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Charting New Horizons: Amanda Makulec on Leadership, Community, and the Human Touch Behind DataViz
799 Plays8 months ago
Amanda Makulec is the current Executive Director of the Data Visualization Society (DVS), and in this week’s episode of the PolicyViz Podcast, we discuss her journey and the DVS’s evolution as it approaches its fifth anniversary. Amanda shares her experience starting as a volunteer all the way to leading the entire organization. With her second term coming to an end, she emphasizes the importance of term limits and her commitment to ensuring the organization’s sustainability by focusing on operational systems, finances, compliance, and community responsiveness.
Keywords: charting new horizons: amanda makulec on leadership, amanda makulec on leadership, data visualization, Community, trakin tech, Human Touch Behind DataViz, tableau, new horizons: amanda makulec, makulec on leadership, leadership community and the human touch, Touch Behind DataViz, business intelligence, data analyst, amanda makulec on leadership community, Amanda Makulec, amanda makulec, data visualization society, public health, women in analytics, women in data, steve Wexler , mathematics, Al, machine learning
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Transcript
Introduction: Amanda McCulloch's Leadership in DVS
00:00:12
Speaker
Welcome back to the policy of his podcast. I'm your host, John Schwabish. On this week's episode of the show, I welcome the executive director of the Data Visualization Society and my friend Amanda McCulloch.
The Role and Future of DVS
00:00:23
Speaker
Amanda and I talk about her time leading the DVS over the last few years and as her time winds down in that position.
00:00:31
Speaker
where she thinks the DVS fits into the current landscape of the field and where she thinks it will head in the future. And of course data visualization as a field is kind of interesting because it has both a researcher side and a practitioner side and it's interesting to think about how both of those sides interact or don't interact and so we talk about where DVS sort of sits
00:00:54
Speaker
in those two camps and I'm sure if you think about it more or have a different sort of feeling of your role in the field, how DVS can provide you with benefits. So it's a really interesting conversation and I think if you are, especially if you are just getting started in the field, this is the conversation you want to listen to because it's going to help you think about how at least Amanda thinks about DVS and how it can help you in your data visualization journey.
00:01:20
Speaker
So I'm going to turn you over to the interview in
Audience Engagement and Reviews
00:01:22
Speaker
just one second. But before I do, if you could take a moment out of your day to leave a rating or review of the show on your favorite podcast provider, iTunes, Spotify, especially, or if you're watching this on YouTube, leave a comment, leave a review, subscribe to the channel. That would be great.
00:01:39
Speaker
Those ratings, those reviews really helped me find other guests to invite onto the show so that I can bring you this content each and every other week. So here is my conversation with Amanda. I hope you'll enjoy it and I hope you will check out the Data Visualization Society website. And if you aren't already a member, we'll consider signing up. So here's my conversation with the Executive Director of the Data Visualization Society, Amanda McConaughey.
Amanda's Journey and Transition in DVS
00:02:08
Speaker
Amanda, what a pleasure to see you again. You too, John. It's been a while. Thanks for having me on today. I mean, it's very exciting. Let's see. I think it was the last time I saw you over the summer. Possibly. Like a whole entire week of quality time at that conference in Maine, right? Yeah. Well, that's possible. It could be the last time. That's crazy. Given that we basically live like
00:02:32
Speaker
15 minutes from each other. Yeah, something like that.
Founding and Structuring of DVS
00:02:35
Speaker
Kind of sad. But it's great to see you. Thanks for coming on the show. You are in your last 12 months of Executive Director of Data Visualization Society. So give me a little bit of your history of DVS. Like how did you ramp all the way up to ED and now seeing the end of your term?
00:02:58
Speaker
Oh, ramp up is an interesting word, right? So I mean, we're turning five. We're turning five this year, which is very exciting. Our birthday is in February. So five years of the Data Vis Society. And I have been involved since February of 2019 when I think I was person number 12. If I look at the roster to sign up for DVS and check the box for yes, I would like to volunteer.
