peopleing is hard.

My submission for a video contest during EYEO Festival, sponsored by and edited on Runway.

To understand how this short video came to be, we have to go back a few months.

A few months ago I was on TikTok (a blessing and a curse), and came across a book recommendation for the Dear Data project. At this point in time, I was feeling disillusioned towards data/analytics and how it could connect to creativity and art. Seeing just a preview of this book got me interested, and I quickly purchased it for myself. You can’t simply flip through this book - it demands you to look deeper, and understand more than just aggregations but the real human connection behind it all. This book re-sparked my passion for data and reminded me of the different ways beauty, humanity, and art can be pulled from it.

I wanted to dive more into data visualization, and came across many articles describing different data viz conferences. Upon reading this one, I was easily convinced about attending Eyeo. The conference/festival provided more than just academic or corporate applications of data viz, but explored further how art and data are combined in so many different and unexpected ways and practices. I watched a few recordings of previous conference talks, and then decided to do my best to attend.

The conference itself, when paid for by one’s company, is maybe a moderate cost for a weeklong event. However, I knew I was going to self-fund this effort if I attended, and therefore I applied for the scholarship to attend. I didn’t end up getting it, which was very understandable. Thankfully, they were still able to provide a discount to all those who applied, and I took that as my sign to go!

June came around quickly, and on Tuesday night I found myself in Minneapolis, at the first event of the conference. I spoke to no one the whole night. I was (and as of typing this still am) on a self-imposed summer break. I quit my job to take some time for myself to travel, spend time with family and friends, develop some life and data-related skills, and also just allow space for new opportunities in my career. It sounds fine when typing it out, but in a room full of artists, UX designers, software engineers, etc. from so many different cool companies and organizations, I felt like a huge imposter. I also hadn’t been around that many people in a professional setting before, and the socialization aspect of it all was overwhelming. The first full day of the conference I remember thinking - what if imposter syndrome is valid?

But I remembered what brought me there in the first place - the Dear Data project and the reminder that data can be used to humanize and create art. The first full day of the conference I decided I’d start recording data on myself and my personal socialization successes and trials throughout the week. I intended to figure out some way to visualize it after the conference ended (ideally by drawing it out somehow, even though I’m not an amazing drawer) and post it all on here.

At the same time, one of the conference sponsors was holding a video contest with a deadline at the end of the week. I was thinking about submitting something for it just because I do have some video editing experience and was missing that practice a little. On the same day I had just attended Stefanie Posavec’s talk about the unconventional methods she used to make effective data visualizations, as well as Alberto Cairo’s talk saying similarly to break the rules of data viz where appropriate. I was brainstorming ideas during another session when I realized the handrails next to me looked like they belonged in a bar graph, and from there I began thinking of the different ways to visualize data using only my surroundings. I captured a few videos of different surroundings specific to the conference, with the hopes that at least a few of them would work for my needs.

That night (the night before the deadline), I sat down and pieced together which video clips could be used with which pieces of data I had, and a few hours later, the final product was complete!

During the last event of conference festivities, they had yet to announce the results of the contest. Much to my surprise, they ended up showing the top three video submissions, and I was able to see mine on screen! It was surreal - I had never seen it run fully since my computer couldn’t render it all, and I had never had a video presented before hundreds of people like this before. Hearing live reactions to it was honestly really cool. I ended up winning the contest, and getting an iPad air as my prize! I’ve never had but always wanted an iPad, and can’t wait to see what new methods of data visualization I can explore with it.