Visualising Data – 100 not out…

It almost passed me by unnoticed but I realised I made my 100th blog post yesterday and so I felt justified to compile a self-indulgent post to celebrate the fact.

For those of you from non-cricket playing nations, 100 not out is terminology used to describe a player who has reached the treasured milestone of 100 runs, a feat traditionally marked by the player acknowledging all those in the ground, as above. With only a day to go before the first Ashes test in Australia, it seemed an appropriate visual.
Main reflections

It has taken me quite a while to reach the hundredth post, I originally expected to be hitting this mark about 5/6 months from launch but maintaining a degree of editorial consistency removes the temptation to simply regurgitate material from elsewhere or churn out off-topic content for the sake of pursuing greater volume. Still, a 1 post per 3 day ratio isn’t bad and I’m fairly satisfied with the range and depth of articles I’ve worked on during this initial period of existence. I’m delighted with the growth in readership on the site which has been consistent from day one. I’m aware that there now exists an increasingly cluttered blogosphere around this subject so I’m constantly working on plans to try and find a niche market position.
Top 5 most popular posts

  1. Visualising the WikiLeaks Afghan war logs using Tableau Public
  2. Visualisation Insights #1: The visualisation designer
  3. Why does a salad cost more than a Big Mac?
  4. The worst graph design ever?
  5. Visualising the World Cup: Part 1

Special mentions to the following sites for the power of their visitor referrals: Flowing Data, Wired, Smashing Magazine, WikiLeaks and Creative Review.
My favourite 5 posts

  1. Making sense of stream graphs
  2. Experiencing information in New York City
  3. Creative Review section on data visualisation
  4. All the Visualisation Insights articles
  5. My first post

Future plans

Aside from a further set of great articles for the Insights series, the most pressing priority, posts-wise, is a series I’m running before Christmas that will present an extremely comprehensive collection of tools, resources, knowledge etc. relating to the field of visualisation. It will be themed around a seven-day release, each day covering a different range of important resources. These will subsequently have a permanent presence on my (currently sub-standard) resources page but will be constantly evolving to reflect the emergence of new, contemporary references and reader recommendations.
I said a few months ago that I wanted to find time to do more design work for the site, utilising the fantastic tools and data sources that now exist to help practice what I preach. Alas, time has not been found, so I need to redouble my efforts to follow this up. I am also buckling under the weight of pressure from knowing that I’ve not yet written up my research paper. This must be done by February!
I am also hoping to launch a Data Visualisation training programme here in the UK early in 2011. More on this in the new year, however, if it is something that interests you please get in touch and I’ll be able to collate a better sense of where in the country I might wish to arrange such sessions.
Visualisation Contest

Another reminder about the visualisation contest I am running for one lucky reader to win a Full Conference Pass, worth up to $1500, to the O’Reilly Strata ‘Making Data Work’ conference. The theme of this contest is visualisations in the wild and the challenge is to take a photo of a great example of best practice information design being used in everyday life. Click on the contest link above to find out more.
Finally, a big thank you…
Aside from my family, my agent and my publicist, I would like to extend a massive thank you to everyone who has visited the site, commented on articles, shared articles, emailed me, subscribed to the site, bookmarked the site, ‘liked’ me on Facebook and followed me on Twitter. Here’s to the next 100 posts…