Episode #310! This week I sit down with Jennifer Roscoe and Shrishti Vaish, two of the key organizers behind Outlier 2026, the annual data visualization conference hosted by the Data Visualization Society. We talked about what it takes to pull off a fully virtual, global conference, and why going virtual this year was a strategic choice, not a compromise. Jennifer and Shrishti walked me through the conference dates (June 23–26), the brand-new pre-conference data challenge in partnership with the United Nations, and the exciting new feedback and career clinic designed to give attendees a safe space for honest critique and professional growth. We also get into the behind-the-scenes logistics: the 30-person volunteer committee, the technology stack (mostly Google Sheets, if you were wondering), and the delicate art of playing Tetris with 34 talks across a 12-hour global schedule. Whether you’re a first-time attendee or a longtime DVS community member, this episode is your guide to making the most of Outlier 2026.
Resources
Data Visualization Society: datavisualizationsociety.org | Outlier 2026 Conference Registration: outlierconf.com | DVS YouTube Channel: youtube.com/@DataVisualizationSociety | DVS on Twitter/X: @DVSociety
Guest Bios
Shrishti Vaish is a data and business analytics professional and community leader passionate about data storytelling, AI-driven analytics, and inclusive tech communities. With 5+ years of experience across business operations, project management and analytics, she specializes in transforming complex data into actionable insights through visualization and storytelling. She actively contributes to global communities including Data Visualization Society, Women Who Code, and She Loves Data, where she focuses on community building, mentorship, and advancing conversations around the future of data and AI.
Jennifer Roscoe is a Lead Analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and Events Director for the Data Visualization Society (DVS). With +15 years of experience spanning public affairs, public policy, and data strategy, Jennifer brings a uniquely cross-sector perspective to the world of data viz. Her career has taken her from diplomacy and field training for the U.S. Foreign Service to developing policy and legislative analysis for Congress and their staff. Currently she supports the Federal Reserve’s financial services and System AI and innovation initiatives.
As Events Director, Jennifer plays a central role in bringing Outlier to life, DVS’ flagship conference celebrating the full spectrum of the data viz community, from artists to engineers. This year, the Outlier Committee is excited to explore the theme The Final Draft, showcasing the iterative and evolving nature of the field and process of making data visual.
Different Ways to Listen to the Show!
New Ways to Support the Show!
With more than 300 guests and 12 seasons of episodes, the PolicyViz Podcast is one of the longest-running data visualization podcasts around. You can support the show by downloading and listening, following the work of my guests, and sharing the show with your networks. If you’re interested in financially supporting the show, you can sign up for my Patreon platform, make a one-time payment via PayPal, or shop one of the show’s sponsors.
Transcript
00:01.88
Jon
Well, hello. Hello, friends. Jennifer, Shresti, good to see you.
00:07.86
Shrishti Vaish
Good to see you too John, excited to be here.
00:09.85
Jennifer Roscoe
nice
00:11.54
Jon
Yeah, how how are how are things? OK, so I do want to do introductions, but let me just like take a moment to breathe.
00:18.39
Shrishti Vaish
if this
00:19.22
Jon
ah How are things going with setting up Outlier? like Are you both like super exhausted?
00:27.77
Jennifer Roscoe
Yeah, do you want the truth or?
00:30.33
Shrishti Vaish
with it
00:31.48
Jennifer Roscoe
ah
00:31.77
Jon
I think truth. I think truth because I think the idea that people are working so hard, especially in volunteer, largely volunteer capacity to put this event on, I think will encourage people to go, inspire people to go.
00:47.99
Jennifer Roscoe
Yes, I mean, speaking speaking from kind of looking at the whole picture and just coordinating so many different aspects of the program, um I can say that it is it is definitely overwhelming at times, but kind of seeing it all come together, um it’s it’s very exciting.
01:12.04
Jennifer Roscoe
knowing we only have a month left is also very intimidating, but still still also very exciting and looking forward to it all to it all coming together, happening, and also when it’s all over and done.
01:12.12
Jon
Yeah. Yeah.
01:26.90
Jon
Yeah.
01:27.42
Jennifer Roscoe
sure
01:27.58
Jon
Awesome. Okay. All right. So let’s come back to it.
01:29.91
Shrishti Vaish
It’s just, you know, it’s kind of, you know, um I know this is like we still have a month ah for the conference, but it’s like the moment you hit that two weeks into the conference, then actually the real trouble starts and everybody is like in a panicking mode.
01:31.40
Jon
Yeah. Yeah, of course.
01:43.10
Jon
e
01:46.94
Shrishti Vaish
And, you know, everything is like, you know, hustle bustle in on our Slack channels.
01:48.32
Jennifer Roscoe
Thank you.
01:52.98
Shrishti Vaish
Everybody’s like, is this thing done or is it pending? So I think we are in a, you know, a little laid back mode right now because of the holidays, of course.
01:55.91
Jon
Yeah.
01:59.83
Jon
Right.
02:00.30
Shrishti Vaish
But I think it’s going to be a mess once we hit June.
