Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
PolicyViz Podcast Episode #18: Tiago Veloso
142 Plays9 years ago
Welcome back to the PolicyViz Podcast! I hope you had a great summer! I’m excited to kick off the fall slate of episodes with Tiago Veloso from Visual Loop. Tiago has been curating some of the best data visualization and...
The post PolicyViz Podcast Episode #18: Tiago Veloso appeared first on PolicyViz.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Sponsorship
00:00:00
Speaker
This episode of the PolicyViz podcast is brought to you by Socrata. Socrata is a global leader in software solutions that are designed exclusively for digital government. They deliver unprecedented data-driven innovation and cost savings for hundreds of public sector leaders and millions of their constituents around the world. Socrata's digital government solutions are being deployed for a wide array of strategic and mission-critical government services that empower citizens while enhancing their quality of life. To learn more about Socrata, visit www.socrata.com.
Meet Tiago Veloso from Visualoop
00:00:37
Speaker
Welcome back to the Policy Vis podcast. I'm your host, John Schwabisch. I hope you've all had a great summer. I took a few weeks off and I'm really happy to be back. Today, I'm very happy to have on the show Tiago Voloso from Visualope. Tiago, welcome to the show. Hi, John. Thank you very much. It's an honor, a true pleasure to be here with you guys. Well, thanks for being here. Thanks for being here. I hope you had a good summer.
00:01:04
Speaker
Yes, yes, a lot of work, of course, around visualloop.com. But yes, it's been great so far. Great. Well, I want to talk about
Origins and Evolution of Visualoop
00:01:12
Speaker
Visual Loop. There's been a lot of action and activity about the work you've been doing. So maybe you can start by just telling us a little bit about Visual Loop, why you decided to start it, and what your goals are for the site going forward.
00:01:25
Speaker
Sure, well basically visual loop started as a personal collection of infographics, charts and visualizations. Something that I was finding out in the internet and decided to create a small tumblr blog.
00:01:43
Speaker
where I could share those findings and also make them searchable or easy to grab around specific topics. So the focus of that initial endeavor was just to have an easy to go online collection of examples without too much focus on the
00:02:08
Speaker
overall quality but more on the topics. This was five years ago so the word infographic was kind of exploding on the internet and I just saw, I started to see a lot of examples of those infographics being shared from
00:02:30
Speaker
whole different publishers and with different targets and with different messages. So I have no background in the subject either in journalism or design. So it was really driven by my curiosity around
00:02:50
Speaker
that medium of communication. Thankfully the site grew and was well received by the visualization community who also was beginning to explore the internet and the new social media channels like Twitter and Facebook and all the other channels to share and to discuss data visualization practices.
00:03:20
Speaker
That's pretty much the point where I decided to evolve to a much more robust and professional platform. And that's when I launched visualloop.com in 2012. And more recently, a couple of months ago, we made another major update to the website.
00:03:42
Speaker
And now a visual loop is no longer just a personal collection of infographics and visualizations, but what we'd like to call a digital environment for all things related to that subject. So we try to bridge together the different tribes that are making use of visualization, either it's visual journalists in the traditional media or
00:04:10
Speaker
data visualization courses in universities and colleges or other types of publishers. So we tried to build a community for the past five years and now we made this upgrade that it's basically a way for the community to create and feed an archive, a high quality archive of visualizations.
Visualoop's Weekly Round-ups and Moderation
00:04:36
Speaker
So I think one of the things that I think a lot of people like about Visual Loop in the work that you do are these weekly roundups you do of what's going on around the world on data visualization. It's sort of like a tour de force of what's really good out there in data visualization. So when you're doing that, are there things you have in mind when you're sort of searching around for different examples or different stories or different
00:05:01
Speaker
you know, you know, talks and videos that you put up. Are the things you have in mind to sort of present all that information and all those resources, you know, try to pull out a bunch of maps, pull out a bunch of presentations. Do you have a philosophy when you're building those roundups or are you just looking for sort of the best, you know, most interesting stuff that's out there?
