Welcome to 2011!

I hope all readers and visitors have had a pleasant break over the past week or so.
Things have been pretty quiet on this site and recently across the blogosphere (hate that word but it does the job) but judging by the increased number of feeds and tweets I’ve been picking up today, it seems people are starting to gear up for another hard slog.
The purpose of this first post of 2011 is really just to mark the launch of the new year and to specifically announce a few things that will be coming up in the next month or two.

I wanted to decorate this post with an apt image of a calendar, one that embodied the theme of visualisation in some way. I decided to use this example of a niko-niko calender. It is an application of kanban, a Japanese concept related to lean/just-in-time, applied to some agile project management approaches to visibly capture the mood of a team and the feelings of individual members.
In the week that saw Nicholas Felton launch the Daytum iPhone App, I thought it was a timely alternative idea to share with those possibly seeking a less sophisticated method of tracking and visualising personal progress through the coming year. It is only the 4th of January so you’ve still chance to remember your feelings from 3 days ago – though I’m not sure a green, hungover-looking face is available with this concept…
Strata Conference
The first item is a reminder of the upcoming O’Reilly Strata Conference, taking place between 1st and 3rd February in Santa Clara, CA.
I’m delighted to say that Visualising Data readers can now benefit from a 25% discount off the registration fee by using code str11vsd or by clicking here. For those who can make it I would highly recommend you get yourself registered, particularly if you can do so before 6th January as the early-bird $250 discount is still available.
Since I last posted about this event, a further set of great speakers and topics have been announced and squeezed in to an already densely packed schedule. I’ll be going through in more detail next week about the specific subjects and sessions that I would really recommend visiting.
Unfortunately, I won’t be able to make it over in person but my recent visualisation contest winner, Jan Willem Tulp, will be reporting about his experiences and key insights.
Coming Posts
I’ve a great line up of visualisation insights posts lined up for the next week or two and some further still in the pipeline. Amongst these will be the David McCandless interview I mentioned a while ago.
I’ve been really flattered by the willingness and effort that everybody I’ve asked to take part so far has demonstrated and I hope to be able to continue to share these (even if I say so myself) really interesting perspectives throughout the coming year.
I’m also finally getting closer to publish my ultimate resources series. I’ve been talking about these for ages but should now be looking at a February release, having diverted away from a blind alley structure-wise that was proving hugely inefficient in compiling the pieces.
Besides a few visualisation design projects, I’ve also got plans for a number of training sessions which will probably be around late spring/summer, the possibility of starting work on a book and also a big ongoing decision I have to make about whether to embark on a PhD…
2011 should prove to be a busy and interesting year, I wish you all the best.