Data Stories

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

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

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

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)

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!!! Related episodes Data Vis Around the World in 2016

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: 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

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.

Hey Folks! 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): How Capacity Limits of Attention Influence Information Visualization Effectiveness. [Best Paper award]. Steve Haroz, David Whitney. Evaluating the Effect of Style in Information Visualization. Vande Moere et al. Investigating Physical Visualizations. Yvonne Jansen et al. Sketchy Rendering for Information Visualization. Jo Wood et al. 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 ;))! Related episodes Highlights from IEEE VIS'22 with Tamara Munzner

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

Hi Folks, In this episode we talk about emoto, the project on visualizing the sentiment of the Olympic Games in London 2012. Since Moritz was one of the principal designers and developers behind the project, we thought: “hey, why not?!” And we have a special guest! Stephan Thiel from Studio NAND joined us to share his own view and experience with the project. Make sure to give a look to the emoto web site and the accompanying blog before listening to the podcast if you can, this will help you following our discussion … just in case you are not familiar with the project yet … just in case. 00:00:00 Intro – catching up 00:04:44 emoto – with our special guest Stephan Thiel from Studio NAND 00:06:58 How it all started 00:09:32 The team 00:13:19 Live sentiment visualization 00:17:44 How to test a real-time system for a one-off event? 00:21:09 The processing timeline 00:24:56 Sentiment analysis 00:27:06 Topic detection – supervised vs. unsupervised 00:28:17 The other project parts – data blog and data sculpture 00:31:00 Origami visualization 00:38:10 Color scale 00:42:34 Message stream view 00:49:00 “Sentigraphs” 00:54:47 Data sculpture 01:00:30 What’s next Have fun! Enrico & Moritz. P.S. Feedback always welcome.