My colleague Beth Schechter and I were just in sunny Austin, Texas for another kind of South by Southwest: SxSW Eco 2013. It was a new crowd for me, which is always a blast. I saw some really interesting talks and projects, like the City as a Living Laboratory by New York artist Mary Miss, or the excellent SolarPump Charging Station from Sol Design Lab. Shepard Fairey gave good keynote too, with beautiful visuals, and a look back on his career and environment-related work.
Beth is also involved with Nerds for Nature, a Bay Area non-profit "bringing technologist and environmental professionals together to build awesome tools to understand, protect and revive the natural world," so she was also helping out at their booth in the conference exhibition hall. Nerds for Nature is awesome! Check them out if you are either a nerd, or like nature, or ideally, both.
I gave two talks while I was there, and we thought others might be interested to read them, so...
Making Data Visible was a "straight to the point" 15 minute pop to a room full of people who hadn't particularly heard of Stamen. I ran through 2 projects (Chesapeake Bay & Surging Seas), and then talked through a few suggestions to help people try to get started "making data visible" without necessarily hiring a group like us (although that would be nice!).
Designing with Data was a 45 minute lecture I gave to a room full of about Undergrads & Masters students at the Texas State University Communication Design School. Thank you to Jill Fantauzza for the invitation!
Thank you! Thank you very much! I'm here all week! Try the veal!