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Hi everyone,

We have graphic editors Mike Bostock and Shan Carter in this dense and long episode. It’s great to finally have someone from NYT!

We talk about many practical and more philosophical aspects of publishing interactive visualization on the web. We also spend quite some time discussing about D3.js’s past, present and future.

(On a side note: apologies for starting a bit abruptly and for the weird noises. Enrico was desperately and unsuccessfully trying to find a quiet and calm spot at the CHI conference.)

Take Care,
Enrico & Mo.

P.S. Many thanks to all of you guys who sent us on Twitter questions for Mike and Shan.

—

Episode Chapters

00:00:00 Intro
00:00:12 Our guests today: New York Times graphics editors Mike Bostocks and Shan Carter
00:01:54 About the NYT graphics department
00:06:56 Map wrangling
00:08:47 QA, evaluation, fact checking,…
00:11:23 Twitter question: Post the data set along with the graphic?
00:15:51 Exploratory or explanatory?
00:19:56 User tracking, user feedback
00:25:53 Balance of familiarity vs. new visual vocabularies
00:29:52 Workflow, on the example of the 512 paths graphic
00:38:05 Hybrid workflows between automation and manual layout
00:45:12 d3
00:45:49 History and philosophy
00:56:19 Value of examples
00:57:31 Community adoption
00:59:25 Vega
01:04:53 More d3 books or tutorials for advanced users?
01:08:15 Developer community
01:09:45 Sustainability
01:11:51 Future development
01:15:10 Enrico is back!
01:16:13 Is d3 complete?
01:18:52 When does Mike sleep?
01:19:45 Wrapping it up

Links to discussed NYT projects

• 512 Paths to the White House / Shan’s talk on the making of 512 paths
• Over the Decades, How States Have Shifted
• China Still Dominates, but Some Manufacturers Look Elsewhere
• Among the Oscar Contenders, a Host of Connections
• Ralf Straumann on hexagonal cartograms

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Hi all,

We have two fantastic guests to talk about using visualization for the good. We actually decided to make it even bigger and provokingly titled it: can visualization save the world?

We have on stage: Kim Rees co-founder of Periscopic, a data visualization company guided by the motto: “do good with data” and Jake Porway, founder of Data Kind, an organization that brings together data scientists and social organizations.

We discuss about the challenges of working in this crazy world of big data opportunities and counterbalance this with risks and subtle potentially negative implications.

Chapters

00:00:00 Intro, welcome to our guests Kim Rees (Periscopic) and Jake Porway (Datakind)
00:01:39 Can data visualization save the world?
00:04:44 Periscopic
00:05:38 Jake & Datakind
00:09:32 Visualization as a process
00:15:17 How do you pick projects to work on?
00:18:01 Periscopic’s U.S. gun deaths visualization
00:30:08 Awareness alone does not help – how you get people to action?
00:32:57 On process
00:40:12 Multiple truths in same data
00:42:53 Responsible authorship
00:45:19 Parallels between data visualization and “photo journalism”?
00:46:12 Responsible data and visualization authorship ctd.
00:50:03 Project votesmart
00:51:39 NYT graphics jobs report
00:53:15 Success stories?
01:05:33 Refuse to work for potentially unethic clients?
01:08:28 “The dark side of datakind”
01:09:06 Back to original question
01:13:18 Concerns in visualizing personal stories
01:24:59 Wrapping it up

Links

• Periscopic’s Gun Murders Visualization
• Jake’s article: “You Can’t Just Hack Your Way to Social Change”
• Jer Thorp’s Visualization as Process Article
• Book: Raw Data Is An Oxymoron
• The Stop, Question and Frisk Data
• Biases in creating data
• Project Votesmart
• NYT vis of job market interpretation
• Map of gun owners

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Hi all,

In this episode we talk about maps and map technology. How it evolved and revolutionized the way we think about geography. We have Michal Migurski with us! He is former technology head at Stamen and creator of multiple successful visualizations libraries and tools like Modest Maps and Crimespotting.