Leadership Focus on Community and Scalability
00:03:22
Speaker
And I got a pretty quick message from Amy Cecil who said, yes, we would love for you to help volunteer. And we knew each other through data visit circles from back when she had lived in DC and had connected back at tapestry, which was kind of the birthplace of DBS back in 2018 when Amy, Molly and Elijah
00:03:37
Speaker
kicked off the conversations about how to create this space for people to connect across different tech stacks and communities and spaces. And so it's interesting looking back over the course of five years, because it feels like it went by really quickly. And it feels like it's been a really long time. February of 2019 was when I had my first kid. And so I was on maternity leave.
00:03:58
Speaker
And I won't venture to say I was bored because I don't think that's the right framing of life with a newborn at home. I mean, you have kids. Life with a newborn is not boring, but there is something that some intellectual stimulation gaps there in terms of spending lots of quality time with a tiny human that doesn't really engage in meaningful conversation. Yeah.
00:04:15
Speaker
And so I got involved very early on and took on the role of the operations director when we kicked off the first DVS board in June of that same year, because we wanted to get ourselves set up in a way that we could be a kind of fully formed organization that wasn't a loosely knit group of people running something with a balance sheet run off of an Excel spreadsheet where people log their expenses and we figured out who owed
00:04:40
Speaker
who what, instead kind of getting everything set up to actually be a created firm organization, getting all the paperwork in to be a 501c3 nonprofit, because we were funded with the goal of being a nonprofit professional association. And so doing all of that work up front that set me up to be the operations director, which I stayed in for about a year and a half until Elijah wrapped up his first term as executive director, and then I ran for and then was selected as the executive director.
00:05:07
Speaker
gosh, no, three years ago. And we have a term limit, which is I know, novel and exciting, but that is the reason I'll wrap I know I'll wrap up at the end of this year is we do have a two term term limit in any given role. And so I've had this wonderful arc of being able to be involved in
00:05:22
Speaker
the foundational creation of what the organization is that can also move through different leadership and board members and remain stable and growing and doing exciting things and also get a chance to be able to have a point where I can pass the torch. So I'm excited to dive into what that world looks like. So what does the next 12 months look like for you and for DBS? Like what are you trying to what do you want to accomplish in this last stretch of your last term?
00:05:51
Speaker
So I think one of the focuses always for me from a leadership perspective has been twofold. On the back end, how do we build an organization that is scalable and sustainable long term, that any one of us can roll off the board and leave and move into an advisory capacity or shift away and just be a general member.
00:06:08
Speaker
And DVS will continue to live on and grow and the various things we've built will be sustained. And that requires a lot of work on the back end in terms of operational systems and finances and working on compliance bits and making sure that we're being responsive to member questions and all of the different things that you think of in running a business, right? I mean,
DVS as a Community Hub and Resource
00:06:28
Speaker
DVS is basically running a small nonprofit business.
00:06:32
Speaker
that has all of those various operational kind of things behind the scenes. So part of me is really focused on, after five years, making sure I am not a dependency on any of those things, so that when I roll off and leave, the organization continues to flourish. And that's, I know, a little bit self-serving, but I think it's also important more broadly for us to think about in organizations that we're in, especially volunteer organizations,
00:06:54
Speaker
that you don't have anyone who's a single kind of linchpin that holds things together. The second piece, though, is really thinking about how we kind of focus on supporting our community and what the DataVis community looks like as a whole.
00:07:06
Speaker
I think as a professional association, we certainly check the boxes on annual conference and awards and finding ways to celebrate and nurture and advance this industry, which are our kind of three key pillars that we hold onto. But I think the thing that has gotten harder as we've gotten bigger, we've grown now to over 31,000 members across over 160 countries around the world, is how do we create more community spaces within our community?
00:07:31
Speaker
whether it's through our local chapters, our interest groups, through Slack conversations, or through other spaces. And so one of the areas I've been really focused on this year, and we'll be thinking about a lot as we get our new board members onboarded, since we just finished a board transition, is thinking about our ways in which we can support and build community in a really meaningful way. Yeah. So what does that mean? What does that look like for you? I mean, what is your view of DVS's role in the DataVis community, which is,
00:08:00
Speaker
centralized and decentralized kind of at the same time, depending on like what sector you're in and what tool you like to use. And, you know, are you part of the Tableau group part of the R group? Like, how do you view the DBS role in the community?
