Now that we have taken a confident stride into the second half of 2013, I thought it would be a suitable juncture to take stock of what I’m working on and share what is coming up in the remainder of the year.
Post-graduate teaching – Sunday commences my guest lecturing on the ‘Information Visualization (Online MPS)‘ programme being run by Maryland Institue College of Art (MICA) for which I’m delivering an 8 week/16 lecture module remotely over the interwebs. It is a whole new way of teaching for me but I am really looking forward to the challenge.
Training courses – Because of the above, I’m in the midst of a short time-out from my own training commitments. I will be resuming the one-day ‘Introduction to Data Visualisation‘ training courses with two London events in August before preparing for a great pair of trips: to the US East coast for events in New York and DC in October (dates coming soon) and then to Australia for events in Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne. I will round the year off with a closer-to-home event in Manchester at the end of November. Details of locations for my early 2014 events are already being plotted…
New training course – Given the amount of new material I’m preparing for the MICA teaching – and an existing struggle to fit everything in to a single day’s event – I’m designing a new two-day training course that will be titled ‘The Craft of Data Visualisation’ and will be launched alongside my one-day offering for 2014. I don’t think you can necessarily create courses about this subject that suit the traditional teaching distinction between ‘basic’ or ‘advanced’ concepts, I believe it is more about the depth of thinking and exposure to/practice with a broader spectrum of challenges. This new course will build on the coverage of the existing one-day Introduction courses but exploit the extra time to introduce far more depth and detail about the nuances of this fabulous craft. There will also be much more space for working on many different exercises. More details to follow later in the year.
Site redesign – This site’s design and function has long needed some love and attention and I’ve not had time to give it. That will change soon when I embark on a full redesign, migration and relaunch. I’ve so many ideas captured from over the past two years of thinking about this inevitable task and I will be moving things forward, most likely, next month.
Resources – You know on your to-do list, at any given point, there will be one outstanding task in particular that weighs so heavily on your shoulders. For me that task is the revision and updating of my collection of data visualisation resources. The reason for my procrastination is that I almost have as many new tools and applications to add to the lists as there are currently. It is a big job that I must do soon because this is such a fast-evolving space. In addition to a fresh list of tools for creating visualisations I will be enhancing my resources collections to cover: tools for handling data, places to get data, tools for colour and data visualisation labs.
Blog posts – As I’m sure is the case with most other bloggers, I have a list as long of my arm of part-started or unfinished blog posts sat in drafts. I made a good start working through this list last week but I have so many more to churn out. My next big post will be the latest update in my 6-monthly review of the 10 most significant developments in the visualisation field.
Design collaboration – I spend far too much time in applications like Word and PowerPoint these days, I’ve hardly had any chance to actually work with data this year. This means I am particularly looking forward to collaborating as a consultant on some very interesting work with Max Gadney’s ‘After the Flood‘ agency. Once again, more details on this in due course…
Book proposal – Last but not least, I’m also currently working on the detailed proposal for my second book. I won’t reveal any details about it at this stage but I am really looking forward to (hopefully) working on this project that, in contrast to my first book, should give me more freedom and opportunity to create something that meets my own aspirations and definition.
Anyway, that’s all for now, thanks as ever to all of you out there for continuing to give me great support!