Customizing 360 Photos - I Need Your Votes

I NEED YOUR VOTES!

SxSW 2017 PanelPicker is open until September 2nd, and this is the community voting portion of the SxSW conference. This is a big part of getting accepted to speak at SxSW, and I need your votes to help support two proposals. My talks proposed for the 2017 conference relate to editing and publishing 360° photos with data visualizations and graphic elements for digital marketing. This is a new content format that can also take advantage of data visualizations and infographics!

Now that Facebook natively displays immersive 360° photos, you can use 360 photography to promote your product, service, and/or brand. However, just publishing raw images is already behind the curve. In this presentation I will teach you how to embrace this technology and harness its reach. You will learn how to inject your brand, call outs, data visualizations and graphic elements to make your 360 photos a full experience for your audience. This presentation will also cover how to optimize a 360 image file, adjust the metadata, demonstrate different editing tools, and help your brand take its marketing to the next level.

You'll need to sign in or create an account to vote. Here's the Login Page

Optimizing 360 Photos for Marketing Your Brand is my Solo talk proposal

Customizing 360 Photos for Digital Marketing is my Workshop proposal

You can help in three ways:

1. Click the links above and vote for my proposal.
2. Leave a positive comment about the talk or your experience with me.
3. Share this proposal on your social pages using the buttons from the SXSW website.

Below you can see a sample edited 360° image embedded here. This example image shows the potential for branding, callouts, data visualziations and other graphic elements that can be added before a company publishes a 360° photo. For example, the white square represents the original view when posted onto Facebook. 

Demonstration of adding graphics to Bedford Boys Ranch Pokemon GO Event 360 photo - Spherical Image - RICOH THETA

You can also see the original 360° photo here, before any of the graphic elements were added.

Visual Storytelling: The Big Trend for SXSW 2016

It’s only August, but voting is already underway for the March 2016 South By Southwest (SxSW) Interactive conference. Long thought of as the breeding ground for new ideas and creative technologies, we can gleam industry insights from the SXSW Interactive Festival. This year, I decided not to wait until the conference to delve into the veritable buffet of groundbreaking panels vying for festival space. This year’s PanelPicker interface received more than 4,000 proposals, which is an all-time record!

While a quick search of infographics yields only 11 results, a mere TWO actually have the word “Infographics” in the title. The industry discourse has shifted away from “how-to” models to “how to do it right.” Infographics have become a key format of the larger conversation: Visual Storytelling.

A quick search for “Visual Storytelling” yields over 200 talks in PanelPicker, along with hundreds more for “data visualization” and “visual content”.  Infographics are now used as one of many effective tools in the Marketer’s toolbox, and an accepted part of the larger conversation happening in the content marketing industry.

Visual storytelling is vital to content marketing success. The following types of visual content are at the forefront of the proposals for next year’s SXSW Interactive Festival.

1.    Animated GIFs

Source: Animagraffs by Jacob O'Neal

The social media world has been slow to adopt GIFs, with Facebook only just embracing the truncated clips this year. The average human attention span in 2015 is 8.25 seconds, so these bite-sized animations are the perfect for telling a complete story in a short amount of time. The motion in the image also captures attention on an already crowded news feed.

Check out these GIF-centric presentations, “Why GIFs are turning into the New Emojis on Mobile” and “Visual Storytelling - GIFs, Graphs, and Napoleon.”

2.    Visual Presentations

Slideshare and other presentation-style platforms provide a visual and interactive way to share lots of information. With millions of visitors per month, Slideshare is an easy way to have your presentations seen by a large audience.

Perfect your visual presentations with “Sucking Less When Presenting Creative” and “The Power of Poise: Chi for Pitch and Presentation.”     

The Science of Happy Design - SXSW 2015 from Pamela Pavliscak

3.     Real-time storytelling

Real-time storytelling has increased in popularity with the rise of live feed social platforms like Periscope and Meerkat. The ease of execution and the sheer scope of the audience made these two platforms instantly successful. While Meerkat took the prize for most buzzed app at last year’s SXSW, Periscope has the weight of Twitter behind it and has become the more successful of the two.

Use these two tools to live broadcast your events, host a Q&A, or even share professional tips to a larger audience. Perfect your live-streaming with the “Live Streaming Killed Cable TV Star” and “Igniting Creativity with Periscope” PanelPicker proposals.