00:08:16
Speaker
So I see us as a convener and a space that people can come together from across tech stacks and tools, from across subject matter areas and areas of interest and share knowledge, resources, best practices in ways that they might not be able to in more tool specific spaces. That was part of the root of how DVS got founded, right? The idea that, you know, if all the Power BI folks are talking about their kind of ways of using color and all the Tableau folks are talking about color,
00:08:42
Speaker
and all the data journalists are talking about color and the data artists are talking
Impact of Social Media on Community Engagement
00:08:46
Speaker
about color. Well, we see a commonality, right? We all have different things that we're thinking about around how we use color.
00:08:51
Speaker
And our use cases might be a bit different, but there's shared knowledge and information and inspiration we can take across groups. And so I think DVS really still serves as that kind of core convening space. And I think that some of the fundamental kind of work streams and products, products is probably a bad word to use, but I mean, products that we've built out over the last five years in the form of our Outlier conference.
00:09:14
Speaker
and in the Nightingale magazine are really spaces that people can go to and discover content specific to data visualization, but that cuts across so many different dimensions and spaces within our space in our industry. And so I think we still take, we occupied that kind of convening space and helping to establish and look at how we can see data vis as an industry. I think that's come with a couple of challenges though, in the form of people hearing data visualization society and saying, I don't have data vis in my job title.
00:09:44
Speaker
So that's not somewhere where I belong. Whereas I would say that anyone who does data visualization work at some point in their job or their lives could find value in being part of DVS at some member level, in part because data visualization creation and reading data visualizations and data literacy have become fundamental skills similar to writing in a lot of ways.
00:10:08
Speaker
in the ways in which we show up in the workplace. And I did a talk at a meetup not two nights ago at a PMI group. And I said, how many of you think of yourselves as DataViz creators? And maybe a couple of hands go up in a room of 60 people. And I said, how many of you have ever had to build a chart for a PowerPoint slide? Every hand in the room shoots up, right?
00:10:26
Speaker
So I mean, I think we're all a little bit closer to data visualization than we think we are. And DVS can help to connect those dots and make that a space that feels nurturing, welcoming, and helps people discover those kind of practices and people to follow, read, look to people like you. Yeah. So on that convening topic, the world of social media has changed pretty dramatically over the last
00:10:52
Speaker
what, 12, 16 months. So I mean, so I will say that like my date of his Twitter was like my main place to go for that discussion. And there's all these other social media channels that I'm
00:11:07
Speaker
like I'm not adding new channels but like there's also the DVS slack which has its own like all these channels have their own pros and cons but like what's your perspective on kind of data vis social media and then obviously like how the DVS slack
00:11:24
Speaker
or DBS generally, it doesn't have to be the site. DBS kind of maybe fills some of that hole, even if you view it as a hole. But what's your feeling on where things are headed and where they are? So I think it's an interesting question on a personal level and then on a DBS level, right? Yeah. So how I choose to spend my time on a personal level as a data visualization professional has shifted and changed, probably similar to yours.
00:11:52
Speaker
I know I did DBS Twitter and database Twitter and more broadly, and Twitter being a convening space where there was this kind of collision of my world's international development,
Funding Challenges and Priorities
00:12:02
Speaker
public health, database, cooking, random photography, people like that's what I loved about Twitter was it was this intersection of my interests that I found really interesting to engage with.
00:12:12
Speaker
I don't find that that's what I get on Twitter anymore, so I don't really engage in that space much. And it's a bit disappointing, because I think that a lot of us that kind of built up that community there, as well as having DVS build up a community of people there. But these days, just even getting your content, your replies, your information seen, if you're not a paid contributor to that platform, I think it's harder and harder based on how algorithms work.
00:12:37
Speaker
I've shifted over, and we have a huge following from a DBS perspective on LinkedIn, where we have over 140,000 followers for the DBS account. And I find that LinkedIn has been a great space for us to share kind of passive updates about information, about postings on conferences, new Nightingale articles. And we get some engagement there, but it's not the same kind of real-time conversation, in part, again, because of how my news feed shows up.