Episode Chapters

00:00:00 Intro
00:03:06 Our guest: Mike Migurski
00:04:45 How did Mike get started with computers?
00:06:16 Raving in the 90s
00:07:02 The beginnings of Stamen
00:13:49 Oakland Crimespotting
00:14:58 A short history of online mapping
00:17:04 Google maps
00:20:19 Open Street Map
00:24:31 Everyblock
00:26:51 Oakland Crimespotting pt.2
00:32:42 Tools and frameworks – modest maps
00:34:29 Polymaps
00:36:30 Cloudmade
00:38:23 Leaflet.js
00:39:57 Mapnik
00:43:12 d3.geo
00:46:17 How to make geo data accessible in a better way
00:49:56 Automatic labeling
00:51:39 @alignedleft: What is a map tile?
00:55:42 @janwillemtulp: Question on process and inspiration, future trend
00:58:07 @petersonGIS: time ratio data processing vs visualization
01:02:57 Wrapping it up

Links

Stamen’s Projects

• Digg Labs Visualizations
• Oakland Crimespotting

The Atlantic’s article on maps: 12 Fresh Ideas for Transforming the Places We Live With Open Data

Tools and Frameworks

• openstreetmaps
• modestmaps
• unfolding (like modestmaps, but for processing)
• leaflet.js
• polymaps
• cloudmade
• kartograph.js
• mapnik
• mapbox
• tilemill
• cartodb
• d3.geo

Recent Mike’s Projects

• Walking Papers
• Field Papers
• Green Means Go

Others

• http://moveon.org
• http://fundrace.org
• http://www.everyblock.com/
• http://www.smartchicagocollaborative.org/
• http://gismaps.oaklandnet.com/crimewatch/

—

Lots of links! Have fun with maps

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Hi Folks,

We have Santiago Ortiz with us today. Santiago has an impressive array of data visualization projects he has been pouring out during the last year and a very unique style. See for yourself in his portfolio website: http://moebio.com/. We talk about the Tapestry Conference, mathematics, the business of data visualization and much much more. Enjoy it!

Chapters

00:00:00 Start
00:00:01 Intro: our guest today: Santiago Ortiz (@moebio)
00:01:55 Tapestry conference
00:08:40 Santiago: how it all began: Flash, math and teaching
00:11:34 Bestiario
00:13:23 Impure/Quadrigram
00:14:17 Freelance since 2012
00:17:12 Yay for self-inititated projects!
00:20:56 Knowledge visualization
00:25:11 “Santiago style”
00:26:36 Client work
00:31:18 Tools, frameworks, open source
00:40:52 On process
00:51:47 Non-information-based projects
00:55:23 The role of math
01:06:41 Regional differences in the data visualization scenes?
01:17:13 Wrapping it up

Episode’s Links

Tapestry Conference
Scott McCloud
Pat Hanrahan
Nigel Holmes
Enrico’s live notes from tapestry
Jonathan Corum’s slides

Santiago and his work
his portfolio: http://moebio.com/
his past company: http://www.bestiario.org/
Lostalgic (ABC’s LOST TV show): http://intuitionanalytics.com/other/lostalgic/
Love is patient (merging faces with voronoi shapes): http://moebio.com/loveispatient/
http://moebio.com/research/faces/

Processing library
giCenterUtils: http://gicentre.org/utils/

Vis people with math background
Jason Davies: http://www.jasondavies.com/
Jen Lowe: http://www.datatelling.com/

Hilbert Curves and Vis
Wikipedia page on HC
Martin Wattemberg’s Jigsaw Maps
Daniel Keim’s Pixel-Oreinted Visualizations

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What can we say? One year has passed and it looks crazy we have been doing this thing for a whole year: 18 whole episodes. Thanks a lot everyone for your encouragements and numerous comments and suggestions. And big thanks to all the people who participated!

In this episode we review the whole set of posts and comment on them trying to see how they look like from a distance now that some time has passed.

If you have any suggestions on stuff you would like to see in DS in the next year LET US KNOW!

