8:00 - 9:00 a.m.

Registration

9:00 - 10:00 a.m.

Keynote / Amanda Cox

10:00 - 10:45 a.m.

Exploring Web Graphics APIs for Data Visualization / Miguel Rios

Ever wondered why we have four different APIs to create graphics on the web? From declarative based approaches like HTML/CSS and SVG to OpenGL-like APIs such as WebGL, each of these APIs was created with a different use case in mind. Miguel will show you, through some data visualization examples created at Twitter and elsewhere, how these graphic APIs work and in what circumstances each of them should (and should not) be used.

10:45 - 11:00 a.m.

Break

11:00 - 11:45 a.m.

On Responsive Design and Data Visualization / Gabriel Florit

Making data visualization responsive shouldn't be hard. Unfortunately, we are nowhere near having an ideal workflow for this.

Gabriel will walk through examples of varying complexity - tables, bar charts, maps - and propose how to make our lives easier by enhancing data with metadata. He will talk about various design and performance issues and discuss how a truly responsive visualization cannot - and must not - be responsive.

11:45 - 1:00 p.m.

Lunch

1:00 - 1:45 p.m.

Data On Your Fingertips: Touchable Visualizations / Dominikus Baur

Touch-based interfaces fundamentally change the way we interact with digital information: the direct connection between fingers and data leads to a previously impossible immediacy and involvement. Especially data visualization can tremendously benefit from tangible exploration. In this talk, Dominikus will discuss the concept and implications of touchable visualizations. Novel trends from mobile interaction design such as physicality and playfulness form the basis for visualizations as virtual objects. Touch-based interaction provides us with a completely new way to grasp our data.

1:45 - 2:30 p.m.

Invisible Visualization / Doug Schepers

Data visualization is an efficient way of conveying information, but sometimes accessibility may suffer. This talk will cover well-known challenges and pitfalls for accessible information graphics, and describe techniques to overcome them. I will focus on Web solutions using SVG, HTML, ARIA, and the Web Audio API. I will also describe some of the new accessibility features in the upcoming SVG2 specification, including the SVG Connectors module, which will allow authors to easily build interactive SVG node-line graphs.

2:30 - 3:00 p.m.

Break

3:00 - 3:45 p.m.

Architecting Visualizations - Pitfalls and Patterns / Alex Graul

Building visualisations is often both a design and software engineering challenge, particularly for the web but rarely is the lid lifted on the development challenges that are specific to visualisation. Through the medium of lessons painfully learnt Alex will talk through patterns, tools and pitfalls found at the coalface of visualisation development - how to approach building reusable charts,  manage interactions between multiple charts and take designs from storyboard to software architecture.

3:45 - 4:30 p.m.

Life After Flash: Native Web Technologies for Mapping & Data Visualization / Shawn Allen

The internet has changed, and will continue to, since Steve Jobs rang Flash's death knell in April, 2010. Three years later, what do we have to show for it? For one, we have robust standards like CSS3, SVG, Canvas, hot new JavaScript APIs and blazing interpreters and, of course, WebGL. We've got kick-ass developer tools, like the element inspectors and script debuggers built into every modern browser. And we've got powerful and expressive new libraries that target each layer of the stack, making our work more fun and efficient.

And while there are many things that we can now do right in the browser, we're still a long way behind Flash in some respects, such as programmatic bitmap effects. The W3C's working drafts cover some of the glaring holes, but their acceptance and implementation is a long way off. In the meantime, Shawn will talk about how Stamen combines cutting-edge technologies with old-school tricks to build interactive maps and data visualizations for the modern web.

4:30 - 5:00 p.m.

Living, Breathing Data / Kim Rees

There's a life to data--it comes from living, breathing things. However, we dissociate that data from its source, ultimately dehumanizing the data. This forces us to focus on an abstract representation of real life places, people, and nature. This may seem okay because there are tools that are built specifically for us to do this sort of thing.

But we need to find a connection back through all this data. We need to use data as a looking glass to transport us into the meaning of it all.

Using their recent U.S. Gun Killings visualization, Kim will discuss the impetus for the project, the creative process, the bane of aggregate data, and, of course, the open data and open source tools they used to create it.

6:00 - 9:00 p.m.

