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PolicyViz Podcast Episode #3: Eric Klotz and Visualized
161 Plays10 years ago
Thanks so much for tuning into the first two episodes of the PolicyViz Podcast. On this week’s episode, I welcome Eric Klotz, founder of Visualized, to discuss the challenges and excitement around data visualization conferences. Eric and I have been...
The post PolicyViz Podcast Episode #3: Eric Klotz and Visualized appeared first on PolicyViz.
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Transcript
Introduction of Eric Klotz on Policyviz Podcast
00:00:11
Speaker
Welcome to the Policyviz podcast. I'm your host, John Schwabisch, and I'm here with Eric Klotz, founder of Visualized. Eric, welcome to the third episode. Hey, John. Great to talk to you again. Thanks, Matt. Thanks for coming. I appreciate it.
00:00:25
Speaker
Absolutely.
Upcoming Visualized Political Data Conference
00:00:26
Speaker
So you and I have been working for the last few weeks on a really exciting conference here in DC. It's going to take place on May 21, Visualized Political Data. Let's talk about that in a minute. But first, I want to ask you if you could just describe the goals and the purpose of Visualize, this group that you created.
Goals and Vision of Visualized
00:00:47
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, it's been a blast working with you on this upcoming event.
00:00:53
Speaker
And it's always fun to work on these events. And I think that our goal is really to have an event that's amazingly curated and really fun for the audience. But the main goal is for people to be educated and inspired when they walk out of an event that we produce. And not just with the tools they can use to create visualizations and things like that, but also learning about the stories themselves that people are telling.
00:01:20
Speaker
We'd like to provide a platform for people to showcase really important stories and have people walk away and learn about things they wouldn't have otherwise known about. So some stuff is like whether it's about global warming or whether it's about animal species and being endangered or
00:01:39
Speaker
you know, things like Selfie City which are much more uplifting and just kind of funny to see how people and selfies are in the world. Yeah, but I think the stories are at the heart of what we do.
Reflecting on Past Events and Future Plans
00:01:49
Speaker
So you've had, let's see, so you did New York in 2012, you did Europe in 2013, you did New York again in 2014, you're doing New York again in October I think, right? Yes. So when you sort of start pulling these things together, do you have like a
00:02:05
Speaker
Well obviously political data that's coming up as a sort of you know targeted concept and theme but for these other ones you have like a theme in mind you're just sort of like trying to get like really cool people doing really cool stuff and just be inspiring or do you sort of like say we want to do these sorts of talks.
00:02:22
Speaker
The first goal is to actually have an event that is not snowed out, where JFK is not completely shut down. If you remember, in 2012 and in 2014, we did it right in the middle of a snowstorm. We are hoping that actually with JFK being closed down, the main airport near the event,
00:02:45
Speaker
And people had a hard time. There were people that flew into Philadelphia and took a train in, et cetera. So our first goal here is moving it to October to see if the weather will be a little bit more agreeable with us. All right, cool. Cool. So if we can establish that, then we're going to be good. Step one, people can show off. Exactly.
00:03:03
Speaker
Aside from that, for the bigger events, I think it's a mix of finding people who are doing really cool stuff and also that combination of finding the stories that have some significant social impact. Last time we had Wes Grubbs and he was talking about drone strikes. We had some topics that were a little bit heavier, but we're not afraid of that. In fact, I encourage it.
00:03:28
Speaker
Because I think that's one of the reasons why I even started Visualized was to provide an opportunity for some of these important stories to be told in ways they haven't been told before. So yes, we're looking for the stories first, and it just so happens to be that cool people are doing that. So it's not necessarily we're just looking for the cool people.
00:03:50
Speaker
But I get what you're saying. We try to start with the story first and not necessarily with, you know, the quote, unquote, date of his rock stars that are out there or whatever. Right.
Importance of Venue Selection
00:03:58
Speaker
Yeah. And how important is it? Well, I sort of know the answer, but for those who haven't been to the visualized conferences yet, how important is it to you to find a really good venue? Like the New York ones have been in the New York Times.