Source: AdWeek

4.    Infographics

I couldn’t get through my list without mentioning infographics. Still one of the best ways to convey complex information in a shareable and visually appealing format, infographics should be worked into your content marketing strategy. While they are no longer the only way to tell a visual story, they remain a marketing industry staple.

Round out your visual storytelling prowess with great infographics. Learn how to rock your next infographic with my own proposal, “7 Deadly Sins of Infographics Design and How to Fix Them.”

Source: Visme 

Buzzword or not, visual storytelling is something we’ve all been doing since we first snapped a picture with a polaroid camera, we’re just getting better at it. Judging by PanelPicker entries alone, the 2016 SXSW Interactive Festival will be another great year for the content marketing industry.

Update on Thursday, August 27, 2015 at 7:47AM by Randy

This post also appeared on The Huffington Post

I Need Your Votes for SxSW 2016

7 Deadly Sins of Infographics Design and How to Fix Them

SXSW 2016 Interactive PanelPicker voting is now open, and I need your votes! My talk proposal entitled "7 Deadly Sins of Infographics Design and How to Fix Them" will explore examples of the top seven mistakes designers often make, and more importantly, offer design tips to overcome these common design blunders. Follow the steps below to vote:

Step 1: Go to PanelPicker to view my proposal.

Step 2: Log in or create an account.

Step 3: Give my proposal the thumbs up to vote!

Step 4: Post a comment (SXSW loves this).

Step 5: Share with your friends on social media.

I've only given this talk once before at the Malofiej Infographics World Summit in Spain, and I'm scheduled to present it at the Big Design Dallas conference in September. (Come join me if you're in the Dallas area!)

Community voting is a large part of the PanelPicker process, so I'm reaching out to you for your support. Please vote before September 4th!

For more information on my talk, please visit Slideshare for a preview.

Thanks for your help!

Infographics at SxSW V2V in Las Vegas

Next week on Monday, July 20th I'll be hosting a Mentor Session at the SxSW V2V conference in Las Vegas! The goal of the mentor program is to help conference attendees benefit from the knowledge of an established professionals in a one-on-one career counsel setting.  Mentor sessions are essentially individual Ask Me Anything consulting sessions where it's first come - first serve to talk about infographics, data visualization, business plans, presentations, marketing strategies, visual content, SEO or just running a small startup business.

Infographics Meetup! Additionally, on Tuesday, July 21st at 8-9pm I'll be hosting a DataViz and Infographics social meetup at the Lily Bar in the Bellagio. This will be a great opportunity to grab a drink and chat all things design, data, and of course infographics. Even if you're not attending the SxSW conference, come join me!

Send me a note on Twitter @rtkrum if you'll be at the SxSW V2V event, or just want to meet in Las Vegas!

SxSW Voting Guide for Infographics and Data Visualization

We Need Your Votes!

The 2015 SxSW Voting Guide for Infographics and Data Visualization

It’s already time to start thinking about the 2015 SxSW Interactive Conference!  This past year there were more than 15 fantastic sessions about infographics and data visualization, which I summarized in my recap post “The State of Infographics at SxSW 2014”.  We’re planning for 2015 to be even bigger for the world of infographics, but we need your help!

Event proposals have all been submitted, and the next part of the process is public voting on the presentations and panels to help the SxSW committee choose which events to include in the schedule of events.  All of you can vote on the proposals related to data visualization and infographics to help make sure they make it into the schedule.  Please register on the SxSW PanelPicker site and cast your votes for all of them or just your favorites.

The voting period is August 11th - September 5th!  There were over 3,000 proposals submitted this year, and the best proposals related to infographics and data visualization I could find are in the list below.  However, I’m sure there are more.  Please post links to any proposals I missed in the comments below.  We need your votes, social shares and comments on the SxSW site to help convince the committee to include these sessions. 

To make sure each of these are chosen we need you to:

First - Vote for each of your favorites

Second -  Share on social using the buttons on the SxSW pages to increase the counters

Third - Comment on their relevancy to you personally, the committee will review the comments