00:13:02
Speaker
I think sometimes I see something from two weeks ago that suddenly is getting surfaced to me. And there's so much kind of AI generated content there that on a personal level, I find that it's not as as engaging for me in terms of those conversations. So I think it's tough because I think that we've seen this splintering across people testing out different spaces, Instagram threads, blue sky now, going over to Mastodon and those
Amanda's Professional Work and Teaching
00:13:27
Speaker
different spaces.
00:13:27
Speaker
And the challenge is that the more we fragment across things, you both see people going into their entrenched corners where their people are. And you also see people trying to do something across everything, right? Where, say, the Du Bois challenge running in February is amazing. But people are posting what they're doing across five or six different spaces and channels.
00:13:46
Speaker
including the DVS Slack. And what that means is that people are seeing the section of the work and the challenge participation specific to their environment. And so I think DVS Slack creates a space that's a little bit more private for people to share things than that kind of challenge. You're in a community of people who've been vetted and added as members for the organization.
00:14:06
Speaker
So you're not putting it out on a public facing space. So I think there's some more safety and psychological safety in posting questions and things like that in the DBS Slack that enabled conversation. I think we have the challenge other Slack workspaces have that aren't paid that the long history of interesting conversations over time gets archived and you can't access it.
00:14:26
Speaker
And I know folks who have been critical of kind of having those conversations and not being able to find them. And so it's always that tricky balance as we look at things as an organization that if we have a robust enough set of Slack conversations, should we be investing in paid Slack for our members? Or should we migrate to a free platform like Discord? And those are the debates we deal with all the time internal as an organization and how we create space for our members to have those conversations and create community spaces for the DataVis community.
00:14:54
Speaker
But Slack is not cheap. To upgrade to that plan, whatever it is, it's not cheap. Oh, no. For us as an organization, based on actives and based on the nonprofit discount Slack offers, which I forget is 70% or 80% on their base rate, we had costed it out and it was going to cost last year, would have cost us around $25,000.
00:15:15
Speaker
to buy paid Slack for a year. And so whenever it comes up where someone's like, why can't we have this? I'm like, well, what would you like for us not to pay for? And then there are other things that we would love to invest more in, like having a dedicated paid part-time community manager or operations manager who helps to support some more of those community level functions.
00:15:35
Speaker
that we would probably choose to invest in first. And those are the tricky back-end kind of trade-offs you're making. Or when you say yes to spending money on one thing that serves one group of people, you're saying no to something else that might serve a different group. Right. Or you're increasing fees, the membership fees, which nobody wants to pay more to. No. And we try to keep those fees so low. I think our entry fee you can pay as a student or something else is $25 a year.
00:16:00
Speaker
Right. I mean, so this is the tension. I'm curious, aside from DVS,
00:16:08
Speaker
Um, what are you up to these days? What are you making? What are you building? What are you leading? What do you, what do you, I know DVS is taking up what, like probably like 10 to 20 hours each week of your time. That's about right. And has for about five years. So if someone wants to do the math on that, I will put in a fun, fun fact of like, when we look at our IRS tax returns as a nonprofit, they actually do an estimation of the value of the volunteer hours contributed. So when you look at our total return, like half of our return is donated volunteer labor.
00:16:39
Speaker
Which is scary, right? There's a sustainability cap there that you have to address. But for people who kind of look at those kind of things, if you ever look at our tax return, which is public information, if you ever look at that, the big number you see is about half volunteer labor that's been estimated in value by the IRS.
00:16:58
Speaker
Oh, what am I working on? So in addition to kind of DVS, taking up a good chunk of my time and a very valuable chunk of my time. I love doing this work. I love the community building we've done. I'm excited about the new board members we have coming on and the ways in which some of our current board members are moving into leadership roles in smaller sections of the organization.
Challenges in Data Visualization Practices
00:17:18
Speaker
I still work. Actually, I do have paid work. I work as an independent consultant. I have since March of 2022. I was working at Excela as a data visualization lead and the acting director of AI and analytics and ended up shifting out on my own in March of
00:17:36
Speaker
Gosh, almost two years ago. Just because of where everything was in my personal life and kind of managing being a working parent and managing balancing priorities and really wanting to go back and focus more on the world of public health data visualization design.
