First, I would like to say that the Outlier Conference in Porto, with its focus on data visualisation, was a great fit for the city.
I divided the event into two parts for myself: relaxation and work. The first part consisted of art projects, experiments, and the so on. The second part was more practical and applicable to my field of work (dashboarding, data quality, data literacy, etc.).
However, the first part helps to find inspiration for new forms and methods of visualisation. One of the talks that stood out to me was "Visualization: it is natural!" by Pedro M. Cruz, which referred to simple forms in our lives that can be reused as data visualisation. Simple forms already have certain associations with people, so they are easily readable. The author's exciting project can be found at https://traces.pmcruz.com/. You can also see other works there.
Enjoyed the story of the accountant from Flutter who, in his free time, created such a project and shared step-by-step how your hobby can turn into a business.
From the practical side, I would like to highlight the presentation "Reflections on How to Craft Dashboards" by Lukas Lienhard. The author is convinced that dashboards are still alive and if done properly can be in demand. He refers to the works of Nick Desbarats and provides four dimensions for evaluating a dashboard - purpose, form, insight, trust.
During the evening online session, there was a presentation by Nick Desbarats, who mostly presented his course.
The presentation of the creators of the dashboard for the US election campaign for NBC drew attention mostly to the managerial part - how to work with a difficult client on such projects and how to make everything beautiful and on time. Some details here.
The French have surprised with their approach to preparing for the Olympic Games. Their presentation, titled "How Data Representations Can Contribute to Olympic Gold," highlighted the importance of digitising training processes, analysing the data collected, and visualising the results. These practices have proven to be powerful tools for coaches in adjusting training regimes, selecting athletes, and more. While the visual aspect of the presentation may have had some room for improvement, the practical application demonstrated was truly impressive. Unfortunately, the author only provided an email contact and no other means of communication.
Finally, I saw a real data journalist. John Burn-Murdoch from Financial Times gave a couple of tips on how to make a dashboard influence decision-making. He started by saying that there are no rules in data visualisation. He then gave interesting examples of how the perception of the same information differs in the form of charts or simple text. It turns out that dashboards should not be underestimated. At the same time, they need to be supplemented with text and annotations for "non-chart people". Some of the author's works can be seen on his Twitter.
Yes, and if you want to be on trend this year, don't forget that the Pantone Institute has chosen Viva Magenta as the colour of the year, and there is an example colour palette here.
In summary: