Last night, I had a conversation with Mark Ng and Marc Chung, two people who I have recently found to be highly enthusiastic in analyzing large data sets. The outcome of the conversation may potentially be two organizations, a user group and a work group.

The User Group:
I’m an interface guy who’s been doing data visualization lightly for 4 years and heavily for 1 year. My skill set for dealing with large amounts of data is creeping its way back, back, back from the front-end interface into the deep abyss of things that drive data visualization: statistical analysis, data mining, and distributed computing. In researching these topics, I’ve learned about some fascinating and useful tools that can do mind-boggling things with mind-bogglingly large data sets. This is stuff I would love to share, and even more, I’m interested to see what other people know and have done with these types of tools. My proposition was to start a recurring meet-up that would consist of presentations and/or demos of tools, languages, platforms, and cloud computing technologies.

The Work Group:
One VERY hot topic driving data visualization forward right now is government transparency. More and more local, state, and federal government bodies are releasing gargantuan amounts of data for the public to review. The problem? Gargantuan means BIG! Here, we need to connect a few dots:

First, we need to get the data. That can be through public repositories, or, as an example, a local news outlet that submits public records requests to obtain public data.

Second, we need to get the data in the right hands. Extremely large data sets are unmanageable to people who aren’t statisticians. So let’s get statisticians involved!

Third, we need to make the results public, which could mean looping back with a local news outlet to get coverage. It could also mean building and embedding interactive data visualizations into local news web sites, much like the New York Times.

I think both groups are excellent ideas and they even complement each other well (the user group would be an excellent resource pool for the work group). It is important to get data wranglers, statistics enthusiasts, and visualization gurus to come out of the woodwork and help these ideas come to fruition! Connect with me, Mark Ng, and/or Marc Chung to get in touch and stay in the loop.

By 2am, here’s what I had come up with! (I’ll post the code soon eventually)

Code & Beats: Music Powered Twitter Wall from Brian Shaler on Vimeo.

Fun stuff! I’m interested in seeing this event come to Phoenix. We just need to get the organizer (+developer +designer +DJ) Avi to fly out and then round up a few local DJs with some good electro material. Un tiss un tiss un tiss…

Also, here’s a separate pic I snapped of the Twitter wall:

Code And Beats: Music Powered Twitter Wall

I should’ve put together a video showing more of the background dancing clips. Some of them were pretty excellent!

Here’s the basic premise:

A party celebrating the art of programming through performance. A handful of hardcore coders from the city’s hottest startups will work in the center of a pounding dance floor to a musical journey of electro beats.

Some additional details: it sounds like the “hardcore coders” will be facing the dance floor, with external monitors mirroring their laptops and facing the dance floor. There may also be one or more projectors involved.

I’m going to experiment with some new visual Flash-based stuff, and will try to include the room’s music, a webcam, and/or tweets as inputs!

It should be exciting! Also, I’m probably going to open-source everything I write at the event and post it somewhere like GitHub.

I think a realist would choose one or the other based on observations, and say it’s half empty if it had recently been emptied from a full level or half full if it had just been filled up.

If someone hands you a full beer and you drink half of it, your beer is half empty. Half is the progress you have made so far on emptying the glass of beer.

If someone asks a realist if a glass of beer he or she has never seen before is half empty or half full, the realist would likely take into consideration whether or not is any beer foam residue above the beer level to indicate that it had been partially emptied. “It’s half-empty,” the realist would reply. You could poor half a glass of beer for that same realist, and he or she would likely complain, “Hey! My beer is only half full! WTF?”

Just a random thought.

I added Giannii and Mike M. who each lent me couches in San Francisco. I added Mark and Mascha from New York City, and Mike G. from Chicago. I can think of at least 3 other people I’ve crashed with this year that I still need to post.

Part of why I’m all of the sudden trying to catch up is because I might be going on another couch-surfing spurt. Also, with more profiles out of the way, I can feel more free to post non-profiles. I think I can come up with some cool stuff to share about traveling.