Chapters:

00:00:00 Happy Birthday Data Stories!
00:02:19 On naming episodes and the Andy effect
00:04:44 01: Animated Data Kitsch
00:06:54 02: Ranting about marathons, challenges and awards
00:09:45 03: Evaluation
00:15:11 04: Malofiej
00:17:27 05: Learning data visualization with Andy Kirk
00:21:22 06: Food
00:22:49 07: Color
00:23:25 08: Interview with Jeff Heer
00:24:51 09: Bridging academia and industry
00:25:41 10: Stefanie Posavec
00:26:49 11: emoto
00:27:29 12: Alberto Cairo
00:29:52 13: visweek
00:31:20 14: Google hangout episode
00:33:22 15: Robert Kosara
00:35:27 16: 2012 review
00:37:24 17: Data Sculptures
00:38:52 What’s up next

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Hi,

In this episode we talk about Data Sculptures, also known as Physical Visualization. We invite Pierre Dragicevic and Yvonne Jansen (from the Aviz Lab at INRIA in Paris) to talk about their experiments with physical bar charts and their fantastic collections of physical visualizations.

Pierre and Yvonne give several demos you can see on our recorded video. Make sure you don’t miss Pierre giving a real-time demo of Jacques Bertin’s reorderable matrix!

Episode Chapters

• 00:00:00 Intro
• 00:01:08 Topic: Data Sculptures with Yvonne Jansen and Pierre Dragicevic
• 00:04:01 Studies on legibility of physical 3D data visualizations
• 00:12:45 Pros and cons of rapid prototyping vs. subsurface engraving
• 00:16:57 Broader perspective: How did Pierre and Yvonne get Pierre and Yvonne’s motivation, and general characterization of the field
• 00:22:04 Their project collections at: http://www.aviz.fr/Research/PassivePhysicalVisualizations and http://www.aviz.fr/Research/ActivePhysicalVisualizations
• 00:27:26 Bertin’s reorderable matrix
• 00:35:00 Slow data
• 00:37:30 Back to Bertin and physical manpulation of data
• 00:39:04 Social aspects
• 00:39:47 Future perspective
• 00:41:21 Digital fabrication techniques
• 00:49:45 Online services
• 00:50:27 FabLabs
• 00:54:17 Accessibility aspects
• 00:55:33 Practical applications
• 00:57:54 Shapeshifting displays and materials
• 01:05:46 Early examples and the great books from W. Brinton
• 01:09:20 Wrap up

Links:

• (Forgotten) Brinton’s book on Graphic Presentation
• Compostable and water-soluble 3d printing 
• PLA Printing (most environmentally friendly material made from corn starch or sugar)
• MIT Shape Displays
• Programmable matter (with demo)
  

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Happy New Year Friends!

We invited a few experts in a Google Hangout to discuss what was big in 2012 and what will happen in 2013. We have Andrew Vande Moere from Infosthetics, Andy Kirk from Visualisingdata and Bryan Connor from The Why Axis.

Chapters Breakdown:

00:00:00 Intro
00:01:22 Our guests: Andrew Vande Moere from http//infosthetics.com
00:02:07 Andy Kirk from visualisingdata.com
00:03:07 Bryan Connor from the Why Axis
00:03:51 What was big in 2012 and what is coming 2013
00:04:05 More education and training
00:05:05 Technical issues…
00:06:05 More general interest in learning data visualization
00:07:01 Mike Bostock and d3
00:07:55 Alberto Cairo’s online infographics course
00:09:06 Mike Bostock and d3 again
00:10:32 Integrated print <-> interactive workflows
00:11:28 Democratization
00:14:58 Academic trends?
00:15:40 Visualization as a tool for communication
00:21:02 The human touch
00:22:39 Storytelling: people are actually doing it now
00:25:10 Woops – there he goes…
00:25:28 Tools for storytelling
00:26:30 So-called “network problems”
00:27:07 Snow Fall by NYT
00:31:49 More tools for storytelling and the return of “multimedia”
00:33:03 More case studies and behind the scenes reports
00:35:11 Less blogging in 2012?
00:42:46 Santiago Ortiz — @moebio
00:43:41 emoto
00:44:58 Real-time data visualization
00:49:28 Reaching wider audiences
00:50:14 Conferences, marathons, competitions
00:54:22 Simon Scarr
00:55:15 Wishes for 2013
01:01:05 Guest wishes for 2013

Mentioned Links:

d3
http://d3js.org
http://bost.ocks.org/mike/

Democratization of infographics
http://www.re.vu
http://visualize.me
http://visual.ly
http://venngage.com
https://www.vizify.com/
http://www.easel.ly/
http://infogr.am/

Visualization as a tool for communication
http://www.aviz.fr/bayes - visualization for bayesian reasoning