00:04:12
Speaker
It's in the New York Times building. I don't know if it has a different name. And we'll be doing the event here, a really nice space at GW. So how important is that to sort of set the environment and the mood? It's critical. Yeah, it's absolutely critical. I think that these people have been working on their projects for so long. And I think that they deserve a place where they can showcase it, where it's uplifting, where the lighting is right, where the sound is good. I mean, we're putting on a production here. It's not just a conference. The last thing, I think you and I have been to so many conferences.
00:04:41
Speaker
I'm sure a lot of the listeners probably can empathize. There's something about being in a hotel room kind of atmosphere where the carpet is like some kind of maroon color. It's just built for something completely different. Showcasing are very modern examples of storytelling and powerful visuals. You need the room to be like
00:05:11
Speaker
in a way that showcases that and also where people can actually be comfortable. That's the reason why we go back to the time centers. It's one of those unique venues where it feels right. It feels like it's a place where the people get a chance to showcase something they've been working on for months, in some cases years.
00:05:32
Speaker
So it's doing right by the speakers and I think in the audience as well. So yeah, to answer your question, we'll always do our events in beautiful venues. Right. Yeah, that's great.
00:05:46
Speaker
So we've sort of laid out finding the good stories and the good people doing those stories are good speakers and then the good space.
Curating Conferences: Challenges and Solutions
00:05:54
Speaker
Are those the biggest challenges or what are the biggest challenges of putting together, pulling together these conferences? I mean, I've been working with you for the last few weeks, so I sort of have my own sense of what's hard, but you've been doing this for a while now. So yeah. So there's so many, there's, it's a great question because there's so many different things you got to take into consideration. And I think,
00:06:13
Speaker
So the curation is the key and the curation, I mean, the venue part is once you find a place and you're good to go on that. But the curation is really important because as you start to build it out, you start to see this composite come together. And I literally have a whiteboard where I am writing down who is speaking.
00:06:31
Speaker
I'm keeping track of a little tracker of gender balance, even thinking about obviously different ethnicities being represented and topics, making sure that everything is balanced. As you start to build out, you invite your first core people and then you kind of build on top of that.
00:06:50
Speaker
Another nuance there is too is that people then come to us once they start to see that the conference is being built, etc., then they reach out to us and they want to showcase their information. So the hardest part for me actually is telling people now.
00:07:08
Speaker
On a personal level, that is the hardest part. You don't have room for it. You get a finite number of spaces. And you've got to make sure that it's action-packed. And then on top of that, we do things like we make videos. So we find these stories we think are interesting to tell, just to switch it up. I've got to remember, we did one on DataKind. And we did one on the story of the Joy Division.
00:07:39
Speaker
And just things that are kind of interesting. It's just kind of switched up the content a lot. And this year for 2015, what we're doing in October is we've got a ton of stuff like that. So I feel like in some cases it's not even a conference, we're producing a show.
00:07:57
Speaker
We sit there and we brainstorm about the most ridiculous, often stupid ideas. Any idea is possible and then we scratch it off whether or not it makes sense or whether or not we've got time to do it. In some cases, there could be a big budget involved to do something.
00:08:15
Speaker
In some ways, it's so much fun for us to see the end results that we put everything into it.
Gender and Race Balance in Data Visualization
00:08:22
Speaker
You mentioned the gender balance. Clearly in data visualization in the tech area, that's a big deal, is the gender and race balance. It's interesting to hear that you're targeting that. I know we've been worrying about that a lot with the political data conference.
00:08:45
Speaker
What are the sort of things that you keep in mind as you're sort of building these things out when it comes to that?