• The Science of Infographics, Randy Krum
• Jumping the Shark: The Evolution of Infographics, Randy Krum, Cristin Moran, Jarred Romley, Brad Woodard
• Your Resume Isn’t Enough: Go Visual!, Jim Hopkinson, Randy Krum
• The Challenge of Teaching Data Visualization, Jon Schwabish, Cole Nussbaumer, Ben Shneiderman, Kaiser Fung
• Picturing Your Big Ideas, Nora Herting
• Why You Need a Business Story And How To Create It, David Sloly
• The Future of Infographics (Mentor Session), Brian Wallace
• Data Design: Where math and art collide, Trina Chiasson
• Visual Solutions To Your Social Media Hangover, Dan Roam, Jessica Gioglio, Ekaterina Walter
• In Data We Trust Blindly: The Data Literacy Crisis, Greg Hochmuth
• 100 yrs of data viz and we still use pie charts?, Andy Cotgreave
• Visualizing Data in the Army, Charles Driessnack
• Data Viz as Valium: How Visualization Tames Nerves, Emily Fuhrman
• This Is Your Brain on Visual Data, Sasha Pasulka
• Use visualization to Help You Think Thru Decisions, Angela Shen-Hsieh
• Evolution of Big Data Visualization at Facebook, Andy Kriebel, Bryan Brandow
• Elephant Camo: Getting Big Data to Blend In, Eric Swayne
• Mandatory Skill For the Future: Information Design, Jason Lankow

Help us make data visualization and infographics the best topic at SxSW 2015!

The State of Infographics at SxSW 2014

I post all types of infographics and data visualizations from designers all over the world here on Cool Infographics, and as a recap, I wanted to take stock of the state of infographics and data visualization at this year’s SxSW Interactive conference in Austin, TX.

I’ve been going to SxSW for a few years now, and infographics have been a growing presence in the Interactive portion of the conference every year.  You can find hidden sessions about data visualization, visual communication and infographics in different portions of the conference like the new SXsports, Health and Business sessions.

Check the links and search the presentation hashtags on Twitter to find more information and audience comments from each event.  I know I didn’t catch everything, so send me links to anything (Events, notes, slides, etc) I missed through the Contact page or the comments and I’ll add appropriate ones into the post!

*Sessions I was able to attend

Official Events:

• The Onions of Interactive Infographic Design (#adobesxsw)
  • Sarah Hunt, Product Manager, Adobe Systems @sarahwhatsup
  • This session covered the value of creating animated, interactive infographics with HTML your readers care about using Adobe Edge Animate.
  • Presentation online: http://sarahjustine.com/sneakyfolder/pres
• Sports Don’t Look the Same Anymore* (#sportsviz)
  • John Meyer, Founder, Statographics and CEO, Lemonly @johntmeyer
  • Meyer examined how infographics, data visualizations, and interactive pieces have changed the landscape for scouts, managers and marketers inside of the game, as well as fans and fantasy players outside the game.
  • Slides available online at bit.ly/sportsviz
  • 
• Truth Will Set You Free but Data Will Piss You Off* (#dataethics)
  • Grace Rodriguez, Founder/President, C2 Create @gracerodriguez
  • Jake Porway, Executive Director, DataKind @jakeporway @DataKind
  • Jonathan Schwabish, Government Economist, PolicyViz @jschwabish
  • Kim Rees, Co-Founder, Periscopic @krees @Periscopic
  • This session explored the issues and ethics around data visualization—a subject of recent debate in the data visualization community—and suggest how we can use data in tandem with social responsibility.
  • Storify notes: http://storify.com/gracerodriguez/sxsw-panel-the-truth-may-set-you-free-but-data-wil
• The Most Influential Visualizations of All Time (#5vizzes)
  • Andy Cotgreave, Social Content Mgr, Tableau Software @acotgreave
  • We’ve chosen the 5 most influential visualizations of all time. Each of the charts in this list instigated change: one helped eradicate cholera, another revolutionized nursing.
  • Presentation slides: http://www.slideshare.net/TableauSoftware/the-most-influential-vizzes-of-all-time-sxsw
  • Andy’s summary blog post: http://gravyanecdote.com/uncategorized/sxsw-the-most-influential-visualisations-of-all-time/
  • 
    
• Actively Participating in the Big Data Revolution (#DataRev)
  • Elissa Fink, CMO, Tableau Software @elissafink
  • In this talk, Elissa will share their stories and offer insights into how we can all become more data-driven, every day
  • HighOnData Dashboard: http://www.tableausoftware.com/public/highondata
  • 
    
