The Visualizing Marathon 2011 is a series of 24-hour data visualisation competitions being held in five cities around the world. The inaugural 2010 event was extremely successful and I’m excited to announce that I’ll be one of the jurors at the London Marathon on 12th and 13th November. I’m also very grateful for being invited join David McCandless and Stefanie Posavec in giving a brief talk/workshop during the marathon.
What is the Visualizing Marathon?
It is a free event for students to enter so long as they are enrolled at one of the Visualizing.org Academic Partners. If your university is not yet an Academic Partner you can register now but make it quick as spaces will be snapped up quickly. Registration runs up to 20th October.
The contest works like this. Teams of size 3 or 4 students from the same university will have 24 hours (noon to noon) to design a solution to a real world problem set at the start. Participants will be given access to a selection of open data sets to work with from Visualizing.org (and you can use any other data set you want so long as it’s open). You’ll collaborate with your team through the night (but do remember to sleep) to come up with a winning entry.
At the end of 24 hours you will upload your entry to Visualizing.org. and winners will be selected by me and the esteemed jury. Aside from being a fun event and a great experience, there are some terrific prizes on offer, courtesy of GE:
- Each member of the winning team will receive a specially engraved iPad 2
- The winning project will be prominently featured on Visualizing.org.
- The winning team will receive the Visualizing Trophy.
- Five winners from each city will compete to win the 2011 Visualizing Marathon Grand Prize
- There will also be two Honorable Mentions named for each city.
London Marathon
The London event will be held on Saturday 12th and Sunday 13th November at the Free Word Centre, 60 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3GA.
- Breakfast/registration will commence from 10:30am
- The event will be launched and the challenge revealed at 11:30am
- The competition will run from 12 noon on Saturday closing at 12 noon on Sunday
The brief workshop I will be giving will take place early in the evening, at about the mid-point of the visualisation work. Details of what I’ll be covering are still a work in progress but will be likely focused on the stages involved in taking visualisation designs from concept through to final execution.
For fans of free food and drink, you’ll be delighted to know that food and drink will be provided throughout the marathon. For fans of running 26.2 miles, you’re at the wrong event.
For any more queries contact Charlene Manuel.
If this all sounds very appealing you should really get registered ASAP and I look forward to seeing you in London on the 12th November!