00:08:51
Speaker
Oh, you always got to keep it in mind. And I think that with regards to the main data visuals, the main event, gender balance is not an issue. It's pretty easy. There's a lot of women out there doing some amazing things out there, a lot of women doing more amazing things than some of the men that are doing it. I mean, that field, it really doesn't feel like, maybe in the beginning, it seemed like there was
00:09:18
Speaker
I guess a few years ago it was a little bit harder, now it's not a problem at all. When you get into the verticals though, that is when it gets a little bit crazy, specifically this one for the political data one. Boy, politics, it is just seriously, it is like man show, first of all. Then we start getting into the nuances of it, which is like the data visualization and some of the
00:09:44
Speaker
things that we wanted to cover for this political data event, people that are doing unique things and people that are actually going to have some impact on the election next year. There's definitely women that are out there that are being involved, but boy, it is like just... It is a challenge. I think we've done a pretty good job. You've just got to look for it. It's a great lineup for those who are listening.
00:10:15
Speaker
Seeing the lineup, you should check it out on the website. Allison Hurt from NPR, Lisa Straussfield from Bloomberg will be there. We have Ben Castleman from FiveThirtyEight. It's going to be a great lineup. It's going to be a great event.
00:10:30
Speaker
Yeah, it's going to be awesome. It really is. And all the research that I've been doing on this, I've become an expert. I'm officially a domain expert on political data now. It's crazy.
Trends in Data Visualization
00:10:40
Speaker
Yeah, but no, it's like I have connected the dots of all the players who sit in that ecosystem and who are controlling the data. I've down to where the data is coming from.
00:10:50
Speaker
and how people are going to be using it in 2016, and I got to tell you, it's fascinating. It really is. So what are the visualizations, either political or otherwise, what are the sorts of things that sort of get you excited, the sort of things that you like to play around with or pay attention to?
00:11:08
Speaker
Well, obviously what the New York Times are doing, I'll tell you one of the hardest things, John, we haven't even talked about this subject, not to invite too many people from the New York Times because everything looks so freaking awesome. It's insane. It's true. I have this problem when I teach is like, you know, I practice these talks sometimes in front of my wife and she'll say, you know, you just discussed five visualizations and they're all from the Times. You need to mix it up a little bit.
00:11:34
Speaker
Absolutely, yeah. And I have a media crash on the New York Times. And so I think, of course, they're doing some of the more interesting things out there in terms of taking the big data sets and expediting the understanding for the general public. What I am also seeing on the other side is this rise of the bite size data visualizations, which is this kind of like fast style
00:12:03
Speaker
Let's show one little graphic and give you a paragraph. And that's kind of just trying to keep up with the way people are consuming media today. So if you look at 538, I think they even got 538 itself is known for kind of showing these
00:12:18
Speaker
bite-sized data visualizations. I don't know if that's the right term, but that's the term that I use. Just these little graphs, right? Yeah. And even within that, as if that wasn't enough, they didn't condense it enough. They've got something within it, I think, called the Data Lab or the Data Blog within 538, which even, I think, the purpose of that is to get these visualizations on mobile.
00:12:38
Speaker
I think that's one of the trends we're seeing. I just came across this project by the New York Media Lab, I think, and it's something called Lenses. They're trying to raise some money for it. I think they right now are currently applying for some kind of funding from the Knight Foundation, but the idea is to work with some of these media companies and
00:13:07
Speaker
give them quick style access for journalists to put data visualizations that are specifically to be showcased on mobile devices. So I'm seeing that trend of at the same time there's the reduction of these data visualizations and then there are people like New York Times who are going full on experimental and they're just going to blow our minds in 2016.
00:13:28
Speaker
What's interesting about the New York Times, just because, we'll just use them as an example. The one that people got excited about a week or two ago was the 3D yield curve graph. It was this 3D yield curve and you can move around in a stepper where it would go one view and then you'd click and the thing would rotate into the second view.
00:13:49
Speaker
And I linked to it from my, I saw it first on my phone. And when I saw it on my phone, it was just a bunch of static images on the phone. And then later I kept seeing everybody so excited about it. And then I went to my desktop and then I was playing around with it. So this balance between, you know, the sort of like these snapshots on the phone versus like the big thing on the mobile devices is really interesting.
00:14:15
Speaker
and really challenging, right? Yeah, absolutely. I don't know how that's going to play out because at one point the challenge is how much flexibility can you give with this information? How far can you let people dive into it and really experiment with that data?