• The Tyranny of Edward Tufte* (#tuftyranny)
  • Gabriel Schaffzin, Researcher & Designer & Builder, Skeptic @gabischaffzin
  • When Edward Tufte tweets mockingly of the leaked NSA slides, he does so as the self-anointed king of presenting evidence. Empiricism’s head cheerleader, he has built an empire on telling everyone—lowly marketer to NASA bigwig—what Truth looks like.  And we eat it up. 
  • Presentation slides: http://utopia-dystopia.com/blog/2014/3/8/sxsw-interactive-2014-austin-tx
• Scientist to Storyteller: How to Narrate Data (#Sci2Story)
  • Eric Swayne, Prod Mgr/Analytics Dir, BuzzShift @eswayne
  • Storify: http://storify.com/40deuce/scientist-to-storyteller-how-to-narrate-data-sci2s
  • Prezi presentation: https://prezi.com/xkqdi1lq8iix/scientist-to-storyteller-how-to-narrate-your-data/
  • 
    
• Visually Turning Complexity into Clarity* (#clarity)
  • Fernanda Viégas, Research Scientist, Google @viegasf
  • Graham Roberts, Graphics/Multimedia Editor, The New York Times @Grahaphics
  • Karl Gude, Graphics Editor in Residence, School of Journalism at Michigan State University @karlgude
  • Ronnie Lipton, Info Design Author, Trainer, Consult @ronnielipton
  • We are a unique gathering of professional visual communicators who employ a wide variety of storytelling platforms (print, interactive and motion graphics) and visual tools (maps, graphs, diagrams, video, etc.) to do our jobs. We will explain our process for finding visual stories in the data, discuss the best technologies for doing what we do and illustrate how we build, plan and execute graphics.
  • Wind Maps: http://hint.fm/wind/ 
  • Sketchnotes: https://twitter.com/KKellyMSU/status/443484058043944960/photo/1
  • 
    
• Show & Tell: How to Present, Extraordinarily (#ShowTell)
  • Dan Roam, President, Digital Roam Inc @dan_roam
  • There are 3 simple rules for making an extraordinary presentation: 
    1. Tell the truth 
    2. Tell it with a story 
    3. Tell the story with pictures
  • 
    
• Mentor Session: Brian Wallace (#infographs)
  • Brian Wallace @nowsourcing is the founder of NowSourcing, Inc., a infographic design and social media agency since 2005 serving everyone from startups to the Fortune 500 and everything in between.
• Workshop: Pimp Your Pitch: Learn Visual Storytelling (#pitchfix)
  • Nancy Duarte, Principal, Duarte @nancyduarte
  • Paul Brown, VP, Duarte @Duarte
  • Mike Pacchione, Facilitator, Duarte @mpacc
  • Ryan Orcutt, Assoc Creative Dir, Duarte 
  • This Visual Storytelling workshop will teach you how to create audience empathy, address resistance, heighten emotional appeal, and strengthen your story structure to persuade your audience.
• Book Signing, Randy Krum, Cool Infographics* - that’s me! (#coolinfobook)
  • Randy Krum @rtkrum @Coolinfographic appeared at the SX Bookstore to sign copies of “Cool Infographics: Effective Communication with Data Visualization and Design”
  • 
• Book Signing, Nate Silver, The Signal and the Noise (#ESPNbrand)
  • Nate Silver @NateSilver538 appeared at the SX Bookstore to sign copies of “The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — but Some Don’t”
• Book Signing, Dan Roam, Show & Tell (#ShowTell)
  • Dan Roam @dan_roam appeared at the SX Bookstore to sign copies of “The Back of the Napkin” and his new book launched at SxSW this year “Show & Tell!”
• Book Signing, Nancy Duarte, Resonate* (#pitchfix)
  • Nancy Duarte @nancyduarte appeared at the SX Bookstore to sign copies of “Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences”.
• The SxSW Trade Show Floor
  • I found three trade show booths this year related to infographics:
  • Tableau Software booth 
  • Visual.ly booth* 
    • 
  • Now Sourcing booth* 
    • 
• Graphic Recordings of SxSW Interactive Events
  • ImageThink @ImageThink created a bunch of LIVE graphic recordings from prominent sessions and made them available for everyone to see across from Ballroom A in the Austin Convention Center and online.
  • Full SxSW gallery online: http://imagethink.smugmug.com/Conferences/2014/SXSWi-2014/37565133_dFJ2tf
  • http://sxsw.com/interactive/news/2014/graphic-recordings-2014-sxsw-interactive-content-march-15-update
  •  

Unofficial Sessions:

