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Episode #108: Andy Kirk
177 Plays7 years ago
For the final episode of 2017, I’m super excited to chat with my old friendAndy Kirk from Visualising Data. You undoubtedly know Andy from his website, books, presentations, Twitter feed, monthly roundups, and overall data viz awesomeness. Andy is also a...
The post Episode #108: Andy Kirk appeared first on PolicyViz.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Final 2017 Episode
00:00:11
Speaker
Welcome back to the Policyviz podcast. I'm your host, John Schwabisch. Happy holidays, everyone. I hope you're having a great holiday season and whatever holiday festivities you are having. I hope they're going well and you're enjoying them. This is the final episode of the Policyviz podcast for 2017 and quite a year it has been. And to help me talk about both the past and the future of data visualization, I'm really happy to have
00:00:37
Speaker
My old friend Andy Kirk on the show. Captain Kirk, how are you, friend? I'm good, sir. Nice to be here again for what I think is my third, possibly, podcast. I'll have to get Kasara and Cairo back on. You guys can all fight it out. No, yeah. No, it's great to speak to you again.
00:00:54
Speaker
Yeah, how are things for you? Okay, thanks. Yeah, again, a long busy year, good year. Absolutely. But yeah, we've reached the end in terms of, I guess, commercial commitments last few weeks of the year, really just trying to sit down and do some proper work, do some planning, you know, these important things. So yeah, all good. Thanks.
00:01:14
Speaker
That's great. That's great. You've had a busy year. I want to talk about some of the projects you've done and then we just chat because, you know, who doesn't want to hear Andy Kirk talk about, you know, whatever.
Exploring the Chart Maker Directory
00:01:26
Speaker
I want to start with I was about to say this might have been your biggest project of the year, but I'm not sure that's true. Maybe your biggest public project of the year, the chart maker directory.
00:01:35
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's why your biggest project at least publicly that you pulled together this huge resource of graphic and data visualization tools. So can I ask you to talk about where the idea came from? Because you already have this huge compilation of resources and tools. And then this chart maker directory is a little different spin. Yeah, yeah. I mean, in a sense, it has been a very big project because it's been in the workings for a long time. I mean,
00:02:01
Speaker
I kind of sympathize with my trading workshop delegates over the last two years because I've kept saying, coming soon, coming soon. And it kind of comes out of that world of trading people because the gist of this resource is that it tries to ask, sorry, answer the question.
00:02:20
Speaker
Which tools make which charts and which charts can be made in which tools and I've always kind of stumbled with a kind of coherent answer to that given the variety of tools that do exist and and of course the relatively limited ways that we can portray data in chat. So you mentioned the other catalog that I do have on the website the resource in general and this compiles I think it's about 330 plus distinct visualization tools but not necessarily all those tools are.
00:02:50
Speaker
primarily chart making tools. They will assist you in the workflow but they don't necessarily just help you to simply make a chart. So what I wanted to do was to bring together a common resource for the public that would organize the hundreds of bookmarks that I've made down the years for basically tutorials and or references to help people know how to make a given chart
00:03:13
Speaker
in a given tool. But I also want to double up the tool as a kind of open source or crowdsource means to get others to send in and submit their own discovered references and how tos that just sit in the shadows of the web that would help just to really build up this resource into, over time, almost, I guess, a tariff.
00:03:37
Speaker
that kind of shows you what you can achieve in which tool. Now, at the moment, the gaps that exist. And just for those who have not been to it, if you imagine a table structure across the top, the column headers, these are the tools, and there's about 30 or 40 selected tools. Down the side, you've got about 50 or so chart types. The intersecting cells, you've got a hollow circle, which indicates, yes, you can make that chart. And here's an example of somebody who has done that.
00:04:06
Speaker
The filled circles say, yes, you can make that chart in this tool, but here's how. So it's a bit more of an instructive reference. And it might be a tutorial that's written down. It might be a demo. It might be a video tutorial. It might be a workbook you can download. But at the moment, the gaps that exist don't necessarily mean that you can't make that chart in that tool. It might be that we've not discovered the means to do it.
