I just returned from a 10-day data visualization trek from DC to New York to San Francisco to Los Angeles where I talk workshops, gave talks, and attended the Social Science Foo Camp at Facebook. SocSciFoo, as it’s called, is a gathering of about 250 social science researchers, practitioners, academics, authors, and thinkers to talk about the present and future of social science. Co-sponsored by SAGE Publishing, Facebook, and O’Reilly Media, in this two-and-a-half day “unconference” attendees created and ran the sessions, talking about everything from human evolution to publishing academic research to machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Personally, it was an incredible few days–I got to meet Daniel Kahneman!!–talking with so many fascinating people about the work they do in and around social science. I spent one session talking about the importance of childhood, ranging from evolutionary biology to kids and social media.
Also, very fortunately, my good friend Andy Kirk from Visualising (spelled with an ‘s’) Data was there, so we spent a little time recording this week’s podcast, a wrap-up of our time at the conference. I’ve also posted some pictures from my trip and the Camp on the PolicyViz Facebook page, so check those out too.