02:01.39
Jon
Yeah. All right. So when people are listening to this, you guys will be in full force. But right now we’ve got a moment of…
02:13.27
Jon
column before the storm. OK, so ah let’s start with introductions so people know who they’re listening to. um Jennifer, you want go first?
02:21.45
Jennifer Roscoe
Sure.
02:24.15
Jennifer Roscoe
So, ready? I don’t know what I’m doing.
02:27.51
Shrishti Vaish
thing Yeah.
02:31.48
Jennifer Roscoe
I am Jennifer Roscoe, the events director for Outlier, the data visualization conference hosted by the Data Visualization Society.
02:42.33
Jennifer Roscoe
My role is basically making sure that every year we create a space for the entire data visualization community from engineers, coders, scientists, artists, to business analysts, where we can really all come together, learn from each other, and walk away inspired and hopefully um empowered.
03:05.92
Jennifer Roscoe
It’s really a labor of love and honestly, one of the most rewarding things that I get to do.
03:05.97
Jon
Yeah.
03:13.56
Jennifer Roscoe
There’s nothing quite like watching a global community show up, connect, and really push each other to think forward and um really see all the work that’s going on across the craft and across the industry.
03:14.17
Jon
Frishti?
03:28.98
Jon
yeah triti
03:31.83
Shrishti Vaish
Yeah, so hi everybody. I’m Srishti Vesh and i joined the Data Visualization Society this year as a volunteer lead for the speakers team and I’ve been leading the back end operations of everything that goes into um handling anything a speaker related.
03:52.12
Shrishti Vaish
And I think this was the first time for me to deal with it. ah And I’m thankful that I already have a colleague with me who is like really experienced, I’d say.
04:02.42
Shrishti Vaish
And he’s been helping out a lot with a lot of different things.
04:03.19
Jon
Yeah.
04:05.78
Shrishti Vaish
But it’s it’s been a very, you know, fun and a learning ride as well, trying to understand what what goes into organizing and, ah you know, coordinating events.
04:16.54
Shrishti Vaish
And I think My main reason for joining communities this has always been related to empowering people. I’ve been with other communities as well. And when I saw that Data Visualization Society is something that I relate to, you know, my principles, you can say, my interests. So I think this was something really important.
04:39.29
Shrishti Vaish
something I was looking forward to join. And i think I’m really you excited to be leading something in the first go as a volunteer as well. So yeah, looking forward to everything that goes into working for Outlife Conference.
04:47.77
Jon
Yeah.
04:53.54
Jon
That’s awesome. Okay. So um why don’t we start with kind of the headline piece here for those listeners who are going to go switch to another podcast, they can get the headline. So what, um okay. So, so when exactly is outlier and and what can folks expect?
05:15.64
Jon
And maybe there’s a, an added piece here is how should they, set up their attendance, right? There’s always a thing, especially people who are going to a conference for the first time, like how should they manage where to go, what to see, what sort how to time, how to time their participation in the conference.
05:36.82
Jon
And I don’t know who wants to start, so I’ll i’ll leave it to you.
05:39.63
Jennifer Roscoe
I can kind of cover a high level of this. um So ah the Outlier Conference is fully virtual this year. It’s going to run actually from June 23rd through the 26th, depending on what you decide you wanna participate in, because we have a new feature this year, which is optional, which is a pre-conference challenge.
06:05.24
Jennifer Roscoe
This is actually a really, really exciting data partnership with the United Nations. And attendees can participate in this if they would like, or they can do the full main conference, which is your normal traditional keynotes, track sessions, tooling demos, everything around networking, our unconferences. If you’ve been to Outlier before, we’ve got Also very exciting speaker networking that we’re going to plug in We’ve really thought about the fact that it’s fully virtual and making sure that we are creating a sense of community.
06:38.04
Shrishti Vaish
Yeah.
06:45.72
Jennifer Roscoe
So we are also including a feedback and career care clinic for those people who want to get an honest critiques on their work.
06:52.14
Jon
Mm-hmm.
06:59.00
Jennifer Roscoe
The unconferencing is also going to be available with that open community dialogue where you can really create an agenda topic of your own, community-shaped discussions. We also are going to feature that data viz challenge where you’ll get to see work. You’ll also get to be able to present your work. So we’re still figuring out what that will look like, but you’ll get to just see what’s going on across the community and um have an opportunity just to really have that global connection, which is really challenging and we find to be one of the most difficult parts of a hybrid conference or an in a totally in-person conference.
07:33.30
Jon
Okay.
07:41.43
Jennifer Roscoe
So this is kind of just when we do a virtual conference, we’ve found that it really breaks the barriers down for everyone where anyone can join from anywhere.
07:52.56
Jennifer Roscoe
And we want to make sure that that allows everyone to be a part of it, which One of the things you’ll notice is once we get the agenda up, the conference will run from, a and I’m speaking in Eastern Standard Time, about 5.30 a.m.
08:07.39
Shrishti Vaish
Thank you.
08:09.66
Jennifer Roscoe
to about 5.30 p.m. That is hopefully going to allow for any time zone to be able to get to content that they wouldn’t normally
08:14.94
Jon
Right. Yeah.
