I want to present at SXSW in Austin next year on the topic of non-verbal wine communication. I think there’s a great deal to be said about visual storytelling, infographics, and non verbal ways of describing certain subjects (especially inherently sensory experiences like food and wine).
As I researched my first few posts about the words we use to describe wine, I worried that my topic was too weird and esoteric. But SXSW has just revealed the full list of 3,266 panel proposals and an astounding number are about similar topics of non-verbal communication!
So I’ve rounded up some panels that look very interesting and talk about a similar topic of post-verbal or non-verbal data. I hope to get in touch with all these presenters eventually because I think we have a lot to discuss.
Live Visual Blogging – Realtime Social Drawing
A presentation about live visual annotation of lectures/speeches/etc. One can also imagine this being applied to wine tastings and tutored tastings? Imagine live tasting notes being drawn by the audience as they learn about wines of Languedoc and our sunshine, winds and mountains. The final result could be more interesting than any list of words!
Culture, Crowdsourcing & Creating New Wine Words
This is crazy. Another wine guy actually proposed a panel about semantics and language just like I did! This group in South Africa has banned a list of the silliest words that turn up in tasting notes and is crowdsourcing wine reviews to develop a new language to describe wine. Pretty cool idea.
The Power of Visual Storytelling
This is probably the most straightforward panel. A group of content creators talking about individual cases of creating visual content.
Text.Snap.Capture.Record : Create with Mobile
Cell phones are reshaping how people think about content creation. Oftentimes, a quick snap or video recording on the fly made at the moment will be more important than a well-written article that takes hours and hours of research and editing.
Visualize This! Data and the Future of Research
A more academic look at how visualization can affect research and data sharing amongst professionals.
Shut up & DRAW! A Non-Artist Way to Think Visually
It’s great that everybody’s excited about visual presentation, unless you suck at art. This panel will offer ways for non-artists to employ visualization techniques.
Data Visualization for Social Change
Can data visualization be refined to help change minds and create social change? Examples of current visualization strategies include abortion statistics and unintended pregnancy infographics
Beyond Chart Porn: Data Vis for Action
This duo is worried that visual data presentation is so sexy and slick that people are overusing it. The panel will look at ways to keep data visualization meaningful.
Lend Me Your Earballs: Sound + Interaction Design
This panel aims to look at audio design. It’s true that we’re veeery visual. And we tend to hate any kind of audio in webdesign. So is there a future for well-crafted audio?
Maps of Time: Big Data as Narrative
An interesting and ambitious panel that wants to visualize data over time and “change the way we do data visualization forever”. I’ve often considered writing a blog aggregator for winemakers that just scrapes all of our photos and posts them on a timeline. And maybe then doing a sort by hue if photos land on the same date. I expect this would create a sort of wave that moves from green to red/brown over the course of the calendar year (assuming we stick to all northern hemisphere or all southern hemisphere vineyards).
Visualizing Social Media for Educational Use
This presentation proposal seems a bit vague at first, promising to deliver social media tools that educators can use to assist visual learning. The powerpoint attached has a lot more detail, including a list of simple tools like wordle, many eyes, twitterfall, and so on. Potentially an interesting topic.
Data is Sexier than Sex… And I’ll Prove It
I wanted to mention this for the title alone.