Data Viz DC Monthly Meetup: Racial Equity Awareness in Data Viz

Data Visualization DC Monthly Meetup -- Every 2nd Thursday

Join Data Viz DC for our monthly meetup to talk shop with data viz enthusiasts, meet other data visualization professionals, learn more about data visualization tools, tricks, and jobs, and share your own work in a Viz and Tell talk!

Register at: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUtcOqsrzsvHdQSFHWMRLR8YKqvpsCB1zpT

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Agenda:

6:00-6:15 - Introductions and networking
6:15-6:30 - Opening and Announcements
6:30-7:30 - Presentations
6:30-8:00 - Viz and Tell and closing

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Applying Racial Equity Awareness in Data Visualization
Jonathan Schwabish & Alice Feng

How can analysts, researchers, and developers apply a race- and ethnicity-conscious lens to their data analysis and data visualization work? How can we take a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive (DEI) perspective to our research, data, and visualizations? Just as we carefully consider our written words, we should be equally careful in how we visually present data to our readers, users, and audiences, including the words we use in and around those visuals. Taking a DEI perspective means considering how the specific lived experiences and perspectives of the people and communities we are studying, as well as our readers, will perceive information and carry that information forward. In this talk, we discuss a variety of techniques that data visualization producers should consider when creating visuals with this DEI approach.

BIOS
Dr. Jonathan Schwabish is an economist, writer, teacher, and creator of policy-relevant data visualizations. He is considered a leading voice for clarity and accessibility in how researchers communicate their findings. His book Better Presentations: A Guide for Scholars, Researchers, and Wonks helps people improve the way they prepare, design, and deliver data-rich content and his edited book, Elevated the Debate: A Multilayered Approach to Communicating Your Research, helps people develop a strategic plan to communicating their work across multiple platforms and channels. His latest book, Better Data Visualizations: A Guide for Scholars, Researchers, and Wonks details essential strategies to create more effective data visualizations. He is on Twitter @jschwabish.

Alice Feng is a data visualization developer based in the Washington, DC area. She is passionate about using design to make data and information more accessible to broader audiences and recently has been exploring ways to bring more diversity, equity, and inclusion into the way we visualize data. Her work has appeared in The Parametric Press and The Pudding. Previously, Alice worked as a data viz developer at the Urban Institute where she built interactive and static data visualization features and tools communicating public policy research. Alice is currently embarking on a new adventure at Natera. She is on Twitter @fleecealeece.

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Jake Riley will share two R packages that he is developing and how they are used in an analytics workflow. The first, whereiation, helps to identify where variation in the data is coming from. Some questions you might ask are "what are drivers of long inpatient length of stay?” and "how have fracture volumes changed pre/post COVID?" The second package, headliner generates talking points that are used to create informative titles for charts and reports.

Packages:
https://rjake.github.io/headliner
https://rjake.github.io/whereiation

Bio:
Jake Riley is a data analyst at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. He is the author of several R packages related to data visualization and he is no stranger to the Tableau community. From maps to text analytics, Jake has developed code and data products to help a wide array of analysts. You can find his published work simplecolors and shinyobjects on CRAN with more packages on the way.

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Data Viz DC is a member of Data Community DC, a nonprofit dedicated to data education in the nation's capital. Learn more at www.datacommunitydc.org