08:22.01
Jennifer Roscoe
be able to access when we do a traditional in-person conference. So it truly is going to be a global experience so that you can connect not only with your peers, but people that you might not normally get to connect with due to those timing restrictions of ah of a typical conference.
08:39.64
Jon
Right. And it’s working out well for me, I should say, because I’m involved as a speaker in that in that UN n thing. But I will be ah on our vacation so I can get up really early in the morning before the teenagers get up and like do my talk.
08:55.09
Jon
But it all works out because it has this like global time. So that’s working out really well for me.
09:00.71
Jennifer Roscoe
Thank you.
09:00.93
Jon
um ah So Trishy, so like when you think about attendees planning their time, like what would your recommendation be or or how are you thinking about, I mean, you obviously can be working.
09:18.15
Jon
So like you’re going to be busy, but like if you were not busy and you were just attending, like what, how would you think about scheduling your time from this? You know, it’s a 12 hour span. so people are going to watching all 12 hours.
09:28.79
Shrishti Vaish
Yeah, no, definitely.
09:29.23
Jon
Like how would you think about it?
09:30.53
Shrishti Vaish
I mean, oh definitely. I think ah my first instinct as an attendee would be definitely just go through the entire agenda list and see what really resonates with me.
09:40.94
Shrishti Vaish
You know, sometimes I clock into sessions when I just want to experience something new. So I think that could be one of the reasons that people can, you know, ah watch our sessions.
09:47.34
Jon
Mm-hmm.
09:53.53
Shrishti Vaish
But I think other other reasons could be, you know, I am into this domain. I want to learn something from people who are actually in the same space, working space, so they can attend the same sessions.
10:06.42
Shrishti Vaish
And Outlier is a very different kind of conference, I’d say, because there are So many people, so so the working people come from all sorts of different walks of life. ah And it’s not just data analytics in using tech stacks as Python R or, you know, just like the very… um highlighted tools that we say today, but there are so many other tech stacks that people use to just use visualization as a medium to, you know, showcase their story or data or information.
10:38.54
Shrishti Vaish
So I think everybody can come in. Anybody who just likes, you know, has an interest in showing up, um you know, using data visualization as a storytelling, they can join in, use the agenda section on our website.
10:50.53
Jon
Mm-hmm.
10:55.99
Shrishti Vaish
before you read after you register, just you know register for all these events and just see whatever you know chimes with you, just walk clock in those sessions, watch those sessions, learn from those sessions. Especially I would recommend going into ah discussions and networking sessions. I think I’ve been into a few different conferences and I’ve met with so many different people and I know sometimes you know you don’t have anything really common in terms of work, but still you get to learn from them a lot of different things and the time just passes by.
11:30.28
Shrishti Vaish
So we should always take ah you know all of these things as an opportunity to learn.
11:31.02
Jon
Yeah.
11:37.34
Shrishti Vaish
you know You never know what you land into. Always be like hopeful and ah you know optimistic about these opportunities.
11:45.99
Jon
For sure. So two quick questions for people who are wondering. So my understanding is you do not need to be a DVS member to attend, but you do need to register for the conference.
11:56.38
Shrishti Vaish
Yes.
11:57.91
Jon
Okay, so folks who are listening who are not DVS members and probably should be, but you don’t need to be a member.
11:58.14
Shrishti Vaish
Yes, of course.
12:04.55
Jon
You can just register for the conference. And then are,
12:07.29
Shrishti Vaish
Mm
12:08.44
Jon
um
12:09.43
Jennifer Roscoe
I would add, if you are member, you get exclusive discounts depending on your membership.
12:10.62
Jon
yeah, yeah, right.
12:12.74
Shrishti Vaish
hmm.
12:14.94
Jennifer Roscoe
And we also have discounts for folks who are students, maybe early career, who are part of nonprofit organizations. There’s lots of different ways that we try to make the program accessible.
12:25.62
Jennifer Roscoe
So definitely check that out.
12:26.39
Jon
Right. Right. And it’s all on the, all on the outlier website. So if you want to get one of those nonprofit student, whatever discounts, good looking person, good discount, you can go to the website and get it.
12:34.94
Shrishti Vaish
Yeah. yeah
12:38.10
Jon
Um, are the, uh, are the, um, are the talks, uh, going to be posted later? I know they’ve done that in the past and I know some of the talks are going prerecorded, but ah is there going to be like a post playlist that people will be able to watch?
12:56.54
Jennifer Roscoe
Yes, so if you are attending the program, the talks will be maybe not immediately available after, but they will be available within the application that we use so you can catch anything you miss because we know you don’t you probably won’t be able to sit around for 12 hours a day watching the program.
13:13.88
Jon
Yeah, right.
13:14.98
Jennifer Roscoe
And that content will be available for at least 30 days within the application. And then our DVS team does take those talks and we’ll make specific content available after the program on our DBS YouTube channel.
13:31.98
Jennifer Roscoe
I’ll have to check the specifics on if it’s available to everyone. i but i’m not sure if our YouTube channel is available to everyone, but…
13:40.18
Jon
I think it is. I recall last year, the last couple of years were like, yeah, it was great because you had like the first month you could just go watch them. You missed it. And then I think like a couple months later, you know, they would, they would come out again.
