DevFestW - Fernanda Viégas - Google's "Big Picture" data viz group

This event is part of a series of women-focused DevFestW events being organized by GDG's around the world.

We will have a slate of all woman speakers kicked off by:

1. Fernanda Viégas, co-leader of Google's "Big Picture" data visualization group, on:

Visualization Culture: Data Literacy for the Rest of Us

Data visualization has historically been accessible only to the elite in academia, business, and government. It was "serious" technology, created by experts for experts. In recent years, however, web-based visualizations -- ranging from political art projects to news stories -- have reached audiences of millions.

What will this new era of data transparency look like -- and what are the implications for technologists who work with data? To help answer this question, she will report on recent research into public data analysis and visualization. She'll also show how the art world has embraced visualization.

Finally, she'll discuss the future of visual literacy and what it means for a world where visualizations are a part of political discussions, citizen activism, religious discussions, game playing, and educational exchanges.

talking about her visualization work.

... and more to follow

This is not a women-only event, as is instead an opportunity to encourage diversity within the developer community through female speakers and participants. Both men and women are welcome!

Thanks to Adobe for sponsoring food & drinks.

Fernanda B. Viégas (http://fernandaviegas.com/bio.html) is a computational designer whose work focuses on the social, collaborative, and artistic aspects of information visualization. She is a is a co-leader, with Martin Wattenberg, of Google's "Big Picture" data visualization group in Cambridge.

Earlier, she and Martin led IBM's Visual Communication Lab, where they created the ground-breaking public visualization platform Many Eyes (http://www.many-eyes.com/), an experiment in open, public data visualization and analysis.

Her artistic visualizations have been exhibited in venues such as the Institute for Contemporary Art in Boston. Viégas holds a Ph.D. and M.S. from the Media Lab at MIT.

Special Thanks to our Sponsor Adobe

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