide data and attract world wide users. It will also support our soon-to-launch Social Explorer 2.0.

We say hello to Amazon Web Services, as we improve the way we bring you all of our resources and tools.

See you in the cloud!

While Irish eyes are smiling on St. Patrick’s Day, many Finns are already celebrating St. Urho’s Day.  The holiday was first celebrated in Minnesota on March 16th, which happens to be just before St. Patrick’s Day.

It honors the legendary Urho, the patron saint of vineyard workers.  As the story goes, he saved the grape crop from a grasshopper infestation with his horrible breath as he yelled, “Heinäsirkka, heinäsirkka, mene täältä hiiteen!”  (Grasshopper, grasshopper, go away!)

Social Explorer has data throughout the years on a multitude of ancestries, including the Finnish.

• Soon after the first St. Urho’s Day was celebrated, the 1960 census reported that there were 240,827 people in the US born in Finland, representing 0.1 percent of the total population.
• Over 15 percent of them resided in Minnesota, where St. Urho celebrations first originated.
• According to the 2010 American Community Survey, there are now 647,697 residents of Finnish ancestry, making up about 0.2 percent of the total population.

Some St. Urho’s Day revelers dress up as grasshoppers and grapes to celebrate.  Social Explorer makes its data festive with purples and greens in the map below.  As you can see, Finns are especially concentrated in northern Minnesota and Wisconsin.  Explore the map to see where you should plan your next St. Urho’s Day outing, or if you are a grasshopper, where to avoid.

Map of Finnish Residents in the US (2006-10 Census)

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Happy St. Urho’s Day!

The once-a-decade redistricting process is heating up in New York as deadlines approach and the legislature, governor, advocacy groups, public and the federal courts become more involved.  There was a court hearing on Monday on what map looked like.

On Monday, magistrate judge Roanne Mann held a public hearing.  Social Explorer’s Andrew Beveridge testified on behalf of the Center for Law and Social Justice and Newman Ferrara LLP.  Based on decades of demographic experience, including work as a consultant and expert witness in redistricting cases, Beveridge analyzed data from the various plans and the changing demographics of New York.

Since the court hearing, Judge Mann put forth her own plan.  Notably, it includes a new Asian-majority district in Queens, with 39.1 percent of the district.  This district was drawn in response to the major population changes in the area (where over 500,000 Asians reside) and around the city (32 percent growth).

New York 1 produced a story on this proposed district, and included an interview with Beveridge.

For more on the latest New York State redistricting news, check out the New York Times series Unmapped.