One Week On
Upon the launch of the Data Visualization Society launch last week, we were met with a response that surpassed any of our expectations. While we assumed a few hundred people might sign up in the first week, over 2300 members have joined to date. This points not only to the enthusiasm present in the data visualization community, but also to a desire to have a place to come together to discuss issues related to the profession and to find centralized resources.
The overwhelming success of the first week since launch is exciting and scary. Exciting because it is reaffirming to see that we were not off-track; others felt a similar void within the community. Scary because it really puts the pressure on us to make sure this develops into the awesome thing you all (and we) want it to be. (But we also think that this kind of pressure is a good thing!)
Today, we’re opening up the Slack chat platform. We’re going to open it up in batches in the order people signed up to keep it manageable. Slack will be a place for members to share their own work, solicit structured critique from the community, and participate in a weekly discussion about issues facing the community.
What we’ve done so far
To start we’ve provided a unified place for people to browse and find various data visualization resources such as awards, events, challenges, meetups, and educational programs. There are also surveys attached to each to provide an easy way to add to the knowledge base. While there were various efforts to wrangle some of this information previously, we feel it will be helpful to have it in a single place, with a way to add information back into the database. All spreadsheets are public and open to people who might want to visualize that information.
Lynn Cherny’s job board has been integrated to the Data Visualization Society website with an aim to make it more generally applicable to the different kinds of data visualization roles — full-time and contract work — and to expose it to a larger community of people.
Volunteers have helped to translate the introductory Medium Post into Spanish, Arabic, Romanian and Portuguese in an effort to expand the reach of Data Visualization Society. Chinese and other versions will be posted soon.
What’s next
As far as our long-term value proposition, we expect to continue to collect information and resources, build out community on slack, respond to community feedback, and be agile about where we go from here. We are working to support the global enthusiasm we’ve received and thinking through what a local chapter structure will look like.
There’s still quite a bit to do, and if we’re totally honest, we can’t possibly know 100% of all of the steps ahead; but that’s by design! We are very aware that all of the possible uses of DVS may only become clear as we build and iterate and continue to gain feedback from members. We hope to build out a society that will provide value to all of us and address the major needs of the community. Your feedback and thoughts (which you can send here) will help us do that. If you haven’t signed up yet, you can do so here. Thanks for coming on this journey with us!
This article was co-written by Mollie Pettit, Amy Cesal, & Elijah Meeks.