00:05:21
Speaker
Well, the idea behind those round-ups, it's pretty much the same idea behind visual loop. The idea is to try to fill some of the gaps in terms of content and content curation that the visualization might have. Because all the professionals, as you very well know, have time issues to be doing the contributions that perhaps
00:05:50
Speaker
all of them would like to do with blogs and social media. So the idea of getting these weekly roundups at the beginning, it came from that perception that it would be nice for the community to have an easy to browse quick overview
00:06:10
Speaker
without too many in-depth analysis of each visualization. That's something that you usually see around for the top projects. So we didn't want to compete with that. But we'd really like to point towards the examples that came to our attention. And when I mean came to our attention, it's either because we are, and I am actively looking out for
00:06:39
Speaker
good examples but also because since I had tumblr I always had a lot of people
00:06:48
Speaker
sending over their examples and their visualizations and their infographics for consideration and eventually for publishing. So it goes both ways. Some of the roundups I had in mind when I was thinking about visualloop.com. Others, we just decided to move forward with them because the amount of content
00:07:18
Speaker
being produced around that specific topic deserved that so for a point you had we started with an interactive inspiration post that included all sorts of interactive visualizations but a couple of months later we realized that interactive maps
00:07:39
Speaker
were deserving opposed by themselves because the amount of interactive maps and the use of that sort of visualization tool in all sorts of publishers was really, really spiking. Now, when it comes to the weekly
00:08:01
Speaker
Yeah, I actually look around for some of the best examples and try to filter among some of the ones that are sent to us to feature. But the bar there is not that high, I must admit. That's a little bit different of what we are trying to do now with the gallery where both designers and
00:08:24
Speaker
the works they submit to the gallery are moderated by our team. So let's talk about that because there's been a bit of a change in the site over the last few months. And you mentioned some of the things that you're trying to do late last year. Infogram acquired visual loop has that. Acquisition changed the sort of way you do business. It sounds like you have a little bit more of a team. And it sounds like you have or on the site has these
00:08:53
Speaker
these designer profiles. So so is all this, you know, what is sort of the goal? Are you sort of trying to just build this big community of designers and get them to interact with one another and interact with people who are reading and using the visualizations?
00:09:07
Speaker
Well, at a certain point, yes.
Infogram's Acquisition of Visualoop
00:09:11
Speaker
But the idea of an infographic gallery is far from being something new. Let me just go a little bit before to the infogram acquisition, which was obviously a major step for Visual Loop. The idea was that from the synergy between infogram resources and the overall editorial proposal that Visual Loop
00:09:36
Speaker
has been developing, that we could find and increase the value of visual loop as a useful resource for the whole spectrum, from the data visualization beginner to the high-end user who's been around for decades.
00:09:57
Speaker
Infogram, for those of you who are not familiar with it, is a company based in Riga and in San Francisco, which is a tool for easy creating visualizations. And their targets and their goals for data literacy and the effort they are doing
00:10:19
Speaker
on a worldwide scale, not only on an English speaking universe, which is something that Visual Loop is also very proud of. We feature works from all over the world. But we had some very, very common points and perspectives. And when I was approached by Infogram, things went down very smoothly. So that allowed, of course,
00:10:45
Speaker
for all these upgrades that we're watching on Visual Loop. Mainly our focus at this point, and until now,
00:10:55
Speaker
has been the platform so basically to move from being a blog to become a true resource for those interested in infographic design and data visualization.
Visualoop's Archival Mission
00:11:10
Speaker
We kept all the editorial content so basically the weekly roundups, the interviews, the weekly featured portfolio, the guest posts which are also a very very important part of our editorial
00:11:25
Speaker
policy, so we kept all of that but with this upgrade we facilitated the creation of a true high quality archive and that is where I think we differentiate ourselves from the other infographic galleries that you see around there.
00:11:48
Speaker
I mean, we are trying to look at it more as a true archive from works from the past two or three decades or even older ones, but that is very simple to understand why I think everyone that
00:12:10
Speaker
uses the internet for visualization purposes, knows that it's easier to find a medieval map on the internet that perhaps an infographic published 10-15 years ago by a newspaper, even in the New York Times. So I think there's a huge gap in terms of online
00:12:35
Speaker
efforts, even from the mediums, from the newspapers and magazines themselves, to offer access to such a vast archive of content and high quality content. I mean, we're talking about journalism, not marketing or promotional pieces. So there's a research and an educational value to that in our perspective.
00:13:01
Speaker
Right, so that's an interesting point that you bring up because there are some of these other data visualizations sort of curated sites. You know, there's Lemonly and there's Visually and there was Visualizing.org although it seems to be dead.
00:13:16
Speaker
But some of those are, you know, sort of anyone can post to those sites, whereas you have more of a curated list and are pulling, you know, in what seems to me sort of the higher quality, as you mentioned, maybe not sort of the marketing infographics, the marketing material that people are making.
00:13:35
Speaker
So do you foresee a place in Visual Loop where there'll be communication between the designers and the readers, or do you see it more as a resource for people to say, I want to know what are the great interactive maps, is a good example you talked about a moment ago. I want to see what the great interactive maps that people have been making over the last five years. I'm going to go find those. And if I want to go learn how to make those, that's a different task. If I want to talk to the designers, that's a different task.