00:04:31
Speaker
but increasingly the gaps will be meaningful and it hopefully will give people a sense when they come to the site of many questions can get answered immediately if I need to make let's say a Sankey diagram which tools give me that means if I've got Excel as a tool
00:04:48
Speaker
What charts can be made that I didn't actually think I could make? Which ones can be hacked into a solution? So hopefully it gives people a sense of what's possible. But yeah, it's been a very useful project, selfishly for myself, in as much as anything else, just to get a sense of the landscape. But hopefully over time, it will be a useful resource for others to visit and also hopefully contribute to. So now when you're asked,
00:05:14
Speaker
at a workshop or a client says, what tools should I use? Do you just point them to the chart maker directory? Or do you have a conversation and say, well, are you comfortable coding? Do you need a drag and drop? What's your budget situation? How do you approach that
Workshop Insights on Chart-Making Tools
00:05:26
Speaker
conversation? Yeah. Well, in the context of a workshop, it usually is a tool that I refer to after I've been through the discussion of chart types as a concept in general. So in a sense, that wets the appetite, and people get excited saying, oh, I'd like to make that chart. That's the perfect use case that I have for that chart.
00:05:42
Speaker
But I can't make it because I've got X, Y, and Z tool. And then I'll say, ah, but all is not lost. Because someone like, I don't know, John Schwabish, for example, has written a tutorial about how to make a grid map in Excel. And here's the how to do it.
00:05:56
Speaker
So yeah, you don't want to trust that guy. No, well, you know, it's in the to do list that contribution. But yeah, you know, it is something that I allowed you kind of pass on to them to find their own way around because they'll all have different circumstances. But it is something that I just try and again, the context of Excel, I think is perfect. You know, there are so many more charts that you can make in that tool. It might not be elegant as a solution.
00:06:23
Speaker
It might not be automatable or replicable as a solution. Um, but if it's, if it's one off, then yes, you can make a waffle chart using the grid structure of the worksheet. So it's just to try, I guess, open people's eyes to those. You never thought this tool could do this thing, but it can conversations. Yeah. I mean, I got the same question all the time. It's just a, it's a tricky answer because there's so many variables that go into it.
00:06:49
Speaker
And people want sort of the one ring, the one tool to rule them all. And I don't think that tool really exists. And I think it's dangerous for me to have that tool. Yeah. Right. Because you have people who maybe they're not very comfortable working with data and you don't want them to be able to just do anything with data. You know, you should really have to think about it. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
00:07:10
Speaker
So it's a great project. I had fun at the very beginning when I was fighting with Martin Lambrick's about who would have the most contributions. I think you've still got the crown, actually. I think there's still the hilts. If you want to topple the man, please, please go ahead.
00:07:27
Speaker
So what are the top tools out there, or top submissions, I'd say, by tool? I think, well, there are probably two that dominate. I mean, D3.js, you're ticking every box, everything's covered off. Of course, you've got the difficulty of having to learn the thing, but again, most of the references there point to existing bodies of code or existing solutions that people have produced.
00:07:53
Speaker
that at least give you a starting point. Tableau, I think every chart apart from one, which I think is a sort of a 3D sort of prism spiky map thing, which isn't the worst thing, let's face it, not to have. Everyone's covered off there. So again, some of the solutions that people have kind of found to
00:08:15
Speaker
to problems and nothing to bend your lines like some diagrams and call diagrams that you think that's just now outrageous solution but you know there's there's cracked it so you know i think some surprise hits have been excel again i'll mention excel but even things like the the expansion of macs office power bi that's the weather's like right yeah.
00:08:38
Speaker
again there are some tools there that have really added a dominance from some missions that would really kind of capture the idea of what it's trying to do that I think will just just give people a bit more of a I don't know a chance to kind of expand what they can do visually which I think is always what we're doing looking for that next
00:08:56
Speaker
I mean, what I love about it is that it is a resource of tutorials. And, you know, everyone has their list of resources out there and that's great. But the question is obviously, you know, which one is right for me? And, you know, if I can see that, yes, D3 might have a very steep learning curve for certain people, but here's 45, you know, bits of code and tutorials I can use to go learn how to make these things. And here's the payoff that you've got ultimate expressiveness.
00:09:26
Speaker
Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's along a spectrum, right? Or it's a, it's a, it's a grid as it were. Well, it's a cool project. So
The Little Viz Blog and Design Decisions
00:09:33
Speaker
I'll have to get back in, make sure I can build up a bigger lead over, over Mark. The other project, I think, sounds like it's taken up a bit of your time is the, the little of visualization design, these blog posts that you've been putting out.
00:09:46
Speaker
I don't know, it feels like every week you come out with a couple more. You want to talk about that a little bit, and then maybe we can talk about your approach to blogging and stuff. Yeah. Yes, the little viz, this is an occasional post I do on the site, which is to kind of find one niche, little, small design decisions that I've seen in a visualization project that I just felt was, you know, made it worthy of comment or to just kind of share as a piece of good practice.
00:10:16
Speaker
also less frequently but on occasion also an example of bad practice but I guess my big picture view of visualization has always been that it's complex rather than necessarily complicated although there are complicated edges to it and with complexity you've got lots of small things lots of little decisions that
00:10:35
Speaker
that make up this hole that are all kind of interrelated and interconnected. And so when I try and make the subject accessible to others, what I'm trying to do is break it down to these small building blocks that make the hole but also have a big impact on that hole.
00:10:51
Speaker
And so this collection of postings is just these little one-off things I've seen that I really wanted to bring to the surface as examples of how small the thinking gets in visualization. We are responsible for every single pixel that's left on that screen or every dot that's left on that page. And so we need to take care of that level of granularity and detail.
00:11:13
Speaker
So it's a posting format that I kind of stumbled across and kind of edgy into that discussion about blogging. I mean, blogging, it's hard work. You know yourself, it's hard work. What you see on the page that's produced is the consequence of using quite maybe a couple of hours minimum work. You've thought of ideas, you've structured stuff.
00:11:38
Speaker
And so I'm often looking for ways to counter the longer form postings with things that I can just mobilize quite quickly. So this idea of, here's one thing that I've seen in this project. Here's why it's cool. Here's the image. Let's move on to the next post. It just gives me a more replicable format too.
00:11:56
Speaker
to kind of keep hopefully the volume of posts up, although that's something that I do feel I'm sort of struggling against. It's a really interesting point because I feel like there's, even within the data viz field, right, there's sort of these two sides, there's like the medium posts that go on forever. And I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean, sometimes it's a bad way, but sometimes it's, you know, they're very good and the length is justified.
00:12:20
Speaker
And then, I don't know, like Alberto Cairo, for example, a lot of his blog posts are short, you know, they're, they're, you know, maybe, like you said, maybe a couple sentences and then a graph and that's it. And he's moved on to the next thing. And I don't know which way is right. You know, I refer to the podcast as lazy man's blogging because, you know, I think he's a fair point. I mean, so are you still writing the longer form posts about
00:12:48
Speaker
bigger topics or have you sort of focused on, okay, I've got a big project, the chart maker directory, I've got the little viz project. You've got your monthly roundups that I also want to ask you about, but how are you approaching it now? And how does it, how do you think about it relative to like, you know, Twitter and Facebook and the social media?
Evolving Trends in Data Visualization Blogging
00:13:07
Speaker
Yeah. And I mean, it's a really kind of fluid approach, I guess, but it's also hugely constrained around just availability and
00:13:14
Speaker
and energy. Just taking a step back, I started blogging, I think, just under eight years ago, I think it is now. I guess at the time, there were very few others doing it. In a sense, you could write a fairly low-level, low-hanging fruit post about a dumb pie chart.
00:13:36
Speaker
And you'd get a few visitors. And then you get a few, I don't think it was even retweets back then. Twitter wasn't a thing, really. But you could kind of get away with those things. And then you might start to do posts around, here's the latest project I've seen from here, from this studio, whatever. I guess that's probably something that you would associate perhaps with Nathan's site. Here's a cutting edge piece of work that's out this week.
00:14:02
Speaker
But then I kind of found that a little bit hard to keep on top of because as the field grew, you couldn't display and share every project that was out that week because it was too numerous. So I guess I'd try to find a new angle which was to kind of become
00:14:19
Speaker
Critical, not in a criticism sense, but critical in terms of thinking about the design choices that people are making, as the kind of core focus. But going back to the question about long form, I still have every intent of doing long form pieces, but they're just so few and far between, I would say, over this last 18 months, because they just take too long. And especially when, and this is something you're also facing, or faced, when you've, in the background, got book writing projects.
00:14:47
Speaker
you kind of run out of words. Have you told my good words in the book? I've got nothing cohesive left to say on a blog post. And you mentioned Medium. I think Medium is a great platform, but what I find about that is it actually leaves me forgetting who the author is. It leaves it quite anonymous.
