Storytelling-is-data-with-soulThis past week I spent two days in Boston at The Innovation Enterprise’s joint summits, The Data Visualization Summit and the Big Data Innovation Summit. Although there should be a natural fit between the two, and the plenary sessions were held only a floor apart, I didn’t see as much blending between the participants as I had hoped, but I think I know why, and I’ll address that later in this post. First, I’ll talk about my primary focus of interest, the Data Visualization Summit.

The Data Visualization Summit, the smaller of the two (and the one I originally was intending on covering), included a wide variety of speakers, from major news publications (The Boston Globe, USA Today), the pharmaceutical industry, biochemical and industrial engineering, and consumer-facing companies, including gaming and online marketplaces.

The half-hour talks (nearly all done with slides and occasional videos), moved briskly throughout both days, and there were a few common themes that carried both days.

Wherever the design starts, it ultimately will be seen digitally.

Print was mentioned, and not just by the news outlets because of their legacy media. Printed reports, or printing graphics, still has use. MOBILE FIRST was mentioned, a new battle cry of interaction designers creating platforms or apps aimed at a millennial-first user base, but not everyone was as focused on a primary environment or platform to share visualizations. One presenter mentioned oral reporting—it’s still important to be able to relay findings that way.

D3.js is the favored interactive library for developing single-purpose interactive dataviz meant to be seen through a web browser. I didn’t hear anyone speak of alternatives and browser incompatibilities, and though Tableau and other tools were mentioned (including a talk about the back story of Clear Story, a cloud-based data visualization tool that also had a booth in the vendor’s area), WolframAlfa, which was scheduled to present in the other Summit, didn’t seem to make it into the conversation or mentions.

However, there was more to be talked about than the “pretty pictures”, massive amounts of data to be visualized, or processing speeds. Nearly every talk went to the passion or purpose behind either individual creations or the use of data visualization in pharmaceutical research, marketing, reporting on social change or helping consumers make better choices.

Data Visualization is storytelling.

Or, to change the perspective by repeating one of the most memorable quotes of the event, made by Tory Hargro, Visual Design Manager of USA Today:

“Storytelling is nothing but Data with a Soul”

His quote was not the only one about data visualization requiring voice, tone and active guidance for the viewing audience, in order to show the discoveries to be found in the data. Creators of data visualizations also need to build a guiding presence into the dataviz, in order to help the viewer make sense out of what they see.

Context is key, and must be explained to the audience.

Whether the context is written about or explained visually, “pretty” visualizations alone are difficult to navigate, nor carry the impact of giving enough background with the image to explain its importance. Chosing the right visualization, for the right audience, is paramount.

Here are selected sketchnotes I created during the summit, highlighting the variety of speakers and yet you’ll find common threads in many of these notes.

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Big Data Innovation

The larger summit in number of attendees and activities was the Big Data Innovation Summit, combining talks, smaller breakout sessions and interactive sessions as well. There’s no doubt that big data has the spotlight for CTOs, CFOs, and much of the C-Suite, with mobile technology already firmly entrenched and cloud computing also becoming less of an issue about whether or not to implement, or why.

The sell for big data is going to be answering a series of “how” questions, along with some of the “where” and “what” to manage it all. Solutions are appearing, often stemming from clients with larger resources and bigger needs. It’s easy to think of Facebook having need for Big Data solutions, but not so clear for a smaller marketing company. However, here’s where closing the loop  of the “why” questions by tying in the kind of Data Visualizations being talked about on the floor above (such as the ones by the speakers from Etsy and Activision) should have driven many from the Big Data summit to drop in the other talks.

As there was only one color badge for both Summits and no restrictions on attending any of the sessions, I hope many who had intended to come to the Big Data Innovation Summit, did look for inspiration and innovation by sitting in on some of the talks from the Data Visualization Summit.

The need for specialists in these fields isn’t gone, but opening both summits to everyone shows that the summit organizer, Innovation Experience, understands that these two fields go hand in hand, across business, health, science, marketing, social welfare, and media.