Webstock 2011 is happening mid-February and I.am.so.excited.
An email from the organisers at the end of 2010 saying there were only three places left in the David McCandless "How to make information beautiful" full day workshop was enough for me to gird my loins and claim that last spot as my own. That lucky last minute enrollment means I now have a full three-day workshops*/two-day conference/one-night awards show for that wonderful week in Wellington.
Add to that the fact that Fox, Bart and Rosie are coming and I get all *squee* !!
Data is the new oil soil
Over the last six months, our department at work has been restructured. We used to be focused on submissions, community out-reach and communications. We are now the Research and Communications Team. The new team will be focused on discovering information and telling the story that data holds. None of us in the team have very much of a clue what that actually means - but are all excited about learning how to make information more accessible, informative and dynamic.
It seems like a fantastic opportunity, especially with our management team understanding that this is a new direction for all of us, and promising training from outside the organisation to help us with the news skills we'll be needing.
I'm the only member of the team who does any technical stuff - I'll be all about putting digitising those stories, providing interative info-graphics, creating video/presentation mashups etc. So it was extremely timely that Webstock 2011 invited Mr McCandless along to the best conference in the world so I could get a fuel injected start on this year.
David McCandless
*Full day with David McCandless on the Monday, full day with Jason Santa Maria on the Tuesday, and two half days - one with Scott McCloud and Merlin Mann on the Wednesday - more on the other workshops as we get closer and more excited about the event.
PS: I'll be blogging from the event, taking photos, and (hopefully) creating some nice sketchnotes of the content - so keep an eye on the 'jar come February - it might be a fertile blogging time :)