Conference Party brought to you by

9:00 - 10:00 a.m.

Closing Keynote / Juan Velasco

10:00 - 10:30 a.m.

Bring the Noise: Making Effective Use of a Quarter Million Metrics / Abe Stanway

At Etsy, we collect over 250k metrics from a variety of monitoring systems - everything from 404s to how much money we make, all in real time. To separate the signal from the noise, we built Skyline - a real-time anomaly detection system. It continually analyzes each of our metrics, as they come in, for anomalous behavior. When an anomaly is detected, our engineers are alerted automatically via interactive dashboard and can react accordingly.

This talk will focus on the engineering and interface constraints and challenges of surfacing actionable anomalies while keeping noise to a minimum.

10:30 - 10:45 a.m.

Break

10:45 - 11:15 a.m.

Visually Exploring Multidimensional Data / Kai Chang

Real datasets can contain dozens or hundreds of dimensions. A sensor buoy in the sea, a telescope in space and the smartphone in your pocket all record multidimensional data.

We will explore datasets like these by interacting with parallel coordinates: discovering relationships, identifying outliers, and drilling through multidimensional space to uncover the structure of the data. Kai will touch on the challenges and possibilities of building data exploration tools for web browsers along the way.

11:15 - 12:00 p.m.

Using and Abusing the Force - Interesting applications of D3’s force layout / Jim Vallandingham

Force-directed layouts are an intuitive way to discover the structure of a network. Because of its basic physics simulation behavior, force layouts can also be used for radically different - and fun! - purposes.

In this talk we will look at interesting derivations and practical applications of the basic force layout, using D3's speedy implementation. Merging force layouts with custom layouts, collision detection techniques, applying new forces, playing with gravity, and various node visuals will all be explored in this talk.

Expand your Jedi and D3.js skills and learn to contort the force to your will.

12:00 - 1:15 p.m.

Lunch

1:15 - 2:30 p.m.

Breakouts or Special Museum Activities in the Planetarium and iMax

2:30 - 3:00 p.m.

The Bones of a Bestseller: Visualizing Fiction’s Structure / Lynn Cherny

How do Dan Brown and Stephanie Meyer do it? Most text visualization focuses on word counts: in this talk, Lynn will illuminate how fiction "looks" at a meta level, using a combination of meta-linguistic analysis and simple machine learning. Beyond just words, long texts are composed of sentences, paragraphs, and chapters, and the pacing and theme are reflected in these as well as word choice. With a little finesse, we can detect and graph the famous story arcs that screenwriters and fiction teachers are always talking about. With a little more finesse, we can write an action scene detector or a sex scene spotter and visualize how exciting a novel is — in all senses.

3:00 - 3:45 p.m.

Successes and Failures of Visualization in the Obama Campaign / Jesse Kriss

Visualization is both praised and derided for being "flashy." If you're designing and developing tools for a presidential campaign, though, flashiness is worth next to nothing. In the end, everything comes down to this: were your tools adopted, and did they help win an election?

Jesse will present a number of case studies from Dashboard (the Obama campaign's online field office) and the custom tools designed to coordinate and track voter protection efforts.

This talk will cover the design and development process, design constraints, the feedback cycle (from early demos to use in the field) and will focus particularly on what worked, what didn't, and why.

3:45 - 4:30 p.m.

Information Visualization Creativity / Santiago Ortiz

Information visualization is a new global language - not only because more people are consuming it and using it, but also because more people are participating in its creation. To create effective and compelling experiences from data, one must understand both human motivation and comprehension, and storytelling techniques. In this talk, Santiago will discuss methods for creating data visualization through understanding data structures & finding inspiration in geometry, topology and literature.

4:30 - 5:15 p.m.

Designing Open, Interactive Maps / Tom MacWright

Maps are one of the most tangible, immediate, and popular ways to visualize data and tell a story. In the past few years, map-making has changed from an exclusive, expensive process into something accessible to a much wider audience and with an array of free, open source tools.

Tom will present TileMill, a free and open source cartography tool that aims to expand the world of maps with a focus on strong visual design as well as learnability and interactivity. He'll also review the ecosystem of modern mapping tools, including new developments in Javascript libraries for displaying interactive maps and integrating them with other visualizations and narrative experiences.