00:14:04
Speaker
But do you see a place in the future where there may be a method of people actually communicating on the site directly? Absolutely. We have been having great feedback from
00:14:20
Speaker
from the initial set, the initial poll of designers that agreed to be a part of this project. So we do have that in mind. We want to increase the social media site and the social networking site of the gallery. However, our first goal was to actually raise some awareness around this topic of the
00:14:50
Speaker
what Manuel Lima so brilliantly calls the digital dark ages where you are losing track of so many great projects either in print or online just because there's no proper place where even the designer feels motivated to share its work because one of the issues among all those galleries that you mentioned is precisely that
00:15:19
Speaker
from a developer or a designer point of view, maybe it's not that good to have your work side by side with a poor promotional one. And that will probably in a time where time itself is such a high commodity
00:15:39
Speaker
people will probably will not spend much time feeding that website and that gallery with their best walks now on visual loop what we're trying to do is to make a real organic community
00:15:56
Speaker
that grows with the help of its members. So each member will soon have a set of invitations to invite other high-end, high-level designers. And since we also have collective profiles, John,
00:16:13
Speaker
We are not just focusing, like I said, on newspapers, magazines, and other sorts of publishers. We have, for instance, universities that can share a new way, that have on visual loop, a new way of showcasing what their students and their academics are doing. So the concept of bridging
00:16:37
Speaker
together the several tribes is still very much present on this new upgrade. So that and the fact that the works are moderated, so I think that are two good guarantees that will keep the gallery at a high quality level.
00:16:59
Speaker
Yes, so let's talk a little bit about these different camps, because you have the researcher groups, you have the journalists, you have the folks making static infographics, you have the people making interactive visualizations. I think, as I recall, when I first started looking through Visualloop at the very beginning, it was mostly static infographics, and now it's sort of grown beyond that.
00:17:24
Speaker
sort of see the field evolving both in terms of how these different groups interact with one another. I mean, I think the, you know, certain people create static, certain people create interactive visualizations. The academics seem to sort of be that sort of a different field. But how do you foresee them sort of all working together to sort of move the, you know, help the field of communicating data evolve over time?
00:17:51
Speaker
In terms of the gallery, we made the conscience effort to have static infographics precisely because of the value and the shorter lifespan they usually have. So on a daily newspaper, the lifespan of an infographic is, I don't know, one day, two days probably. If that infographic is not repurposed or at least included on some sort of gallery,
00:18:20
Speaker
And I think the newspapers and the magazines, they should be the ones leading this. But if that doesn't happen, what you have is a lot of great work scattered around in places like Flickr or Behance or Dribble or Pinterest. So our first goal was, OK, we want to be the platform where you can find
00:18:47
Speaker
the best infographics, including the print infographics, which are so rare. Now, when it comes to interactive, of course, they supposedly are easier to find and easier to even to share on social media.
Collaboration in Infographic Projects
00:19:06
Speaker
So as you can see, week after week, day after day, we are having more interactive infographics added to our gallery.
00:19:17
Speaker
And I think it's just a consequence of the work that we have been doing, inviting the players that are working more with those interactive forms of visual representation of intervention. As for the field, well, one thing that I can say about the great projects is that they're rarely, and this is almost common sense, but they're rarely the project of a one man
00:19:46
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, today you have a mix of skills, not necessarily linked with journalism or even with design, but you have a lot of different skills that are being used, especially on the top newsrooms. For the middle one and the small ones, the challenge and the opportunity as well that appears is that you're having
00:20:16
Speaker
an explosion as well of free tools and free or at least
00:20:24
Speaker
cheap options. Yeah, better tools. Yeah, better tools to create without having that huge team with different sets of skills. So the landscape is evolving.
Challenges in Visual Journalism
00:20:37
Speaker
I think the challenge, the major challenges that publishers and speaking here in the media industry, they are facing are still the conceptual ones, understanding the internet, understanding the audience, understanding the
00:20:51
Speaker
the advertising marketing that has been supporting these publications for so long. And those are the profound changes that are still affecting the growth of visual journalism as a much more frequent and useful form of storytelling and news reporting.
00:21:16
Speaker
Great. Well, on that note, on the idea that we still have a long way to go, but things are getting better. We have great tools and a site-like visual loop to pull it all together for us. I want to thank you for coming on the show. This has been really interesting. Thank you very much, John. Keep up the great work. Thank you, sir. And thanks to everyone for listening. Please let me know if you have any comments or questions. Hit me up on Twitter at policyvis. Check out the site at policyvis.com and rate the show on iTunes. Thanks so much, and we'll see you next week.
00:21:59
Speaker
This episode of the PolicyViz podcast was brought to you by Socrata. Socrata is the global leader in software solutions that are designed exclusively for digital government and provide benefits for hundreds of public sector leaders and their constituents. The company's customers, among others, include the cities of New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. To learn more about Socrata, visit them on the web at www.socrata.com.