How we can be better data presenters

Hello and welcome to the latest Sweet Spot. 

My current status? Excitement about data storytelling and Tableau's new Gestures prototype.

Before we get to that, I'd love to you sign up for Chart Chat, live on June 15. We remade a Visual Capitalist chart for our live Tableau Conference Chart Chat session, and now we're going to use the remakes to dive into the complexity behind the question "Hey, Andy, can you make a chart with this data?"

Gestures: a new paradigm in presentation?

I've long cared about how we can be better data presenters (check out my YouTube videos on showing charts and showing dashboards). It won't come as a surprise then that I'm completely excited by Gestures, a new concept in communication from Tableau's research team. We previewed it at Tableau Conference and I got to demo it at the Gartner BI Bake Off. I think it offers huge potential to those who want to drive change via compelling presentations. 

Find out more about the research behind this project in this post about augmented reality by my colleague Matthew Brehmer.

Gestures builds on the shoulders of giants, of course. None larger than Hans Rosling, whose data presentations were groundbreaking. He added drama, humour, and passion to data, showing us whole new ways for data to come to life. Check out the video above to see him in action.

Joss Fong from Vox is another wonderful data storyteller. We interviewed her on Chart Chat last year. I recommend watching at least part of our interview to get an idea of how she brings data to life using pen, paper, scissors, acetates, rulers, and much more. 

That's all for now. What do you think? Do you present data? What are your methods to make data more compelling in your presentations?

Happy Vizzing and see you soon (at Chart Chat on June 15, right?)

Andy