I am happy to announce that together with my friends Andrew Vande Moere and Benjamin Wiederkehr, I am organizing a little informal extension to the see conference on Sunday April 10. We call it see+.

In the morning (i.e. hang-over friendly 11:30), we will have Justin Manor and Wes Grubbs over for an open discussion on information visualization, life, the universe, and all the rest.

And in case you wanted to get your hands dirty in data, in the afternoon (around 14:00), a hands-on workshop on information visualization tools will provide you with a practical overview of how to develop your own interactive data representations.

In case you are still pondering if you should go to the see conference — hesitate no longer — the tickets are becoming scarce! For me, it is always one of the highlights of the infovis year, and I am sure it will be as inspiring as ever.

If you plan to attend see+, let us know on the facebook page or in the comments. Also, all kinds of suggestions for discussion or workshop topics are welcome.

Everybody complains that art, design and research in information visualization should be talking more to each other.

Here is a unique opportunity: Andrew Vande Moere and I will be hosting a symposium at IV10: DAVis, the 5th International Symposium on Design and Aesthetics in Visualisation.

From the call:

“This symposium aims to bring together researchers and practitioners of design, art and related disciplines. The goal is to share their stories and experiences on how the needs and goals of both users and businesses are met through information visualisation.

It supports the publication of research in two general domains: Design and Aesthetics. Design refers to the development of visualisation as a creative design process. Aesthetics refers to the role of user experience in visualisation, as understood in three distinct components: aesthetic experience, experience of meaning, and emotional experience.

This symposium presents an opportunity to explore these issues and their consequences for the field of information visualization. In particular, we encourage the submission of design critiques; case studies, possibly with accompanying evaluation studies or critical reflections; position papers; or reports on the impact that visualization research or visualization use has had on the work and life of people. In this context, the story of failures or abandoned approaches can be as informative as descriptions of success. The fields of application are open, and can reach from traditional screen-based graphs, over innovative multi-touch interfaces, to dynamic media architecture displays.”

So — designers, coders, artists, visualizers — go forth and write!

Update: make sure to check out the submission requirements and procedure up at the IV main page.

Beware: the deadline is tight: March 1. March 21 But honestly, you would not have started earlier, anyways — right? Feel free to get in touch if you have any questions, and we are really looking forward to your submissions.

The symposium »Living with Information: Architecture and Visualization« (October 16 , 2009 at FH Potsdam) will juxtapose experiences and results from the MACE project with thoughts and design approaches from practitioners in the fields of design, architecture and technology. Guided by five central questions, we will explore future trends in information visualization, the relationship of visualization tools and creativity plus issues like information over– and underload.

I am really looking forward to the unique speaker combination we put together:

• Miguel Cardoso from bestiario,
• Paolo Ciuccarelli from Politecnico Milano /density design,
• Georgi Kobilarov from FU Berlin / dbpedia,
• Norbert Palz (CV + info) and
• Andrew Vande Moere from infosthetics.com!

In addition, Prof. Boris Müller and I will provide a rear-mirror view and outlook of our activities related to the MACE project… A wide spectrum, but hopefully all held together by the central issue of the workshop and the five questions we prepared for the speakers.

Hope to see you there – register soon — space is limited!

On a related note, the Potsdam–based W3C office opens on the day before, which should be quite interesting, too.

You can find a podcast interview with me about the session and ongoing work here.

The (preliminary) session abstract reads

In this break-out session at VizThink 08, Moritz Stefaner will present visual strategies to understand and discuss emergent information architectures in the web. Phenomena like the mainstream acknowledgement of the web as a social platform, and the first steps towards a semantic web (as envisioned by Tim Berners-Lee a decade ago) demand for new approaches to information handling. Following the research agenda for web science, visualization can not only help to understand these emrging structures, but also to shape and steer interface design. We will discuss and criticize existing and cutting-edge approaches to search and browsing of resources and the visualization of conceptual structures.

So, I planned to show some of my thesis work, and on-going work like the MACE project, and make some general positions statements about where things should head in this area. But the rest is pretty open – for those attending – what are you interested in? Happy about short comments!

Btw: If you plan to register, use the discount code DCFF23 to get 50 € discount!