00:17:51
Speaker
And the way to make sure you're focusing on the kinds of projects and subject areas you care about is really to focus in and work for yourself if you have the privilege and the ability to do so. And so I've been working on various different projects, working with different clients, including USAID, working about halftime with them for the past year plus, working with USAID, working with smaller organizations and entities, teaching at MICA, the Maryland Institute College of Arts,
00:18:18
Speaker
kind of cobbling together this interesting kaleidoscope of different ways in which I get to still do some data visualization design work, but focusing a lot on capacity development and teaching and training and thinking about how do we continue to help people build these various pieces of skills and knowledge and information about data visualization design that oftentimes is really going back to basics.
00:18:41
Speaker
for people who have oftentimes used kind of basic chart defaults and different tools that they use, and helping them build better charts where they feel like they're making deliberate design decisions. And that's really where I'm happiest, is how do I help people build those skills? And how do I help organizations go ahead and operationalize some of the systems for continued skill development and for finding ways to build better internal data visualization projects by using user-centered design,
00:19:08
Speaker
agile and other approaches to building better dashboards, for example. So what's in your experience, and this obviously goes back years now, but like in your experience working with clients and other groups and at excella and all the other and JSI before that, like one of your love your map shirt, by the way, I mean, JSI, this is a nice shout out to Jon Snow in the collar. What, uh, what is your client's like folks biggest challenge? Is it on tools? Is it the concept? Is it just like.
00:19:38
Speaker
you know i could never build something so amazing as such and such a person like what if you if you had if someone came to you said hey we want to work with our team but you can only teach or do one thing like is there a silver kind of silver bullet for you that you would say this is the thing that we need to work on.
00:19:58
Speaker
Oh, that's so specific to what their needs are. I would be asking a lot of follow-up questions to silver bullets. And then I'd probably get nervous that they wanted a silver bullet. And I decide that's not a good match for the way that I approach thinking about data visualization. But as I think about the cross-cutting skills, I do think technology becomes a easy thing to blame when technology solutions don't solve the problem, right? How many places have you gone to that have a ton of Tableau licenses and Tableau server
00:20:27
Speaker
and yet still people aren't using the information and still aren't kind of engaging with the data and the dashboards or charts continue to underwhelm. And so for me, I would focus on kind of narrowing in who are the people who are building or should be building and designing charts and graphs, not just in their job title, but charts and graphs, focusing specifically on static charts and graphs.
00:20:50
Speaker
Because I think if you can start to learn and implement best practices and principles around decluttering, meaningful text, purposeful color, sorting with purpose and order, I think if you start to apply those design principles and some good thoughtful chart selection, if you can learn to build better analytical charts that communicate a key finding, a lot of those same ideas and principles around color and white space and clutter and design
00:21:16
Speaker
all translate into and you build upon as you scale to bigger products or projects like dashboards or interactive tools or reports.
Dashboard Design: Aesthetic vs Function
00:21:24
Speaker
But if I had to focus in on one thing, it would be let's master and focus in on building a better chart and having a framework in your head for how to make deliberate decisions about everything on that chart.
00:21:35
Speaker
that you can run through, that I can run through now. I mean, you probably have one in your head that you can run through and take a Excel default bar chart and make it look pretty great in the course of a couple minutes. And I really believe anyone can do that. And I think if you were looking for that kind of silver bullet approximation, you would be thinking about a skill set that I firmly believe anyone can master. Because then once you can do it, you get excited about it and you get good feedback on it. And your better charts and graphs communicate more effectively
00:22:02
Speaker
and connect with people differently, and they start using data more, and they ask for better charts, and then you get the opportunity to learn more and share more. And that's exactly what my whole entire career arc was at JSI.
00:22:13
Speaker
I wanted to learn to build better charts and graphs and went and started learning how to do that myself and eventually started doing little brown bags and then started getting asked to work on projects and eventually ran a small database team inside of the organization. And I think it's that kind of snowball effect that you can have just by enabling a couple people who then take and run with it how to build those better charts that you can make a lot of impact.
