November 10th, 2011

5 years of well-formed-data

Five years ago, I posted the first entry on this blog. I think it is safe to say, it’s been a wild ride. I know lots of you who read this have been following my work for a long time, and I would sincerely thank you all for your attention, comments, and help.

For the younger ones among you: 5 years ago, infosthetics was pretty in purple (with that awkward off-center vertical axis). 5 years ago, there was no flowingdata.com. But yes, we did have electricity, thanks for asking.

What was I doing 5 years ago? Well, I was just starting my master’s at the interface design program at FH Potsdam. The fabulous Prof. Boris Müller took me under his wings, and he made me visualize the heck out of this brand new thing called web 2.0! Tags! Feeds! Blogging! Wikipedia! A new world order! Ah, exciting times. Although clearly a child of its times, I still think my thesis turned out quite nice, and laid the foundation for many, many good things to come. The weeks of my thesis presentation were probably the most intense of my life, with me and Sina moving together, me presenting my thesis, Sina’s father dying and our son Juri being born in the course of only a few very short weeks. A whole new chapter had started, and now I was living on the country side with a baby, commuting to Potsdam for my part-time research position, and at the same time working freelance datavis jobs.

Well, many things have happened in the meantime, and I am very grateful for where I am at right now. Here’s to the next 5 years of well-forming whatever data I come across!