13:51.66
Jon
But um the excitement is obviously in those first few weeks.
13:52.86
Jennifer Roscoe
so we can…
13:54.54
Jon
So, yeah.
13:54.90
Jennifer Roscoe
Yeah.
13:56.12
Jon
um I wanted to ask about the the online, the reason why it’s online and obviously there’s I mean, there’s obviously costs associated with putting something on an additional cost of putting something on in person, but were there other reasons why to go fully online.
14:16.09
Jennifer Roscoe
you want to take this one?
14:16.34
Shrishti Vaish
Yeah, I mean, yeah. um I think one of the major reasons was reducing the barriers to entry, um meaning like anybody from anywhere doing anything you know, wherever you are, even if you’re busy doing something, and you can just log in, put in your headphones and, you know, just listen to it, you know, you’ll definitely learn something.
14:26.24
Jon
Yeah.
14:38.23
Jon
Yeah. Yeah.
14:40.31
Shrishti Vaish
So you don’t really have to come to a particular place, spend all those dollars and, you know, attend an event, but you can be at your home and still attend the event. I mean, it’s ah’s it’s a great way for any virtual conference these days, especially we love live in a ah remote you know working environment.
15:00.97
Shrishti Vaish
I think this was ah one of the biggest reasons to put it as a virtual conference this year.
15:08.50
Jon
Yeah. and And so, I mean, i think the the big um complaint against online conferences is, especially what you mentioned earlier, which is the conversation and the discussion and the networking. And so like, what has what has the team tried to put together to try to facilitate that? Yeah.
15:29.62
Jon
Because I totally get the, you know, money is tight, gas prices are high. So let’s not have people try to spend, you know, thousands of dollars through to a conference.
15:34.82
Shrishti Vaish
Sure.
15:38.98
Jon
um But there’s clearly but there’s clearly ah an obvious trade-off. And I’m just wondering, like, what you have all tried to do to, like, mitigate that, which I think is probably the biggest concern people have about virtual conferences.
15:52.49
Jennifer Roscoe
right? We are actively developing specific networking that will be organic as well as structured.
16:03.03
Jennifer Roscoe
So we’ve always had our unconferencing, which is you kind of set the agenda yourself, but we have a ton of tools at our disposal through our conferencing application that allows us to really push people to talk to folks they’ve never talked to before. We also are creating special situations where you can directly connect with our speakers. Also, we can create that we have our feedback and career clinic, which is allowing the opportunity to directly have that communication around what we’ve been receiving in terms of our community as well as our,
16:43.99
Jennifer Roscoe
um sorry, me take a pause. Our feedback and career clinic is also directly in response to the feedback that we’ve received, not only from our state of the industry survey that goes out, but also our DVS survey that goes out. And that this is what people want, so we’re creating a space to make it happen. A lot of the feedback that we receive is, it’s hard to just answer it all.
17:16.02
Jennifer Roscoe
People want the connections. People want in person. People want overseas.
17:22.38
Jon
Yeah.
17:22.70
Jennifer Roscoe
People want in their hometowns. we we It’s really hard to give everybody everything.
17:25.14
Jon
Yeah, yeah. You’re never going to please everybody.
17:26.23
Shrishti Vaish
Thank you.
17:27.58
Jon
There’s just no way. Yeah, yeah.
17:28.82
Jennifer Roscoe
They also want it to be inexpensive. And it’s it’s hard to respond to everything.
17:32.50
Jon
Yeah.
17:35.38
Jennifer Roscoe
And we absolutely aren’t going to do virtual every single time. This is more of just our approach to we can give more at a lower price point if if we do mix it up.
17:40.33
Jon
Mm-hmm.
17:49.78
Jennifer Roscoe
And we can also address especially a lot of the programming opportunities if we do make it virtual.
17:50.05
Jon
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
17:56.14
Jennifer Roscoe
Just because it does lower not only the cost of entry, the accessibility of things that we can put on, but it also allows us to build more and really think about what we’re providing in terms of programming.
18:13.31
Jennifer Roscoe
It is a little bit challenging when we have a virtual audience and we have an in-person audience to mesh them together. so when we kind of flatten that out in the whole experience everybody is starting from the same vantage point.
18:22.13
Jon
Yeah. Yeah.
18:29.30
Jennifer Roscoe
It allows us to really create something special that there are no restrictions for us except for really thinking through, okay, what language do you speak?
18:39.94
Jennifer Roscoe
What time zone are you in?
18:40.60
Jon
yeah
18:41.78
Jennifer Roscoe
and we can work with that more easily than, um okay, these people are here, these people are here, and you can’t come because it’s nighttime for you something.
18:46.72
Shrishti Vaish
Mm-hmm.
18:50.65
Jon
yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would also say, i mean, i I’m sort of like almost neutral about it because I mean, of all the considerations you just mentioned, but I think for me, the one thing that the virtual conference helps with is people who are, you know, they may be earlier in their career or they’re just kind of shy, like going to talk to people who are like,
19:18.67
Jennifer Roscoe
Mm-hmm.