00:15:09
Speaker
Often great content, but you kind of forget who was written and I think that's something you lose when you don't Publish on your own site as well. I mean obviously you can cross post But I think you know, it's still important and so in my world it's still important to keep feeding the blog machine because that's that's affected my shop window to get the footfall in to then see you know other offerings commercially and If I stopped blogging
00:15:34
Speaker
Well, would that footfall dry up? I suspect it would. So it's an interesting thing. And then of course you've got social media. And I would suggest that from just looking at my site, visitor levels, that a lot of people aren't even going beyond the snippet that they will see.
00:15:53
Speaker
in a tweet, for example, or in a Facebook post, you might get the first paragraph of text. And that might be enough for them to say, OK, I've got a gist about what that's going on about. So I think social media is now, in a sense, although it gives you access to perhaps more people, it also gives people an excuse not to go that click further and actually visit the site. For those who are interested, what are the blogs that Andy Kirk regularly looks at? We've mentioned a few already. The other one?
00:16:23
Speaker
I think perhaps one of the most interesting, I guess, writers about database I think is Lisa Roast.
00:16:30
Speaker
I mean, I've always thought she's an extremely thoughtful observer of the field. And as I guess of the last three or four years, she's kind of emerged from post-graduation into a career. And I find her posts extremely refreshing. And she asks questions that we're all asking, but probably some others are afraid to ask because they might be quite simplistic in some respects. But it's a brilliant way that she then brings that back to her.
00:16:59
Speaker
a kind of a conviction or a solution or a point of view. Also, Alan Smith's chart doctor on the on the FT's and another great really astute slices of comments about different aspects of the field, especially, you know, from the, you know, the co office, you know,
00:17:19
Speaker
from the context of the newspaper environment. So I think there are just two that I would pick out as being on my favorites. But again, I'm bouncing around every side going, it's exhausting. Right. I love that you mentioned Lisa's because I think the writing that she does is great and it's deep. Yeah.
00:17:37
Speaker
or deeper I should say than a lot and that's the sort of thing that I personally sort of go back and forth on because you know I do these little tutorials and I do some remake stuff and then you know I've been writing lately about maps and thinking trying to think a little bit deeper about what we might sort of take for granted with dataviz but her the way she's thinking about things is in a different sort of more of a humanities approach sometimes and
00:18:00
Speaker
and more of a data perspective. She asks the question why, but not necessarily in that sense of it being an academic why. Why in a practical sense, in a human sense, and also academic, what it needs to be. But it just kind of appeals to me, that sort of approach. So you've been blogging, so you said like seven or eight years. So when you look at the landscape of data visualization blogs,
00:18:30
Speaker
What's your feeling about it? Has it changed in a way that's become deeper or shallower or is it better? Is it worse? This is just a lot of voices and you can't really make that sort of comment about it. But how do you think about the evolution of blogging in this field over the last seven, eight years? It's a really good question because I think in some ways I would answer that by saying that I don't think it's expanded as much as we might have expected it to expand.
00:18:59
Speaker
And I think I had a conversation with a delegate recently and he was looking to try and get into the field and he naturally expected that doing blogging would start to get some notice. And his concern was that, you know, has it all been said before? Is there anything new to say to stand out? And I think it's kind of an interesting point to make that. I mean, as we all know,
00:19:22
Speaker
It's such a multifaceted field that you can find any angle and you'll have tons and tons of stuff to go with if you just write a blog about color in visualization and you've got a lifetime's work there. I feel that there's a lot of blogs that are quite.
00:19:40
Speaker
So for example, there's lots of blogs that are Tableau specific. So there might be much more about the techniques around that tool and then maybe occasionally sort of a step back from that about, you know, where's Tableau evolving. I think there's, there's obviously a lot of use now of medium. So again, I find that there's lots of interesting stuff there, but I lose that sense of that person's, you know, building up a nice portfolio of pieces there. I think you've got a few that have, you know, dropped off the scene over the last,
00:20:08
Speaker
two, three years, maybe just because they've evolved in their careers. Obviously, you've still got people like Robert and Nathan plowing away for many, many years now. So I think to come back to the question, I think it's still perhaps undersupplied in the sense of broader data visualization blogs or postings. I just feel that perhaps the environment has moved on so much to having the
00:20:36
Speaker
the discussions that you might otherwise articulate into a post on social media. You're having the 140 or now 280 digit tweets and you kind of leave it there and you might retweet it, but that's kind of done the job of what you might have otherwise posted and crafted into a posting. So I do feel that's probably sucked up a lot of the content that might otherwise be sat in posts. Yeah, that's interesting.
