Proposal
Talk sessions are designed to share a meaningful story grounded in real practice — one that brings clarity to a challenge and offers insight others in our data visualisation community can use.
Stories teach, model, unite and motivate by transporting audiences emotionally. ― Peter Gruber
Think of a talk not as a presentation of polished results, but as a crafted narrative journey. We are looking for proposals that begin with a real question or tension, make the thinking process transparent, and leave the audience with something practical to carry forward.
A strong talk doesn’t just inform. It makes the audience think differently about their own work.
Writing Your Proposal
Writing is Thinking. A well written proposal articulates the core of your talk clearly and concisely.
Use these prompts as a mini-outline while drafting your proposal submission.
- Who is the audience for your session? — Think about their backgrounds, roles, and questions. Are they students, early-career practitioners, domain experts, or cross-disciplinary collaborators?
- What problem or question are you centering? — Describe the pain point, curiosity, or gap you want to address. This helps participants understand why your session matters.
- What is the scope of your session? — Outline the main ideas, themes, or steps you plan to cover. It is okay if your work is still evolving – give us a clear sense of direction.
- What will participants take away? — Share the practical outcomes: skills, mental models, checklists, workflows, or new ways of seeing a familiar problem.
- Which format best supports your aims? — Consider whether your idea works best as a talk, group discussion, or hands-on workshop.
Talk Types
Choose a talk style that suits your content and personality. Here are some common styles to consider:
| Style | Description |
|---|---|
| Stories | Weave long & short anecdotes to guide |
| Interactive | Integrate audience engagement with Q&A |
| Demo | Exemplar driven with multiple demos |
| Visual | Show, not tell — anchor through visuals |
| Process | Illustrate process and share war stories |
| Narrative | Singular arc with a main visual showcase |
| Performance | Live visualization & creation on stage |
| Conceptual | Build understanding with stepwise explanation |
Making a great proposal
Being specific and descriptive is key to getting your talk accepted.
To make our communications more effective, we need to shift our thinking from ‘What information do I need to convey?’ to ‘What questions do I want my audience to ask?’” ― Chip Heath
Here are two examples to illustrate what you should not and should do when crafting a compelling submission:
A Cookie Cutter Proposal
- Avoid the following:
- Writing a generic introduction without being specific about the talk
- Providing insufficient detail about what you aim to achieve
- Not outlining how the talk will be delivered
- Omitting a speaker bio that establishes credibility
Proposal Status: Not Accepted
Thinking Narrative Visualization
An important part of a data scientist/data analyst/data journalist's role is to communicate the insights from the data. Traditional presentation formats have been slide decks, spreadsheets or a BI dashboard. Most of them are designed to be self-served. That introduces a challenge for the analyst - the story she wanted to communicate may not come across naturally.
Narrative visualisation is a way to present analyses, thought processes and insights - all in one document.
This talk introduces narrative visualization and provides pointers on tools and best practices on how to think and design narrative visualisations.
A Thoughtfully Crafted Proposal
Aim to do the following:
- Provide a short, crisp summary of the talk
- Set context for why this talk is distinctive
- Clearly outline what will be covered
- Explain how the talk will be delivered
- Clarify the objective (e.g., live demo, conceptual exploration, performance)
- Establish credibility and capability to deliver the talk
Proposal Status: Accepted
Learning Djembe Visually with p5.js
What if we could learn music visually? It would be great if we could learn the djembe not only by playing it and by listening to it, but also seeing it visually. We will use p5.js to visualise music. That’s it.
Outline
Music visualisation is not new. Winamp and iTunes have been doing it for years. But they are designed to augment the aural senses with a nice visual display. But what if we could visualise music for not only our aesthetic senses but also for learning the music. We all learn differently - aurally, symbolically, visually and kinesthetically. We will have live djembe play and see if we can all learn music visually together. This is a live demo and what could possibly go wrong!
- How can we see sound?
- Can we see how loud it is? Can we see all parts of it?
- We can all tap to a beat. Can we find the beat and show it?
- Can we show the pattern in the beat? Boom Boom Pa!
For the technically inclined, we will leverage HTML canvas and Javascript Web Audio API using p5.js. But basically this is a fun talk to explore creative coding to learn new things.
Requirements
None. Just come and listen and see the music live!
Speaker bio
Amit Kapoor is interested in learning and teaching the craft of telling visual stories with data. He uses storytelling and data visualization as tools for improving communication, persuasion and leadership. He conducts workshops and trainings for corporates, non-profits, colleges, and individuals at narrativeVIZ Consulting. You can find more about him at amitkaps.com and tweet him at @amitkaps
Ashok Kumar is an accomplished djembe - an African drum - player. He has been playing djembe for more than 15 years and has done numerous performances both as a soloist as well as with his band - Shoonya World Music. You can watch him play in this clip and can find more about him at jembeashok.com