19:20.12
Shrishti Vaish
Oh.
19:20.82
Jon
You know, I mean, I have this at lots of conferences I go to where it’s like, whoa, that’s the person who’s the person in the field. And you’re like a little, you know, there’s a little hesitation to go talk to that person.
19:30.07
Shrishti Vaish
I was just about to mention that, John.
19:30.38
Jon
and Right? Yeah.
19:32.23
Shrishti Vaish
I was just about to mention that it’s it’s kind of best of both worlds for people who are introverts, you know, kind of just students or maybe just fresh out of their colleges.
19:33.02
Jon
Go ahead. Yeah.
19:38.30
Jon
Yeah.
19:42.46
Shrishti Vaish
They don’t, you know, they don’t know all of these communication styles or maybe just, know, stand up to someone who’s really experienced in the field. You want to talk to them or even… even you want to learn anything from them. So I think it it’s just a great start for anybody who’s new as well.
20:01.14
Jon
Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. I wanted to ask, ah i’m Jennifer, I’m glad you mentioned it. I wanted to go back to the career clinic because I know in an earlier conversation you and I had ah that that had come up um in the survey.
20:16.28
Jon
And I’m curious, I guess, maybe you could tell folks a little bit more about the feedback that that DBS received through the survey. And then also like who that career clinic is for and and what the goals are and how it’s going to work.
20:30.10
Jennifer Roscoe
Sure. is it So I will say to both your points earlier, most of the design of the program, especially the non-main agenda program, like our secondary agenda, is all from the feedback we’ve received, not just from Outlier, but also community feedback about what they want, what they want from an organization that is all about data visualization and what they need in terms of just
20:45.46
Shrishti Vaish
Thank you.
20:59.32
Jennifer Roscoe
growth in their careers or growth in their practice. So with the feedback and career clinic, we hope to just provide a comfortable, safe space for people to bring their work.
21:11.42
Jennifer Roscoe
We find, just to your point earlier, a lot of people are not necessarily comfortable, as a lot of us are introverts in this space, with just approaching anyone and saying, hey, give me feedback, especially if it’s a if it’s a new area that they’re working with or they’re very early in their production of their product, they might want to just move ah a safe space to talk about it and to get feedback versus showing it off to an entire community and getting just random feedback from anyone because it can be harsh sometimes.
21:36.98
Jon
Yeah.
21:45.35
Jennifer Roscoe
And you want to have that psychological safety in which we want to be able to provide and make sure that we’re giving that and monitoring that when it comes to not only our mentoring program that DVS does have, but this is a little bit more of a group sharing.
22:06.18
Jennifer Roscoe
You can show as much as you like or as little as you like. And it also gives you the opportunity to either talk about maybe expanding your career in different places. Maybe you’re going from an individual contributor role to a potential managerial role. Maybe you’re switching from different areas of your data visual design work and you want some support and you want some help in how to, how do you make that transition?
22:33.82
Jennifer Roscoe
Or you want to talk about your resume.
22:34.49
Jon
who
22:35.54
Jennifer Roscoe
Maybe you want to talk about how do you interview well, or how do you, how do you make sure your portfolio is prepped um and ready for interviewing? And ah so we just want to provide that, that safe space for getting, getting information from professionals who can help you with that.
22:55.77
Jennifer Roscoe
And, you know, that’s what people asked for.
22:55.83
Jon
yeah
22:58.97
Jon
Yeah, I mean, that’s what they need right now.
22:59.10
Jennifer Roscoe
that’s, you know, you know
23:00.97
Jon
I mean, you know, everybody needs to pay the bills.
23:01.53
Jennifer Roscoe
Yeah.
23:03.69
Jon
Yeah. um Okay, so I want to ah ah kind of switch gears a little bit, but, Shristi, I wanted to ask about the, you’re the speaker analytics lead. So I wanted to ask, like,
23:16.95
Jon
What is that role? And um I guess I’ll fast forward. Like, are speakers being nice to you? And are they like they they are they doing the things that they’re supposed to do? I know like I was bad about filling out one of the bio forms. But like are people being nice to you? Because I know dealing with speakers is not always the best.
23:35.67
Shrishti Vaish
No, no, no. They have been really nice. I think last I checked, we were like on track with everything based on our backend programs and our backend operations, I’d say.
23:43.13
Jon
OK.
23:46.26
Jon
Yeah.
23:47.98
Shrishti Vaish
Everything was ah on track. So we I think we really had to reach out to people to gather a lot of you know anything that they might have done. incorrect or maybe they’ve not filled out anything i think everybody everything was pretty on track so i’d say uh we were in good shape at this time um i don’t think so people were really lacking any of the things or did not fill out anything on the farm or we were you know uh like losing time because of anything they’ve not done i think everybody was everything was like clean and squeaky clean so
24:07.22
Jon
Mm-hmm.
24:23.58
Jon
Yeah.
24:23.87
Jennifer Roscoe
Thank you.
24:24.34
Jon
And so how many speakers will be, or how many talks I should say, will be prerecorded versus how many will be live? And I’m not, you know, exact doesn’t matter, but like, I know like ah my colleague Alice and i are prerecording our lightning talk.
