From the course: Data Visualization: A Lesson and Listen Series

Lesson: Community

From the course: Data Visualization: A Lesson and Listen Series

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Lesson: Community

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(light upbeat music) - I'm totally self taught at data visualization. That's how I used to say it. Because I didn't go to school for this. I didn't have a training program, a curriculum, any formal or even informal process to follow. I didn't even have a mentor to help me learn the craft. No, I just found myself doing it because my clients needed it. Once I realized I should probably figure out the right way to do it, I started reading books and watching videos and reading how to posts online. Wait a second, so I didn't really teach myself at all did I? No. The community taught me. I learned from a community that wasn't, in many cases, thinking of itself as a community yet because when I was learning how to do this work in the mid nineties, data visualization as a practice was just forming as an idea but that community was there and I'm very thankful for it. Now, as I think about it, that community has many different forms and there are even more outlets for the community than ever before. Here are a few places you can look for the data visualization community, some of which may be more helpful and interesting to you than others. I always start with the Data Visualization Society, a relative newcomer to the space, but a group that's dedicated to becoming a tech agnostic community for anyone doing this work anywhere around the world. You can join for free and, with a very reasonably priced paid membership, you get access to additional benefits. Now, full disclosure, I was on the board of DVS and I continue to contribute to them when asked. Now, the list of books on data visualization is very, very broad and very deep. Amazon shows more than 5,000 results if you search for data visualization books I've collected my top 10 or so books across a few categories which are a great place to start on the subject. There's also a growing list of podcasts and regular series focused on data visualization, like Data Stories, Data Viz Today, Chart Chat, Explore and Explain, and many more. The ongoing conversations on Twitter, the many lists focused on data visualization and hashtags like data visualization that I turn to regularly have been a constant source of ideas and inspiration over the years. Now I'm not a Tableau user and I'm not really part of that community, but the hashtag data fam on Twitter is a dynamic place for Tableau people to gather and share ideas, tips, and support for each other. Even if you don't use Tableau, if you just watch that hashtag you'll learn all kinds of good stuff. LinkedIn has also become a very important part of my data visualization community. Not just because I create courses here on LinkedIn, of course, but because I have people who engage with me every time I post about the topic. I'm constantly learning from you all. And I want to thank you for being part of my community. As someone who creates interactive experiences in JavaScript using D three and other tools, I spent a lot of time Googling for syntax, debugging things and finding examples that I can leverage. So I spend a ton of time on websites like Stack Overflow, Observable, GitHub, and more. I literally cannot imagine creating most of my projects without access to those platforms and communities. When I was getting started, finding content on data visualization was tough. I had to bang my head against a lot of walls to figure things out. Now the content is everywhere. People you can lean on are all over the place. So take advantage of this, get ingrained into this community and you'll get more out of it than you put into it. But the more you put into it, the more you'll get out of it, so get involved. Next up, I'll talk with Amanda Makulec, the executive director of the Data Visualization Society, and we'll hear about their plans for community as well as Amanda's experience with community in her own career.

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