Story Swap

We’re doing something new and fun this time around for our Bay Area QS Meetup: a two part meetup in conjunction with some friends and colleagues who have a keen interest in data visualization: the Bay Area D3 Users Group. On November 21st we’re gathering these two wonderful communities together to listen, learn, and plan together. The goal of the first meetup is to foster collaborations between the data visualization experts from D3 and QS members who are looking to have their data visualized in new and interesting ways. (We’re calling this a “Story Swap.”) Then in mid-December we’ll all get together again and listen to the show&tell talks that come out of the connections that formed at the Story Swap.

Please join us! More details below.

What is a Story Swap?

Think of the Story Swap as a kind of “mixer” for people who have a variety of skills and questions. Bring your skills, bring your questions. Use your skills to answer others’ questions, and get answers to your questions from people who have skills you lack.

We’re inviting our QS meetup members to come with some personal data. Whether this data is neatly organized in a spreadsheet, or chicken scratches on paper, bring some of it along. We’ll have tags so that you can identify what type of data you’re tracking or interested in and we’ll be breaking into groups to discuss questions, ideas, and of course, visualizations!

We know that starting these conversations can be difficult so we’ve devised a “icebreaker” of sorts to help conversations get going. When you RSVP, you’ll be asked if you can share a single personal data visualization that has been useful to you. Nothing fancy is necessary. A screen grab from a mobile app is fineas long as you’ve learned something from it. We’ll be turning these into name badges for the meetup and encouraging everyone to explore them together. If you’re attending and would like us to make you a visualization badge please send us your visualization and a short description (http://quantifiedself.com/gallery-entry/) by 11/20.

(Don’t worry if you don’t have a personal data visualization to share, you are still welcome and invited!)

What is D3?

D3 (http://d3js.org/) is a programming library that has been used to power some of the web’s most interesting and explanatory data-driven visualizations. You can see D3 at work all over the web, from personal websites to the New York Times. We are collaborating with the D3 Users Group with the hope that we can work together to bring new visual and analytical perspectives to our QS data.

Schedule:

6:30 - 7:00 PM - Social Time & Food

We'll be providing light refreshments and beverages for everyone. Come early and meet your fellow self-trackers and data visualizers.

7:00 - 7:15 PM - Intros

Gary and Ernesto (QS Labs) will be giving a brief intro about the meetup, Quantified Self, and our recent Global Conference. We'll also introduce about our work with personal QS data visualizations.

Ian Johnson (D2 User Group) will give a brief background on the D3 User Group and provide a few examples of D3 being used for interesting data visualizations.

7:15 - 8:30 PM - Story Swap

We'll be breaking into small groups based on tracking topics (e.g. mood, physical activity, productivity, etc.). You'll have time to share your experiences, questions, and ideas about tracking an visualizing personal data.

This is also your time to meet members of the D3 User Group and pair up to work on a new personal data visualization for presentation at our December Meetup. If you have data you want to explore, this is your chance!

8:30 - 9:00 PM Social Time

Stay and hangout for a bit. We'd love to hear more about what your tracking!