00:21:02
Speaker
I wanted to ask you about your monthly best of lists. You might detect a certain scene from that. I could feel it going through.
Crafting 'Best of' Data Visualization Lists
00:21:20
Speaker
Um, I'm not sure we have the time and, you know, I'm not sure I accept your, I don't account. Um, so how do you collect all of that? And then you, and then you write like, you know, I mean, not a lot, but you write a sentence or about for, for each one of those. So, so what's your practical,
00:21:43
Speaker
Method of collecting those so that the method is is relatively straightforward. It's based on stuff that I come across that just strikes a chord with me at that moment in time and this can be from
00:21:58
Speaker
tracking my Twitter timeline. It can be, although less frequently these days, drop into my RSS feeds, collection on feedly. It can be things that I just kind of come across in discussions and emails. Sometimes people do send me their work as a kind of a pitch to include, which is really nice to think that people want to be on the list and see it as a nice place to be included.
00:22:26
Speaker
In a sense, I don't encourage that because I want to keep it, in some respects, quite serendipitous in terms of what I've discovered. Now, the semi-grown I gave in response to the question is just simply because it does take a hell of a lot of time to turn around into a post. And when we talk about long-form posts, although it's not a long-form written piece, it does kind of take me two or three hours most months. And I've got... I started the latest one this morning.
00:22:56
Speaker
I just walked away from it. I just didn't have the time and energy for it. But it's a list. And I guess at the start, eight years ago when I started this, it was very much just a public bookmark service. In fact, it probably didn't represent the best of so much as it represented the field.
00:23:14
Speaker
such was the infrequency of new things being published. But now it's very hard to keep on top of a genuine and authentic best of. But again, it's my personal collection. So in a sense, the best of Monica is perhaps a bit of a clickbaity thing these days, but it's still good stuff. I mean, I don't use that to share dumb projects.
00:23:35
Speaker
It's going back to the point of it being a list and I've had loads of emails down the scene. Can you make it more visual? Can you put as a thumbnail up there? Can you just do more to make it easier for me? Sure, just do more. Do more for free. We want more, but pay less. I've kind of always understood that, but I've had to just...
00:23:55
Speaker
I reject it just for the practicalities of turning it around. I might be able to find some, some plugins to make it possible. But I don't know, there's maybe a certain resistance now to change this kind of old school. So I think it will probably stay as it is now. But it's interesting because I do go back over
00:24:15
Speaker
over previous months and you know I've got eight years of it now so there's tons of monthly posters to track against the evolution of the field. My challenge now is to kind of perhaps reevaluate the method I use to find and isolate these good pieces so it's not just those that are our loudest spoken you know it's very easy to find a good New York Times graphic from last month
00:24:40
Speaker
it's less defined that freelancer in in south africa was published a great piece of work that hasn't quite got the the traction line but he's out there so i just need to kind of you know readable methods to make sure that i'm i'm seeing all the stuff that's out there as much as i can and you know and then just just to you know represent the field in its broadest sense
00:25:02
Speaker
Right. Yeah, that that's tricky. And I think the geographic and racial and ethnic diversity is something that you know, we've, we've all talked about for a while. So certainly something but when I'm collecting things, just practically, when I'm collecting things, I have like 900 different things that I'm using, but
00:25:18
Speaker
but when I'm really find something that I'm like, Oh, this is good. I can use this to teach with this. I have a folder with all the hundreds of graphs and an Excel file that has the name of the file and the URL. So do you so so when you're pulling this list together, are at the end of the month, are you then sifting through your RSS feeds and your email and your favorites and trying to do that? Or do you have more of a
00:25:39
Speaker
Centralized place where you're saving these over the course of the month and then yeah Well, I mean in very practical terms that most of it is saved as a bookmark with pocket Pocket pocket pocket. Yeah, and then just translate into bookmarks into a I've got my Google Chrome bookmarks and
00:26:00
Speaker
It's strange how frequently on a monthly basis I end up with roughly around 150 to 170 bookmarks that I then might whittle down to about 110, 120 that make it to the final cut, but I'm trying to be representative of
00:26:16
Speaker
as well of not just new visualization pieces, but also articles, learning resources, just general subject news if there's been anything that's significant that's happened in the last month. And then just some random what I term sundries, which is just things that are perhaps loosely associated with the world of visuals, but might not necessarily be just data visit itself. And then, yeah, I guess I kind of dumped them after that.
