I’ve heard a lot about SXSW Interactive festival, but never attended. Now, for the first time, I’ve been included in a panel proposal so there is a very real chance that I’ll attend.
As such, I’ve been going through the (lengthy) list of proposed panels and voting for the ones I’m most interested in attending. Below I’ve put together a list of panels I’ve either stumbled across or had recommended to me that sound fascinating. If you’ve got the time, check them out yourself and, assuming you’re equally interested, give them a thumbs up (even if you’re not attending SXSW)!
Also, if you’re interested, here are the details on the panel I’ll be on, along with an all-star panel of political data-heads: Patrick Ruffini, Kristen Soltis, Josh Hendler, and Dan Siroker, talking about “Big Data: Powering the Race for the White House.”
Panels I’ve given a thumbs up to:
And of course, if you’ve got any others that should be on here, let me know!
I’m very excited to share with you a data visualization project we did for Resurgent Republic that just went live this last week:
An Independent Congress How would a Congress full of Independents Vote? http://independentcongress.resurgentrepublic.com What if Congress were comprised only of Independent voters? What sort of policies would they prefer? Would the legislation they pass be more conservative or more liberal? For over a year now, Resurgent Republic has been surveying Independent voters, asking them to choose their preference between the policy positions of two hypothetical members of Congress: one distinctively liberal, and the other a conservative foil. By translating Resurgent Republic survey results into a vote of 435 members of the House of Representatives, this interactive data visualization shows you exactly how conservative or liberal an Independent Congress would be.
Last Saturday I had a great time moderating a panel at the AMP Summit on Data Visualization; panelists included:
- Justin Ferrell, Washington Post
- Morgan Clendaniel, GOOD Magazine
- Clay Broga, Public Notice
Over the course of our conversation, there were a whole host of products, websites and books cited, and I wanted to be sure they were shared with interested parties. To that end, here is a non-exhaustive list of what came up:
- Made To Stick, a book that talks about the power of comparative statistics
- Dippity, a timeline widget
- Many Eyes, free online data visualization tools from IBM
- Wordle, free online word cloud generater
- Tableau, data visualization software (along with Tableau Public, their free version)
- Your.Flowing.Data, a personal data collection & visualization service
- 10,000 Pennies, an amazing data visualization web video
- Typekit, an online font service
If I’ve missed any, please let me know and I’ll be sure to get them added.
Chart Wars: The Political Power of Data Visualization
If you’ve gotten here via my recent article in Wired UK, welcome!
I’m not quite sure why they linked to my Tumblr profile, as this isn’t the place I’m most active. Instead, I’d rather you follow me on Twitter @alexlundry, or subscribe to my company’s blog, ToThePoint.
Hope you enjoyed the piece!
- Alex
The White House, as required by federal law, has released their annual report to Congress on the salaries of White House staffers. For the second time, this data has been released as a downloadable, machine readable CSV file. Because of this I was able to link it back to the previous year’s data. This means we can see who got raises and promotions. Here’s a very quick data dump of what I found:
- The average (mean) White House raise was about $5,000.
- The median salary increase was $1,753 (50% of raises were above this number and 50% were below it).
- 84 of the 329 people (26%) that worked in the White House in both 2009 and 2010 received no raise at all.
- 93 of the 329 people (29%) that worked in the White House in both 2009 and 2010 received promotions (changed their title/position).
- 2 people actually made LESS this year than last year: Diana Beinart’s salary fell about $2,500 to $132,914 when she switched positions from Tax Counsel to Special Assistant to the President & Associate Counsel to the President. And Anand Chhabra took an $8,000 hit when he moved from Senior Writer for Proclamations to Staff Assistant.
- Margaret McLaughlin wins the prize for biggest raise at $40,000. She jumped from making $80,000 as Director of Operations to $120,000 as the Special Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff for Presidential Personnel.
- The highest raises that came without a promotion (no change in job title) went to two presidential speechwriters: Cody Keenan and Jonathon Lovett who both enjoyed raises of $30,000 from a 2009 salary of $45,000 to a 2010 salary of $75,000.
On April 15th my firm surveyed almost 500 attendees of the Tax Day Tea Party Rallyin Washington D.C. with questions about their feelings on current issues. Ever wondered how your feelings compare to theirs? Take this quiz and find out!