00:22:37
Speaker
Yeah, I totally agree with you and I think in some ways stripping out the technology issue, building interactive charts in a lot of ways is easier than a static chart because you can just say here you can go select and filter and search and you know
00:22:53
Speaker
The creator doesn't have to distill down to a story or an argument or a point. You have this flexibility that you give the user so that they can sort of build their own their own stories. I'm sure there's a whole bunch of dashboard designers out there who are yelling at me right now. But I think it's easier to just build them. I think it's harder to get people to use them.
00:23:15
Speaker
Cause I think oftentimes the default then becomes smash a bunch of filters across the side and, and hope that it all works out and hope that your user comes in and that they know what to do and they know what to look for and they know where to direct their energy and attention. And I just don't think that's usually the case either from a gap in knowledge or a gap in time that your executives not hopping onto your dashboard and wants to click 16 different filters. Right.
00:23:40
Speaker
You can train them to then save their own customized view and this, that, and the other. But all I hear are steps and steps and steps that have to happen from when they get to the dashboard to when they can use the data. And it was a big focus. And I think it's interesting thinking about the way we think of dashboards and business intelligence as this vertical.
00:23:59
Speaker
in a lot of organizations where like building the dashboards and the tools is the job of the team. Whereas when I was in the world of public health more firmly and I was a data person inside of a public health organization, I think I talked about this probably at that panel I was on at Urban with you years ago with Alberto about how charts lie. Like the work streams I worked in were never a data visualization work stream or funding vertical.
00:24:24
Speaker
It was, I was part of the team working on the measure evaluation data demand and use work stream, or I was working within the confines of building better community health information systems. And it was always part of the puzzle that helped get you to the goal of data use. And I just really loved that kind of framing and ways in which we thought about how we funded and built data visualization tools versus it being a team that builds these tools because it's their
Balancing Creativity with Practicality in Data Visualization
00:24:51
Speaker
job to build them. Yeah.
00:24:53
Speaker
I want to ask you on the dashboard side, since I know you're doing a lot of work, you're doing some writing on it. You go to, say, Tableau Vis of the Day or the Power BI site or whatever pops up in whatever social media feed you're on. And the stuff that gets a lot of attention on social media or Tableau Public, whatever, tends to be these super bespoke dashboards. There's a lot of cool icons and swirls, like Neil Richards has this great book on how he builds all these really neat
00:25:23
Speaker
I want to ask you, of all the dashboards you think that are out there, that people make every day, hundreds of thousands of them, and they're probably made every day, what percentage of them do you think are these cool, swirly, bespoke dashboards? Dashboards actually in production in organizations that they're actively using, right? Not things we might haphazardly call a dashboard because they happen to have been built in tablets. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a very good point. Yes, yes, that's right. Good differentiation, right?
00:25:54
Speaker
less than 5%, less than 1%. I mean, small, small, small, small. And I think it's
Outlier Conference and Future Innovations
00:26:01
Speaker
in part because these typically involve a lot of labor to build. They involve a lot of labor to decode and understand sometimes. You have to spend time with them to make sense of them. And they often, in my experience, require additional kind of padding in of additional data and data densification that can impact speed and how your dashboard actually renders and performance.
00:26:22
Speaker
And I think when we think about dashboard design, there are different things we're looking at, one of which is kind of speed to insight, the kind of charts and graphs we use where bar charts and line charts and spark lines and KPI boxes are really helpful. There's also performance in the sense of kind of speed to rendering. And I've had the client environment where the senior executive says, I saw this this of the day. It's so cool. I want this on my dashboard.
00:26:48
Speaker
And you have to kind of take a bottom line approach and say, well, do you want me to divert three days of one of my developers time to build that instead of these other five things on the backlog? Do you recognize that we're going to have to pad in to make the base shape that everything plots against in the background? We'll have to pad in a whole nother data set, and it's probably going to impact your performance on this massive kind of load you already have in a dashboard program.
00:27:11
Speaker
And how often are you going to use it? Is it going to be a screenshot that goes on the cover as kind of data art in your annual quarterly data review? In which case could we just build this for you and run it once a quarter and not put it in production? Like if that's all you really need and it's important to you. But I think there's this disconnect between the things that look like shiny, pretty objects, which I love seeing how people do them. The geometries and things like the math of it is fascinating. The math is very cool. Very cool.