By the way, I watched the movie Up in the Air recently. It is to travelers what Hackers was to geeks. I bring it up because George Clooney’s character did some things I was thinking about doing: share some of the tricks that optimize your airport experience.

Two and a half years ago, I rendered a large heat map representing almost 100,000 Digg users and the 300,000 friendships between them. I used PHP/GD2 to render the image and it took quite a while to render. Due to the difficulty of redrawing it, the heat map was never updated. It would have been great if the heat map reflected current information, but instead it got to live on as a snapshot taken in 2007.

Since then, I’ve wondered about ways of rendering heat maps on the fly, ideally using the visitor’s CPU. Finally, in November, I was able to hack together a highly optimized Flash application that produces pretty awesome-looking heat maps (if I do say so myself) within a second or two.

Check it out

I’m afraid I’m going to have to be a bit of a tease for now, and not dive into too much technical detail. This project is part of a series of data visualizations that utilize a specific, lesser-known feature in Flash.

Tonight, I was asked, “Brian, why don’t you take on any side work?”

I have a pretty strict zero side work policy. As a Flash developer, opportunities come to me regularly, and I do my best to deflect them to other local Flash developers. It makes sense for people to wonder why. There’s money in front of my face and I’m not reaching out to get it.

There are several reasons I don’t do side work. First of all, I don’t need the money. I make enough to get by with my day job, so I would rather spend the rest of my time on me — traveling, going out, working on personal side-projects. However, I could work about the same amount, have just as much free time, but make more money if I freelanced.

I know my limitations. I know what I’m good at and what I’m not good at. I’m good at making stuff move with code. I’m good at turning someone’s idea (”It should move like this.”) into a reality. I’m not good at keeping organized. I’m not good at paperwork. I’m not good at maintaining client relationships.

Maybe I should get over these problems at some point, but for now, I focus on what I’m good at and avoid what I’m not good at. And it works.

I get asked from time to time, “Brian, you’re the organizer of [some event], right?”

People know I’m involved with a lot of the tech events around Phoenix. Even when I’m not, I try to help spread the word. With only one recent exception (I stepped up to organize SustainaBIL at the last second when the organizer realized he was going to be out of town), I haven’t organized any events.

I know my limitations. I know what I’m good at and what I’m not good at. I’m good at taking tasks and getting things done. I’m good at connecting people with the resources they need. I’m good at coming up with and vetting ideas. I’m not good at organizing. I’m not good at following up and keeping the ball rolling. I’m not good at leading the charge and getting people to take orders from me.

So I stay where I’m most valuable. I’ll perch on the captain’s shoulder and squawk ideas into his/her ear. I’ll swab the deck or pitch the anchor. More specifically, I’ll help line up speakers, or design & build web sites, or live stream & live tweet events, or pick up food, or hand-craft badges, or program a Twitter wall. That seems to work.

There’s merit to saying, “if you’re not good at something, try harder or find methods to do it,” but it can also be a good idea to step back and avoid causing a disaster.

Somehow, I survived Geek Week AZ. I went to Ignite Phoenix, TEDxPhoenix, Desert Code Camp, SustainaBIL, AZIMA, Developer Ignite, Arizona Entrepreneurship Conference (AZEC), Social Media Club + AZEC Mixer, Phoenix WordCamp, #evfn, and PodCamp AZ. All without taking any time off work. The only events going on during working hours were AZEC & WordCamp, where I co-worked!

The spaghetti is on the wall, and it’s time to see what stuck. The event organizers who banded together to make it happen pulled it off. It was no easy task, because they’ve already got their handful with their own events, but this year, they went above and beyond to create something new. The culmination of 2 years of conversations about making a big splash in the local tech community resulted in a festival of independently organized tech-focused and tech-related events.

Geek Week AZ became what it was because the idea evolved WITH criticism. “You don’t think this will work? Then propose a better way of accomplishing the same goals.” What Geek Week AZ was looks nothing — NOTHING — like what Geek Week AZ initially set out to be.

