I'll be speaking at Strata 2012 in late feb.

I'll be talking about work recently done with the BBC and what people in software can learn from video.

I was there last year and it's a great conference for people interested in data.

Here is what is happening

Here are some talks from last year

After the Flood is my new company.

I founded it a month or so ago and have been very busy - on client projects and meeting new clients too.

I'm going to continue to blog here though - a good thing about doing so much new work is that it leads to lots of new ideas.

The thoughts in the blog are absolutely of my employer.

Hey! Look! A map!

We love maps because we know how to read them, but there are other reasons that many visualisations end up as maps and unfortunately the answer doesn't always have the end user in mind.

Designers love maps because-

- they are easily understood by users, most people can read a map

- they are easy to make - plenty of them online or as vectors to buy and / or trace

- clients want them because they see them, use them and know what they are

- (I also think that on a deeper level, our brains work like maps, with co-located repositories of certain stuff on tap and that we recognise this almost as looking in a mirror when we see one)

But anyway...

I think the main reason is that one of the cleanest and most robust data-sets available these days is map data - location , gis gps etc data. And people have trouble finding good data to build with. So they resort to map data.

When projects at the concept stage discuss data product possibiities, many end products are imagined. But when the investigation of available data (some say materials) happens, it often happens that the reliable data that the project requires is not available.

But there is always some map data and most things are based somewhere so that's that solved. It's a map.

The answer is to put planning into finding data that will fuel your true product aspirations.

The answer is to add data sourcing to the list of data science skills and data engineering aptitude. A data sommelier if you will.

Doing something about health? Don't just do a map because the government data sets are all geo based. Just as Apple finds new raw materials to build thinner laptops, or buys companies who can make 10% better batteries, so should data engineers insist on the right materials to build with.

They may not own enough domain expertise to understand where these data sets lie/ Is it them? Is it an IA job? It's probably one of the new jobs springing up these days.

All I know is "what data shall we use" is a vital pillar of any product concepting session.

People love maps and rightly so but in a hundred years they'll be literate in other useful visual tools - we can't make these without being interested in what they are made of.

We cant make these without getting good at sourcing and making new data.

I've been quiet on the blog front recently because I've been setting up a new company.

We'll be launching the site soon so watch this space.

maxgadney.com blogging will resume soon...

First confirmed speakers and tickets on sale for The Design of Understanding 2012

Go to the site

I'm very excited at all the speakers we will have. Like last year, I am staggering their announcement through July/ Summer.

This blurb from Eventbrite sums up what The Design of Understanding is all about:

‘St Brides is the ideal partner for a conference that values insight as much as inspiration.

Looking at information design and beyond, our speakers are experts in their fields who practice and speak without ego.

This conference is about designers needing to understand their subjects before communicating them. It is also about subjects tangential to design and the universal lessons we can learn from them.

The format encourages concise crisp stories and we won’t be having any dull portfolio viewings.

We‘ll announce our stellar line-up through July. Tickets sold out three months before last time so get your ticket fingers ready.’

 

As mentioned by Russell Davies, many hum-drum experiences are a lot better when they let you pretend.

One of the best examples of the use of a pretending layer to get people to pay attention is this from the US CDC - Centre for Disease Control. 

 
They obviously have a hard job convincing people to plan ahead for bad news - who would read this in their free time?

So they thought to draw attention to ideas of preparedness by getting people to consider something they are more likely to have considered preparing for - a zombie attack.

It sounds odd - but just as lots of teenagers have given serious credence to falling in love with a vampire, so have many people considered what they would do should the dead rise and walk the earth.

The clever thing the CDC saw was the the cross-over. They they assembled official advice pertinent to more likely disasters - you can fantasize, but also earn something.

Like most stuff it is  a Venn diagram. 

You need that cross-over, where the concerns of the fictional world (infrastructural chaos and possible death) cross over with the real world (infrastructural chaos and possible death).

You want to mitigate against too much reality (antibiotic replenishment, urban evacuation) because it is (thankfully) so alien to people as to be irrelevant.

You also want to avoid the excesses of fiction ("pack a Ruger 10/22 for decent mid-range protection and light ammo") as it is too far from the core needs of practical advice and possibly nutty.

So pretend needs to tread a line of credibility - as they say "all the best lies have an element of truth".

 

I've nearly agreed the speakers for Design of Understanding 2012 and a fine bunch they are.

I've done that same thing of getting together 12 people I admire and want to hear speak.

I need to sort out the DOU site, get tickets available and then start to publicise it over the next few months.

If you missed out on tickets for DOU2011 then keep an eye out in the next month.

I've started consulting on digital data products.

I'm looking at visualisations/products for media, BI, health, security and analytics industries.

I've worked with C4, Man City FC and The Guardian in the last month and things are getting nicely busy.

I'll be considering what kind of online presence this endeavour will have, in addition to what sort of business it will be.

In the meantime if you want to talk, mail me - 

maxgadney@googlemail.com