00:27:38
Speaker
Yeah. The practical nature of it. Not so much. Right. So to link this back to DVS. Yeah. Do you feel like DVS because particularly in the Slack, uh, in the DVS Slack, which as you mentioned is more private,
Reflections and Future Engagements with DVS
00:27:52
Speaker
um, do you feel that people may not, may not have this need to create the shiny
00:28:00
Speaker
a sparkly thing that actually doesn't help people get to insights because they can connect with people in sort of a different, more personal way to say, oh, I really love this thing. And someone said, yeah, I just made that because it was fun and I like to do the math and solve this problem in Tableau or Excel. Like, do you think DBS helps that, that little bit of like creation envy of creating this beautiful thing, but maybe not that useful?
00:28:24
Speaker
I think we've seen it create that kind of space. I mean, we have a topic like a share critique channel people can post things on that has a very specific format. Who's the audience? What's the goal? What phase are you in? Like, what kind of feedback are you looking for? And I think that we've seen kind of more practical things get shared there, which is great.
00:28:41
Speaker
And I think we can have better conversations about the pragmatism of charts and graphs and those kind of seemingly small design decisions there in a good way. I do think that as we look at kind of the space and the space DVS occupies, we end up in our public facing content, Outlier and Nightingale and other spaces, digging a lot into the more kind of whimsical, curious kind of charts and graphs, right? Look at Outlier's first couple of years. There's a lot of data art and innovation and creativity.
00:29:08
Speaker
And I think sometimes that drives people to think that that's the majority of our community. But if you look at kind of the segmentation of our membership base, more than 60% of our members from the data that we have available on our members who come in through our newer membership funnel.
00:29:23
Speaker
our analysts and BI developers who are interested in learning kind of better practices and getting more engaged. And so I think that it's important to think about how do you create space that celebrates simplicity and what that looks like and making sure that that's clear in our public content as well, which is where people often learn about us.
00:29:40
Speaker
I'm actually really excited. The theme for Outlier this year is positive disruption. And part of the goal of that and the way we've been framing it to people is that doesn't mean this is like the explosion of data art and NFTs on disruptive technologies. This is the idea of like positive disruption is what's even some seemingly small and simple thing that you've done that you've changed in your database practice.
00:30:01
Speaker
that has had a positive impact moving our field forward in a good way, changing and shaping how people use data. And I often go back to kind of Stephen Johnson's where great ideas come from, which funny enough, I saw him speak, I think it was at the 2012 Tableau Conference. And he talks about this concept of practical innovation.
00:30:18
Speaker
that I think to me is connected a lot to the idea of these positive disruptors, because practical innovation, he says, is taking some idea or concept and putting it in a new environment and applying it to solve a different problem than it was designed around. And many of the great innovations that we see, and he talks about these throughout history in the various chapters of the book, are really about kind of taking an idea that didn't work in one place and using it somewhere else, because context matters so much. The people implementing it, doing it,
00:30:47
Speaker
impacted by it matter so much. So I hope that with Outlier, we'll be able to see these kind of positive disruption themes come through both in interesting innovations in data visualization and the use of AI and other things like that. But also in some of these seemingly small ways, maybe we've changed how we develop and display a dashboard. And I hope people consider the ways in which those are also positive disruptions in our work as well. Yeah.
00:31:12
Speaker
So let me just wrap up with one more DVS question for you. You've got a year left of executive director. What are you going to miss most? Maybe not having to work 20 hours a week. Yeah. It takes a lot to choose to do that for five years, right? All right.
00:31:30
Speaker
people, almost people in the ways in which I get to be one of the first people people reach out to. I love working with our team. I've met great people and worked with people on our board, and I'll certainly miss them. But I think it's some of the ways in which when someone reaches out to DVS or they reply to the newsletter, it punts back over to me. And I get to kick off and have these occasional interesting kind of one on one conversations with people.