00:26:46
Speaker
But maybe the, you know, the handful of those that have also just take something in my mind that says, ah, this could be something that you might use in, uh, in the training materials. So just store that in another folder for material updates. So there's a certain amount of systematic treatment, but perhaps not to the extent of, uh, of kind of Excel, you know, little databases. Yeah. I mean, I, I mean, I have, I was using pocket for awhile and I'm using Pinterest and I'm using Excel and I'm using all these things and.
00:27:15
Speaker
They never seem to quite be satisfactory, but, um, I'm sure no one has a solution to that. But anyway, um, so before we finish up looking forward next year, 2018, what are you looking forward
Hopes for Data Visualization in 2018
00:27:27
Speaker
to? What are you hopeful for? What am I hopeful for? Visual data, data is wide. I think we, you know, we all have, you know, things to be hopeful and certainly grateful for, but, um, in the field, what are you looking for for next year? It's a really good question. And, and you know, I've done a few, um,
00:27:44
Speaker
sort of end-of-year podcast in the past and looking forward is always difficult and it's always difficult to say something more interesting than more of the same but I do feel more of the same is legitimate because I think we're in a fairly healthy state right now. I did
00:28:01
Speaker
wonder about the direction of the field, say post election, US election, as you know this kind of mirror was shown upon obviously journalism but then by extent data journalism and then by extension visualization as a medium and I don't feel like we've come out the other side of that but I do feel that there's probably been an awakening of the importance of things like visualization literacy amongst readerships and amongst
00:28:26
Speaker
and more refined thinking around how we show things like uncertainties and probabilities. And I feel that the field is probably healthier as a result for it. I think the biggest direction of travel that I guess I've seen, and this is perhaps more of a two to three year journey, is just again a better representation at least in terms of gender balance in the field.
00:28:55
Speaker
I do track the attendees at my workshops and there's been a switch this last three years and it's now. I would say fifty five percent female forty five percent male companies events which suggest that there's a pipeline there.
00:29:12
Speaker
that's very healthy for the field and I think you know that's now moving on to you know very visible female practitioners and uh well sorry there's always been very visible female practitioners but even more representative um so hopefully that will continue to be a trend but otherwise you know there's one or two tools that are not yet live products that are bubbling away under the surface I'm aware of that I think if they came into the uh
00:29:40
Speaker
into the reckoning could be a very positive move to, to bridge some of the gaps that we've got in that tool space right now. So that would always be, be very helpful, but no more, more of the same, hopefully. Yeah. I mean, hopefully, and continuation of a lot of good work, I think that we've seen this year.
00:29:58
Speaker
And you also have, what
Community Project: Book Page Photography
00:30:00
Speaker
was the other project? Oh, your Viz book. The Viz book. Flip book. Probably the most important project of the year. For many people.
00:30:13
Speaker
This was the sort of project that comes to mind when you might have had a couple of drinks. I can't legally confirm or deny that. But this was an attempt to photograph every two-page spread of my book, but not by myself, but by people who own the book.
00:30:29
Speaker
But then to kind of, you know, to do that photograph in interesting scenes around the world, around the planet. So, yeah, so if you do own my book and if you don't, we need to sort that out anyway. Yeah, I mean, that's ridiculous. Time presence, Amazon vouchers, et cetera, et cetera. But if you've got the book, I would very much welcome two-page spread photographs, two per person, Max,
00:30:54
Speaker
of a page of your choice from anywhere around the world. Now, to get very boring and administrative, there's a Google spreadsheet for you to reserve your pages of choice. But then when I get all these pages back in, I want to create sort of an interactive sort of carousel view of it. I want to put together a little animated gif of it.
00:31:16
Speaker
There'll be lots of little crazy things come out at the end of it. But we've just hit the 50% mark, so we're halfway through there. So plenty of scope for some more submissions. Yeah. And it's a big book. You should have written less. You should have written less. Well, I'm starting the second edition next year, and I'd like to reduce that to about 100 pages, just to make it more viable.
00:31:39
Speaker
Right. Right. So these flip book projects can be so much easier. Well, this is great, Andy. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Always great talking to you and thanks to everyone for tuning in. I hope you had a great 2017 and looking forward to a great 2018. Have a happy holidays. Happy, happy New Year. This has been the policy of his podcast. Thanks so much for listening.