Now that it has happened, there are new criticisms. It’s very important that this criticism doesn’t fall of deaf or defensive ears.

There are at least a dozen people who have said they are opposed to multi-day events. Perhaps something like Geek Week AZ isn’t for everyone, but the beauty of the model is that most of the events are free and you don’t have to pay for the full event and feel obligated to attend as much as possible. Some people just can’t handle 4 days in a row of learning, networking, and staying out late.

I thought one of the major problems would have been people not knowing what is going on and where to go. That’s why I put together a pocket guide to Geek Week AZ. Either the site solved the problem, or the problem didn’t end up being there to begin with.

There are justifiable concerns about the momentum and energy of attendees who participated in multiple events. It also seems possible that events could have built up more excitement and anticipation if they were standing alone and not a smaller part of a bigger thing.

Does this mean Geek Week AZ shouldn’t exist? No. This means there is valid criticism that should be addressed — not ignored — and addressed in a way that still accomplishes the same goals. What are the goals? I might have posted about them before, but feel free to ask me.

The way you respond to criticism shows your ability to think creatively. You can say, “It doesn’t work like this, so maybe we should go back to the old way of doing it.” Or you can say, “If it doesn’t work like this, what can we do to make it work better so we still go in the same direction: forward.”

Here’s to going forward.

This is one of the main reasons I tell myself I’m not a blogger. People may or may not read my posts. If there’s something worth posting, post it and post it quickly. If I don’t have anything to say, do what I usually do when I don’t have anything to say: STFU.

One thing I noticed, however, is that I don’t have to suppress blogger’s block on one of my other blogs, SofaJumper.com. I don’t post much there either, but when I do, it’s easier. There’s less pressure. It’s a simple task, versus being somewhat of a monumental piece of literature.

Why is that? Well, first of all, it’s not really ME. I don’t dig into my thoughts and try to come up with useful (To whom? I don’t know!) information. I’m not trying to write something I already have trouble verbalizing. The biggest challenge is the time it takes to sit down and type it out. Not much thinking necessary. Not much personal investment in the content.

I wonder how this applies to people who want to blog. I have both a personal blog and a not-so-personal blog like SofaJumper. If someone else was looking for advice for setting up their first blog, it might be beneficial for me to help them find a suitable middle ground between the bloggers block of a broad, undefined blog and an easy and focused blog.

I’m going to this event, and I think you should, too. I’m a fan of TED talks and have even helped organize a TED talk viewing party. TEDx is even better, because it mixes TED talk videos with live presentations from local individuals who have ideas worth spreading.

To explain the event a little more thoroughly, I’m going to re-post some info Tomas Carrillo (lead organizer for TEDxPhoenix and all-around awesome dude) has been sending out to local bloggers:

I’ve been in the trenches for the last few weeks putting the finishing touches on Arizona’s first ever TEDxPhoenix event which is scheduled to take place this Friday, November 6th from 6pm to 9pm at the Mesa Arts Center.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with TEDxPhoenix, it’s been described as a Cirque du Soleil for the mind. Our inaugural event will feature six of Arizona’s leading experts brought together to enlighten, inspire, and entertain via ideas worth spreading. For fans of the environment and sustainability, we are excited to announce that Urban Farm founder and sustainability guru, Greg Peterson, will be speaking at the event.

TEDxPhoenix is also a place where you can meet individuals who are interested in leveraging ideas, technology, education, and design to help create a better future for the Phoenix-metro communities and beyond. For more information about the event, I highly recommend checking out our TEDxPhoenix Beginners Guide.

I really hope you will join us this Friday, and here are all the event details for your viewing pleasure:

Homepage: www.tedxphoenix.com
Event Date & Time: Friday, November 6th, 2009 from 6pm to 9pm
Location: Mesa Arts Center – Google Map
Tickets: $5 – Get your tickets here

Sincerely,
~Tomas