00:31:53
Speaker
I'm going to miss that. I will say I won't miss the fact that I've also been told that just by holding the title of executive director, sometimes people are intimidated to reach out to me and say hi or ask me questions. And I'm like, oh, please do. I would love to chat about your work and what you do. And I do try to kind of balance how much time I have for more in-depth kind of mentoring and other things and nudging people over to our mentorship program. But when it comes to just kind of off the cuff conversations or saying hello, I always love connecting with folks and hearing what they're working on.
00:32:22
Speaker
And I feel like DBS has just created space for me to have those kind of moments of creative collision in ways that I wouldn't have otherwise. And I've really enjoyed and appreciated that part of being part of this team. I also love these kind of big challenges of building things. And I think that working independently, working for myself as a consultant, being part of a team is a big part of where I draw my energy from. On the whole Myers-Briggs piece, I'm like 100% extrovert, as easy as they come.
00:32:50
Speaker
I answer no questions as an introvert at all. And so I love being around and working with people. And so I think as I look forward, I'm going to continue to figure out what my project mix looks like and what other communities I might engage in that allow me to go ahead and continue to foster that same sense of community. And that might mean carrying forward and doing kind of volunteer data visualization work in service of a cause that I care about, where I'm kind of like my work transitions, going from being the data person in public health to the data person in tech.
00:33:19
Speaker
now in DVS, kind of going from being a leader in a dataviz organization to maybe being a dataviz contributor and doer in an organization and service of a cause I care about. So it'll be interesting to see kind of how the world works out and the juggle of a couple of small kids at home. You never know what's going to happen. Absolutely. You never know. Absolutely. Well, congrats on everything. I'm sure lots of people are grateful that you were able to steer the DVS into a successful organization where it is.
00:33:47
Speaker
I hope so.
Encouragement for Community Involvement
00:33:48
Speaker
And I will say it before we wrap up, I would love if people have feedback for us on how we can better serve our membership on things we should be focusing on.
00:33:56
Speaker
I think within the constraints of our current kind of environment of the budgets we have and the time we have and the volunteer labor, there are certainly limits of what we can do. But some of the biggest successes we've had have been with people stepping up as community members and saying, I want to kind of build and do this one small thing. And the more we have people stepping up and doing those kinds of things in service of the community, the better. And so if people have ideas, I'd love to chat and love to know what you'd love to see out of DBS over the course of the next five years.
00:34:22
Speaker
Right. And so they can reach out to you DVS on the DVS Slack, all these places, but they can also see you, I presume in person in June at the outlier conference. Sure can. And then at the end of the year, there'll be information's beautiful awards somewhere that'll happen somewhere. So lots of opportunities to connect.
00:34:42
Speaker
I always love connecting in person and would love to see folks there. And Outlier will be in Chicago, Illinois this year in June, also available hybrid. And we're working on some maybe satellite sessions for those of you who don't want to fly across an ocean, but still want to hang out with cool data as people. But I will be in Chicago and would love to say hi if anyone is there. So please walk up to me, introduce yourself, say hello.
00:35:02
Speaker
And I'm excited for kind of where the DataVis community is going and what DataVis looks like today. And I think it is continuing to be a space that is so important for us to understand as citizens in a lot of ways. And so I'm excited by the ways in which DBS can continue to help to shape what that looks like and create space for people to learn and grow. Awesome. Thanks, Amanda. Always a pleasure to see you. Thanks, John.
00:35:27
Speaker
Thanks everyone for tuning into this week's episode of the show. I hope you enjoyed that conversation. I hope you will check out the DBS website. I hope if you are not, you will consider becoming a member. And before you click stop on this podcast episode, just take a second please to leave a rating or overview of the show on your favorite podcast provider. Really helped me find more guests to bring on the show so that you can learn how to better communicate your data in your analysis.
00:35:54
Speaker
So until next time, this has been the PolicyViz podcast. Thanks so much for listening. A number of people helped bring you the PolicyViz podcast. Music is provided by the NRIs. Audio editing is provided by Ken Skaggs. Design and promotion is created with assistance from Sharon Sotsky-Ramirez. And each episode is transcribed by Jenny Transcription Services. If you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it and review it on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:36:22
Speaker
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