24:42.84
Jon
So like how many of those can be prerecorded versus live? And then of course I should, I should note just so everybody knows pre-recording the talk, but then there’s a live Q and a that follows right after. So just want people to be aware that there is a live part, even to the pre-recording thing, but what is the balance between those? And um is that making your life easier or harder?
25:07.10
Shrishti Vaish
it’s It’s not hard at all because, as I said, speakers have been really you know coordinating with us as well. Our team, our speakers team has been really on top of everything.
25:19.18
Shrishti Vaish
So everything is, as I said, on track. I will not call anyone you know losing time or not doing things on time, but ah I’ll say everything is in good shape.
25:31.86
Jon
Okay.
25:31.82
Shrishti Vaish
So, yeah.
25:32.60
Jon
All right. Okay, great. um Can you all?
25:36.22
Jennifer Roscoe
I can speak to the balance.
25:37.37
Jon
Yeah.
25:39.02
Jennifer Roscoe
It’s about one forever every one recorded talk to every four live talks.
25:39.32
Jon
Yeah.
25:45.85
Jon
Oh, okay.
25:45.88
Jennifer Roscoe
So with our global agenda, we have a lot of talks on our on our schedule.
25:52.09
Jon
Yeah.
25:54.66
Jennifer Roscoe
And we are doing pre-recorded just to help with the flow of our run of show, just because the prerecorded are really short talks and it just makes it a little bit easier.
26:05.91
Jon
Right.
26:08.54
Jennifer Roscoe
but we, we do have quite a full agenda of live talks and, um, at least for the balance there, it’s about one, one to every four or prerecorded.
26:20.98
Jennifer Roscoe
um
26:21.14
Jon
and And how many talks do you have a count of like the total number of talks?
26:26.78
Jennifer Roscoe
it’s If we don’t include our kind of workshop day, it’s about 34, I believe, something in that range.
26:30.62
Jon
Yeah.
26:33.69
Jon
Wow.
26:36.28
Jennifer Roscoe
So it’s it’s a lot.
26:36.67
Jon
Yeah.
26:38.20
Jennifer Roscoe
So you’re getting a lot for your for your money this year, more than you normally would, because we just can’t have an agenda like this in ah in a normal in-person setting.
26:38.62
Jon
Yeah.
26:41.37
Jon
Yeah.
26:44.81
Jon
Right.
26:48.70
Jon
Yeah.
26:50.39
Jennifer Roscoe
So it’s very exciting for for folks.
26:51.01
Jon
Right. Yeah.
26:53.39
Jennifer Roscoe
you You’re getting so much. And you’re also, like Shresti mentioned, you’re getting so much in terms of networking, too. We’ve got all kinds of a activities scheduled throughout the day.
27:04.84
Jennifer Roscoe
We encourage you not to overwhelm yourself because we those are also aligned with lunches and sort of typical breaks for folks, depending on where you’re tuning in from.
27:16.30
Jon
Right.
27:19.50
Jennifer Roscoe
But there’s There’s a lot, and we know that that you probably won’t be able to do everything, but we encourage you to at least take part in some of the optional networking opportunities because that’s really what you really what you get to experience that nobody else gets to experience and where you make those connections and where you can really build build your personal kind of growth
27:22.64
Jon
Yeah.
27:40.16
Jon
Right.
27:42.72
Jon
Right.
27:47.66
Jon
Although I’ll say, I don’t know, my son will sometimes watch like a six hour car race or like he’ll tune in for the 24 hour race and watch like big swaths of it. So I don’t know.
27:57.94
Jon
He he might be the one who could hang in there for for the full 12. But I certainly will be tuning in and out.
28:00.81
Shrishti Vaish
Yeah.
28:03.26
Jon
um ah The other question I wanted to ask on this kind of behind the scenes piece is, um I’m just talking to to the two of you today, but there’s a bigger team behind you. So can can you give folks a sense of like how big the team is, how many different, I guess, like categories of roles there are?
28:24.18
Jennifer Roscoe
Sure.
28:24.31
Shrishti Vaish
and
28:25.69
Jennifer Roscoe
So we have an what we call and DVS speak our committees. So Outlier has its own volunteer committee, which is made up of around 30 volunteers. And we have it subdivided into subcommittees. So Shresti is on our speaker subcommittee and they have one of the larger groups because Our agenda is sort of the main main programming function of the conference, and there is a lot that goes into that.
28:56.78
Jon
Right.
29:01.23
Jennifer Roscoe
People think it’s just, oh, you invite a speaker, but no Like you mentioned, there’s a lot of that.
29:01.88
Jon
Yeah.
29:04.38
Jon
but ah
29:05.06
Shrishti Vaish
Thank you.
29:06.74
Jon
Okay, anyone who says that has either never been involved in any way in a conference. Anyone who says you just invite speakers has never been involved in any part of a conference, either attending or planning.
29:18.06
Jon
Okay, so yeah.
29:18.62
Jennifer Roscoe
Exactly. And there’s a lot of analytics involved. So we have this full-fledged, like, tracking mechanism that has been developed.
29:21.98
Jon
Yeah.
