Tag Archives: RIAdventure

Data Visualization

My Data Visualization Presentation from RIAdventure (full video and slides)

On the RIAdventure conference I gave a presentation about the past, present, and future of data visualization as I see it (fun side note: RIAdventure is the only conference I can say I “went on”). Luckily, the organizers filmed the entire thing, and we now have the video of the whole presentation that you can watch. This presentation covered a brief history of the field of data visualization, with the focus on the invention (in the not too distant past) of many data visualization techniques we take for granted. The point of the historical exercise was to point out that new opportunities with new data that we have before us present new opportunities for invention. I talked about new trends I see emerging in the data itself (massive datasets, city data, you life data, stream data) and what those trends mean for us as data visualization software engineers (I also argue that everyone will be a “data viz” engineer to some degree in the future).

I hope you enjoy the presentation, it was a lot of fun to create and to present. I learned a ton from the research and it was exciting thinking about the future of the field. Below is the full video (low resolution streaming from vimeo, or you can find higher resolution streaming form screencast here, or you can even download the full video file). Also embedded below are the slides that go along with the presentation, and you can always download the slides as a PDF.

Also check out some of the other presentations from RIAdventure.

Video:

Slides:

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Let’s go on a cruise! RIAdventure is going to be sweet

RIAdventure speaker badgeTom Ortega and John Wilker, who organize the kick ass 360|Flex conference, are teaming of with Joshua Cyr, who organized the first RIAdventure cruise. They’re planning a new event that will be a 7-day cruise that features a 2-day conference. The cruise, called RIAdventure 360, is going to leave from New Orleans and hit Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize.

The conference will take place December 6-13, 2009.

Only new, forward-looking content

The speakers are required to prepare new content specifically for RIAdventure 360. That means no canned presentations that you saw 5 times already at past MAX conferences. The content has to be fresh, it has to be cutting edge, and it has to be made specifically for this event. This requirement is awesome. I think that all presenters at all conferences should prepare fresh content every time. Sure, it’s more work, but if you can’t prepare fresh shit for a conference then you should present less often. But of course that’s just a personal opinion with no disrespect meant to anyone on the speaker circuit 🙂

The speakers for this fine event will be: Ted Patrick, Ryan Stewart, Faisal Abid, Samuel Rivello, and… me!
RIAdventure

Focus on the future of RIA

This is a conference about the future, not the present. I’ve been formulating some ideas about what I’d like to present, but I haven’t quite solidified my plan yet (hell, if the conference is about the future I can’t plan it too far ahead, everything will change!). I’m currently playing with some ideas about the future of data visualization in application development. We’re reaching the point where data storage and bandwidth have reached levels capable of transmitting massive data sets, but we haven’t yet understood the implications this has for application developers. What if you had access to the location data of all the cell phones in the country? Or your entire genome? Or the record of every dollar ever spent by the government? The data is coming soon (much of it is here already), but if we, as RIA developers, don’t have the skills necessary to make sense of it all we’ll miss the opportunities to truly innovate and impact the world.

One big party!

And of course this is a cruise after all! We’re going to be partying it up like it’s nobody’s business. The conference also includes dinner discussions about our industry, which I think roughly translates to getting Ryan and Ted drunk enough to spill some Adobe secrets.

Get a free 360|Flex ticket!

And if all that wasn’t enough Tom and John are also throwing in a 2-for-1 deal. If you sign up for RIAdventure you also get a free ticket to the next 360|Flex in February. So if you want to have a hell of a good time while geeking out, go sign up for the RIAdventure cruise.

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