00:14:30
Speaker
And I think that that's kind of like a web experience versus being on the phone. And even despite we're seeing the phones get bigger in size and things like that, I still think it's challenging. But we'll see a little bit more activity. I think that's one of the programs that that group, Lenses, is going to be working on.
Insights on Political Data Visualization
00:14:51
Speaker
But certainly, some of the things like Allison Hurd is working on and things like that, I can't see that translating onto the phone in 2016 with the same level of flexibility. Yeah, that's true, which is really interesting. I mean, if you think about the folks who are sort of really following the election, they're going to be on their phones all the time. And so do they want to be able to play around with the data as they're going from event to event? Well, do you use an iPad? Is it the same experience? I wonder if it's the same experience on an iPad.
00:15:21
Speaker
Yeah, so I mean, my, my, I don't know, or tablet, I just have it. I haven't splurged for the, you know, for the connectivity on my tablet. So I need the Wi Fi. So I'm sort of tethered, you know. But yeah, that's true. If you have a tablet and you know, you have you have wireless connection, then
00:15:40
Speaker
I guess that's like in between, maybe? I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I don't have a tablet. I don't know. I'm not sure that tablets will be so popular in a couple of years. I kind of just feel like, you know, that you think it's like a huge screen. Well, when I'm traveling, let's just use, you know, real world, you know, I get onto a plane and I can just open up my laptop just as easily as a tablet, I suppose. Right. Unless that guy in front of you puts a seat all the way back.
00:16:06
Speaker
Yeah, well that is always why I sit in row 9, because the exit row is in front of me, so they can't lean back their seat. That's the whole tip for you. I always, when they come by with the drinks, make sure I close it up and put it away, because I have this fear that they're going to hit turbulence, and the coke going to the person next to me is going to be all over my machine, and that will be the end.
00:16:27
Speaker
Yeah, that will happen. That will happen. All right, so let's just circle back to the conference because it's coming up. It's at GW on the 21st. Is there something you're most excited about?
00:16:44
Speaker
Yeah, actually I'm most excited about connecting the dots. So for me, at least when we jump into these verticals, so Visualize might be doing something like another vertical, like science or something like that down the road. I love just kind of just jumping into it, understanding the landscape. So I didn't quite understand it before, but I think that the audience will have an understanding of who the players are, what kind of data they're collecting, what kind of data companies work with,
00:17:13
Speaker
the other data companies. It's super fascinating by the way to look at the party split. This is probably the most interesting part of political data and that is there are companies that work with Democratic data only and ones that work with Republican data only. There's a few in the middle that play with both sides of the data but for the most part it's a
00:17:33
Speaker
political data is partisan. Now, how they collect that data is super fascinating. I think data science is actually going to be a pretty big part of this discussion, as well as the visualization part. Of course, the two go in hand-handing any of these companies. Part of my research was when I was looking into the companies that whether or not we want them to participate in this, I was looking at who they're hiring.
00:17:57
Speaker
and what they're shaping out their force to be like. It's clear to me that they're focused on both obviously the analytics and the visualization aspects of it. And seeing how these organizations are starting to build out their organizations, having a heavier focus on visualization as well is super fascinating.
00:18:20
Speaker
Wow. And then of course, New York Times is going to be there, so. Of course. So then, you know, it would be great. Yeah. No, it's going to be,
Conference Logistics and Excitement
00:18:27
Speaker
I'm excited for it. It's going to be great. We've got the conference on the 21st, and I'm running some workshops the day before, some data visualization workshops in town. So it's going to be a couple days of data visit debauchery. It should be fun.
00:18:38
Speaker
Yeah. And also, we've been working with the George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management. They're super awesome over there. They're so excited about the event. So I think that there's going to be a large turnout of students and actual graduate students because they're into politics. They're going to be into this. Yeah, they're going to be into it. Great. Yeah. Great. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show, man. I appreciate it.
00:19:03
Speaker
Hey, thank you. And I'm sure I'll be talking to you very soon. Very soon. All right, this has been the policy of his podcast. Thanks so much for listening.