29:27.57
Jennifer Roscoe
um I’ll give a shout out to Kushal, who was mentioned earlier.
29:30.54
Jon
Yep.
29:31.33
Jennifer Roscoe
He was with us last year and worked on the other side of the agenda, which is sort of the networking and experience side. And now he’s getting to taste the the speaker side, which is almost even more complicated.
29:45.03
Shrishti Vaish
He’s phenomenal.
29:48.14
Jennifer Roscoe
It’s just a lot of…
29:48.22
Jon
Yeah, I’m going to just take an opportunity to apologize to Kushal right now because i got my invite.
29:50.37
Jennifer Roscoe
Yeah. Yeah.
29:55.08
Jon
I was out of town for a few days and then Alice was out of town for two days and I want to sure we’re both in town to accept and I kept having to apologize, but we finally got it done. He was very nice about like giving me some extra time because it was a little bit of a scheduling mess on our side, but okay.
30:08.50
Jon
So Kushal, cheers.
30:08.73
Jennifer Roscoe
It is a lot of that.
30:10.87
Jon
Yeah, yeah.
30:11.13
Jennifer Roscoe
It’s a lot of just people management. We also have contract management. We’ve got presentation management. We’ve got the whole AV side of the house that we also coordinate with and then have coordinate with you all.
30:20.91
Jon
Right.
30:24.41
Jennifer Roscoe
And then we’ve got the run of show. That’s just a whole nother animal that we’ll worry about when we get there.
30:28.31
Jon
Yeah.
30:29.45
Jennifer Roscoe
So that is a huge, huge problem. like Just kudos to you all for managing the the people, the information that we’ve got to organize with all of that.
30:40.90
Jennifer Roscoe
And we will have an agenda up soon. We just also have some you know, play Tetris with all of everybody’s timings when it comes to a program like this.
30:44.65
Jon
Okay.
30:49.51
Jon
Mm-hmm.
30:51.08
Jennifer Roscoe
There’s just so much to coordinate. And it’s it’s a lot. ah The other kind of pieces that go into our committee are We have a wonderful communications and marketing team.
31:03.41
Jennifer Roscoe
a lot of those folks that are on the team are also part of our DBS community, including our communications manager, as well as our communications director.
31:14.99
Jennifer Roscoe
So Jane and Kim, and we also have our secondary agenda team, which is our experience team. We have a few folks that are also helping out with our challenge.
31:29.35
Jennifer Roscoe
as well as our feedback clinic.
31:30.24
Jon
Right.
31:31.15
Jennifer Roscoe
So we’ve got, that’s all kind of a giant programming team that we’ve got going on there. And then we have our platform team. So every year we use a conferencing platform to host all of our content because things do need to live online for people to access, especially if they’re tuning in virtually.
31:52.20
Jennifer Roscoe
And this also gets streamed through for our AV and also so you can register, see what’s going on, get all the information you need. So that’s a whole a whole thing that goes into it.
32:03.88
Jennifer Roscoe
it’s It’s complicated every year for different reasons, but they’re an amazing team as well.
32:06.28
Jon
Yeah.
32:09.35
Jennifer Roscoe
And we’ll we’ll link everybody’s names out, but that pretty much sums up everything as well as sort of our sort of overseers who manage all the chaos and which is myself and then our conference director, Deshaun Spellman.
32:12.40
Jon
Yeah.
32:26.38
Jennifer Roscoe
We’re sort of herding everything around and making sure it gets done on time.
32:29.18
Jon
Yeah. yeah Yeah. um Can I, one more question on this, because there are people listening to this who I’m sure are curious, but like, what is the, um on the organization side, what is like the technology stack that you’re all using? Like, is it just a simple Google sheet? Is it like an air table? Like, I’m, you know, this is a data, data is crowd. So they’re going to be interested, I think.
32:56.12
Jennifer Roscoe
Well, it really depends which subcommittee that you are talking to. um We do use google Google Drive and Google Space as really kind of our main, just general tools that we use to kind of keep track of everything.
33:08.92
Jon
Yeah.
33:12.78
Jennifer Roscoe
Once you start hitting some of our applications that we use, it can go in a million different directions. depending on what year it is, what day it is.
33:23.82
Jennifer Roscoe
And it just kind of expands from there.
33:23.86
Jon
Right.
33:26.90
Jennifer Roscoe
We we don’t do, this is going to be sad to say, we don’t do a ton of visualization in terms of the actual building of Outlier.
33:36.95
Jennifer Roscoe
A lot of it is more just tracking and like project management, people management, of just um really kind of
33:39.75
Jon
Right, right.
33:39.91
Shrishti Vaish
yeah.
33:42.57
Jon
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
33:47.51
Jon
But that’s but that’s mostly a google that’s mostly a Google, like a Google Sheet. Like, Tristia, are you like tracking, like, you invite a speaker, and then they have to sign, there’s like a waiver form, and then there’s a bio form, and then they eventually have to send in their recording.
33:50.86
Shrishti Vaish
yeah.
33:58.55
Shrishti Vaish
yeah
34:01.03
Jon
Like, is that all just like checkboxes and a Google Sheet?