• The Attention Economy with Walter, book signing by Ekaterina Walter @Ekaterina, co-author of The Power of Visual Storytelling
  • “Attention is the new commodity. Visual storytelling is the new currency,” say co-authors Ekaterina Walter and Jessica Gioglio in their new book The Power of Visual Storytelling.  The first 100 attendees for Ekaterina’s signing will get a copy of her book. Come chat with Ekaterina about the visualization revolution and her thoughts about SxSW Interactive 2014.
  • Hosted by Vocus @Vocus
  • http://www.eventbrite.com/e/wtf-sxsw-visualize-a-powerful-future-tickets-10822280733
• FH Black Box lounge at the Four Seasons (#FHBlackBox)
  • Fleishman Hillard @Fleishman hosted the Black Box Lounge throughout SxSW Interactive with a massive Social Media Control Center that was visualizing millions of data points and mentions online about SxSW.
  • http://fleishmanhillard.com/
  • 
• Column Five announced the release of Visage
  • Column Five @columnfive announced their new interactive data visualization tool, Visage at SxSW.
  • “Visage is a new Web-based platform that transforms the uninspired data in your reports into beautiful, branded visualizations that make your message more impactful—and make your work look good. The easy-to-use software helps you create high-quality, professional visualizations that are accurate, effective and elegant.”
  • http://www.columnfivemedia.com/blog/introducing-visage-our-new-visualization-platform
  • 
• Cool Infographics Meetup
  • Special thanks to the team at the Fleishman Hillard Black Box Lounge!  They allowed me to host the Cool Infographics @Coolinfographic meetup event after my book signing on Monday for anyone that wanted to hang out.  It was also an opportunity to meet fans and sign books for people that didn’t have official SxSW badges.
  • 

Please help add anything I missed by posting in the comments below or sending me a note through the Contact page.  I’ll add new content into the post above.

Update on Tuesday, May 13, 2014 at 9:51AM by Randy

A modified version of this post was featured on The Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/randy-krum/infographics-at-sxsw_b_5001070.html

SxSW 2013, an infographic

Rocksauce Studios has released SxSW 2013, an infographic looking at the basic statistics and demographic data around this year’s South By Southwest conference in Austin , TX.

The seven SXSW events — gaming expo, interactive, film, trade show, music, music gear expo and flatstock — attracted an audience of more than 300,000 last year (though only a sliver were badge holders). The PDF offers an attendance breakdown.

Demographics: the largest percentage of attendees are between the ages of 31 and 40; 86 percent of registrants are from the U.S.; 60 percent of attendees are male; and 29 percent of festival goers work in the creative industries.

Five companies to see success with SXSW include Foursquare, Twitter, Gamesalad, Phonebooth and Foodspotting.

The 2013 SXSW festival runs March 8-17.

300,000 attendees last year, and this year looks to be even bigger! Not sure why they released it as a huge, high-resolution PDF file, but the you can download it here.

Thanks to David for sending in the link, and also found on the Austin Business Journal

HEY!  I’m headed down to Austin on Friday for SxSW, so I would love to hear from anyone else headed down there as well.  Should we have an infographics meetup?  

Rock of Ages: The Evolution of SxSW

Rock of Ages: The Evolution of SxSW from Music Festival to Interactive Launch Pad is a new infographic from Rocksauce Studios just in time for SxSW 2012 this weekend.

Since 1987, SXSW has morphed into an interactive, film and music conference and festival that brought together 19,364 attendees in 2011.

Austin-based app development firm, Rocksauce Studios, has created an infographic that dissects the interactive portion of SXSW, and proves why this conference is the new popular techie playground.  

The topics and cited statistics covered in “The Evolution of SXSW from Music Festival to Interactive Launch Pad” include:

- History of SXSW
- 2011 Attendance Demographics
- Top 10 Types of Business of Interactive Registrants  
- Geographic Breakdown of Total Interactive Registrants
- Successful SXSW Startup Launches
- Recent SXSW Web Awards  / Interactive Awards Winners
- Reasons So Many Companies Chose to Launch at SXSW
- The Accelerator

You can read more about the development of the infographic on Silicon Angle

This design does a really good job with the visual basics.  Showing the icons/logos of the startup companies, illustrating the business types, mapping the conference registrants. The overall design tells a good story top-to-bottom to the readers, and it’s easy to follow the flow of information.

Three things stood out to me that could be improved:

• There are a lot of data values in the text of the timeline that should have been visualized.
• The three shapes showing the amount of Interactive Conference Participants, Conference Sessions and Interactive Media in Attendance all of different values, but the shapes are not sized to match those values.
• The last section “The Accelerator” seems to fall apart as all text, even though there are some good data values there that should have been visualized.

Thanks to Kelly for sending in the link!