The human touch
http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/1274/ - sketchy rendering
http://nathaliemiebach.com
http://itsbeenreal.co.uk
http://www.densitydesign.org

Narratives
https://popcorn.webmaker.org
sStory by EJ Fox

Snow Fall
http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/

Less blogging?
http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/blog/?p=644

Santiago Ortiz
http://moebio.com

emoto
http://blog.emoto2012.org

Realtime data visualization
http://hint.fm/wind/

Reaching wider audiences
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2012/may/08/gay-rights-united-states

Conferences
visualized, eyeo, visualizing marathon, information is beautiful award…

Simon Scarr
https://twitter.com/SimonScarr

—

Have fun and Happy New Year!!!

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Hi all,

We got Robert Kosara on Data Stories for this episode. Robert is the editor of eagereyes.org, one of the most respected and well-known data visualization blogs in the Internet. He is known for his controversial and informative posts and his “academic” style (some people say ).

But Roberts, as he says in the show, wears many hats. He was a Professor of Computer Science at UNC Charlotte until recently when he surprisingly moved to Tableau after being tenured.

In the show we talk about his choice and many other things: vis research, blogging, Tableau, etc. See the episode breakdown below.

And, as usual, have fun!

Enrico & Moritz

—

00:00:00 Enrico and Moritz catching up
00:04:22 Today’s guest: Robert Kosara
00:05:23 eagereyes.org and blogging in general
00:08:14 Enrico’s blog
00:09:46 Robert’s research themes
00:11:35 Blur as a retinal variable?
00:13:13 Interdisciplinarity in infovis research
00:14:31 How Robert got started
00:19:04 Early years of eagereyes.org and abandoned plans for the site
00:21:59 “lines in the sand”
00:27:04 What will the future bring for eagereyes?
00:30:58 State of visualization blogging
00:33:16 Blogging and academic careers
00:36:17 Openness and sharing ideas
00:43:04 The real story! Robert’s move to Tableau
00:51:22 Researching: storytelling with data
00:55:40 Visualization in wider communication contexts and workflows
00:59:13 Tableau for Mac?
01:01:36 A few ideas for improvement
01:03:12 Clevelandgate
01:08:16 Future for word clouds as a final slide for powerpoint presentations?
01:10:14 Robert’s influences?
01:13:38 How much work was it to release Parallel Sets, and was it worth it?
01:16:13 Wrapping it up

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Hi there,

We just finished recording the hangout. 10 people joined it and some more followed the stream off-line. If you wanted to participate and you could not — we are sorry but there is a limit of maximum 10 people imposed by Google.

We really enjoyed the hangout and it was a fantastic experiment full of interesting questions and comments.

Among others, we had Kim Rees from Periscopic, Benjamin Wiederkehr from Interactive Things, Santiago Ortiz, Stephen Boyd, Miska Knapek, Wes Grubbs from Pitch Interactive, Karen Doore from UT Dallas, Yuri Engelhardt and Jim Vallandingham on the show.. Quite a mixture!

Unfortunately, as with any experiment, something can go wrong and it went wrong: we totally screwed up the video part by having Benjamin Wiederkehr in focus all the time instead of switching between the participants. For this reason we turned down the video part and kept the audio. The gist is still there!

We’ll hopefully get it right the next time

Enrico & Mo.

Hi Folks!

We would like to experiment with Google Hangout and create a Data Stories event where we can all get connected live on it. It’s an experiment, we don’t know if it will work but we think it’s worth a try.

You can ask the questions you always wanted to ask (we like the scary and irreverent ones of course) and we’ll get the opportunity to see some of your faces more closely!

The event will be held on Tue, Nov 13th at 2pm EST (8pm CET for most Europeans).

IMPORTANT: we want the get the feeling of how many people intend to participate. Please add a brief commet here below if you want to participate or drop us a line at mail@datastori.es.

In order to participate you have to make sure you have a working account on GH. Best, is to try out with some friends. We’ll post the link to join the hangout shortly before the event on the blog and twitter. For technical reasons we cannot post it beforehand.

We are super excited to try out this experiment. The whole hangout is automatically recorded and we’ll post it online.

Please don’t hesitate to ask questions. Stay tuned and be ready!!!

Enrico & Mo.