34:04.09
Shrishti Vaish
Yeah, mostly like data validation checks on the Google Sheet itself and just kind of tracking, managing data that comes under everything, like data management, mostly that, maintaining data hygiene, everything, I think mostly around that.
34:07.76
Jon
Mm-hmm.
34:15.57
Jon
Right. Yeah. Right. Well, also, I mean, ah it’s also like lots of people touching the same files, which is always nerve wracking.
34:19.56
Jennifer Roscoe
Thank you.
34:24.50
Shrishti Vaish
Yes.
34:25.18
Jon
So yeah, so I can understand that.
34:26.46
Shrishti Vaish
if
34:26.70
Jon
Okay. um ah The other thing i want to ask about was the information is beautiful words. I noticed that they’re not attached to Outlier this year. They have been in the past. and um’ And I’m sure others are wondering too, like what’s happening with the IAB awards and also related question. Do you think that the longest running data viz podcast should be up for some sort of, you know, special podcasting data award? Just, you know, just throwing that out there.
34:53.02
Jennifer Roscoe
yeah yeah do you have some recommendations you’d like to throw in
34:54.04
Jon
yeah ah
34:56.67
Shrishti Vaish
Yes.
34:58.07
Jon
I guess I could nominate a couple. Yeah. I have some ideas.
34:59.96
Jennifer Roscoe
think
35:00.39
Jon
Yeah.
35:01.14
Jennifer Roscoe
a there we absolutely are going to continue with the information is beautiful awards the um the program itself we we’ve had uh if anyone was paying attention, we had our full whole board nomination process actually not too long ago, just a couple of months ago.
35:23.98
Jon
Right.
35:24.46
Jennifer Roscoe
so we are in the process of really figuring out what that program is going to look like for the next year. so it will it will not unfortunately be aligned to our 2026 Outlier program this year just to due to the nature of the Outlier program itself.
35:44.47
Jennifer Roscoe
but more to come there on what it’s going to look like for likely 2027, just because there is kind of a longer runway to get all of the applications in and all of the different judging in.
35:45.14
Jon
Yeah.
35:53.27
Jon
Mm-hmm.
35:57.85
Jon
Yeah.
35:59.36
Jennifer Roscoe
But we have moved everything. um i i need to get a date on this, but our DVS website is going going through a whole revamp.
36:11.68
Jennifer Roscoe
So that will also impact the information is beautiful awards content. So we have been working on that um sort of in the in the background, but we absolutely wanna maintain, that’s just an incredible sort of archive of data visualization.
36:27.90
Jon
Yeah.
36:28.16
Jennifer Roscoe
and that’s one of the big things that we’ve been working on now and a lot going on with our information director here in DVS. and some of the behind the scenes work of DBS going on.
36:40.01
Jennifer Roscoe
So more to come there. We’re definitely open to what kind of new categories could be included in the Information is Beautiful awards.
36:51.84
Jennifer Roscoe
So that’s always up for up for discussion.
36:53.20
Jon
Yeah. yeah
36:55.80
Jennifer Roscoe
And because we we do, we have we have kind of a little bit more control over that being partnered with David McCandless and the Information is Beautiful team.
37:06.46
Jon
Yeah.
37:07.04
Jennifer Roscoe
So um yeah, more to come for 2027. And we’re always excited to see how we can grow and expand what that looks like for sure.
37:15.48
Jon
Awesome. Awesome. Okay. So let’s, um, let’s wrap up here. um Okay, so I guess the the sort of general best way to wrap up here is um ah kind of maybe just restate like time date, time, registration information, where people can go to register, and if they have questions also, like that’s the other thing. And like anything else they need to do to sign up or prepare for the conference, like…
37:45.40
Jon
You know, some conferences use Discord, some conferences like, you know, anything else people need to do to sort of like be ready to go. so I don’t know who wants to give us sort of like the advertising spiel.
37:58.52
Shrishti Vaish
I think you can just, you know, well maybe we can have our website later attached to our podcast description. But you can just simply go to the website, register for the conference, which is on
38:07.48
Jon
Absolutely. Yep.
38:13.40
Shrishti Vaish
June 23 to 26, like technically. Otherwise, if you’re, because we have a like pre-conference challenge on the June 23rd, but if you’re not attending that, so the main conference would be just for two days, 24 and ah from 24 to 26.
38:24.37
Jon
Love it.
38:31.67
Shrishti Vaish
And just, you know, register for the conference and and just look for the session RSVB for the sessions. And probably that’s pretty much it. There’s no like ah any other, you know, technicalities required.
38:43.35
Jon
love it Love it. Keep people’s lives simple to get in. Okay. um Terrific. Yes. I will put all the information for the Outlier Conference coming up this June in the show notes. Jennifer, Tristy, thanks so much for coming on the show. Great to chat with you. Good luck in the last few weeks of the sprint and very much looking forward to this year’s conference.
39:07.70
Jennifer Roscoe
Appreciate it. Thank you so much for having us. We’re excited.
39:09.85
Shrishti Vaish
Thank you, John. goodous It was fun talking to you. do
39:13.94
Jon
Yeah.