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 the challenges of working in this world of big data opportunities and the risks and potentially negative implications of using big data.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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: viz 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
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.
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!
I managed to grab a couple of buddies at VisWeek and record a (low audio quality – sorry) episode with some on-the-spot comments. Andrew Vande Moere (infosthetics.com) and Jerome Cukier joined me to have some fun and indulge in some gossiping.
A few papers we mention in the episode (may be not complete):
Have fun! And hey … big big thank yous to all the data stories listeners who stopped me to say hi. I loved it!
-Enrico.
P.S. Moritz was not there and lots of people asked me about him. What can I do? Just let him know how much you want to see him (he will hate me for writing this ;))!
Hi, we have Alberto Cairo on the show for Episode #12! If you don’t know who Alberto is, well… it’s your fault! Check his web site first. He has a fantastic book out on Infographics and Visualization called “The Functional Art,” which can directly go in your shelf between the Tuftes and the Fews.
We talk about the book and many many other things. Alberto is so talkative and deep that we could have recorded for another 3 or 4 hours. Lots, lots of fun! We loved it.
—
Episode breakdown:
00:00:00 Data Stories Number Many
00:03:29 Special guest today: Alberto Cairo
00:05:30 Background: Journalism and Teaching
00:13:01 Book: The functional art
00:19:25 Low-tech visualization
00:23:38 Differences between data visualization and information graphics / data journalism
00:31:51 How to work under practical constraints in a newsroom
00:39:11 International news graphics scene
00:42:37 Experimentalism vs conservatism
00:46:52 Connect print and online
00:48:17 Flash! (ah, the good times)
00:49:40 Back to “The Functional Art”
00:53:21 The visualization wheel
00:57:59 Use of multiple representations
01:04:02 Power of annotations
01:05:44 Wrapping it up
