The Art of Communicating Data

In this episode we'll be setting your data communication goals for this year. I'll help you figure out what you should focus on and what's important to you for your data career. 

Best-selling author Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic joins us on this episode to talk about her latest book: Storytelling with You: Plan, Create, and Deliver a Stellar Presentation. She shares lots of helpful advice on making effective and successful presentations.  Resources talked about on the show: Storytelling with You: Plan, Create, and Deliver a Stellar Presentation Upcoming workshops Cole is hosting (one in London coming up on October 26th) Check out this episode's show notes for additional resources

Having a 3-minute story and Big Idea can help you tremendously with preparing for the rest of your data presentation as well as during the delivery itself. Listen to this episode to learn what these are and how to craft them for your next presentation.

The work we do as data practitioners often plays a key role in decision-making. In this episode, we talk about how we can foster critical thinking in teams and create captivating 3-minute data stories to help with data decision-making.

So you got the basics of data visualizations covered, what's next? Here are my recommendations on how to build on your data visualization foundation.

Here's my take on what a beginner’s data visualization curriculum looks like. This is for data practitioners or aspiring ones who want to get a solid foundation in data visualization and don’t know what they should be learning at this stage.

Paulina Davila started her journey as an analyst and recently became a VP and the Head of Data Visualization & Storytelling at JP Morgan. She shares her tips on how to build effective data visualizations and presentations, as well as how to take initiative to help you climb the ranks at work.

Do you work with data and are in academia? Tune into this episode to get advice from Dr. Sarah Treit, founder of Figures First, on how to communicate with data in academia. We also talk about the common forms of communication, predict how that will change in academia, and more.

Learn how to make a data portfolio that will work in your favor rather than hurt you (because they can!). Our guest, Juliana McMillan-Wilhoit, shares her thoughts on geospatial data analysis, why you shouldn't trust maps, and data portfolios. 

In this episode, we talk about the struggles data scientists face with communicating their work and tips on how to address this. Our guest is Avery Smith, founder of Data Career Jumpstart, and he also shares his thoughts on how to use certain data science terms when talking to non-technical audience members.

Do you get anxious presenting your work? If so, you don't want to miss this interview with Susan Gatura, a senior data analyst working in the media and entertainment industry. Suzie shares her experience with conquering presentation anxiety while also being an introvert.

To kick-off the 2nd season, listen to our guest, Britney Lovett, share her advice and tips on how to improve your data communication skills as an industry professional. She's a lead data analyst and has also started a free mentorship program to help data professionals.

Have you heard about these 7 different types of data stories? In this week's episode, I review this data storytelling framework with you so you can use this anytime you feel stuck on what story to tell with your data. I've also linked a helpful article with data visualization examples for each of these in the show notes.

Are you starting a new data role? Or maybe you are new to the data viz world? If either is true, listen to this interview with BI Analyst Mujahed Syed, a Phoenix Tableau User Group co-lead and former Tableau Ambassador. He shares his communication tips as well as how he presents his dashboards to his clients. 

Katie is a data analyst in the healthcare industry with an educational background in math. In this episode she shares her tips on how to confidently communicate your data work. We also have a segment where she advises on how to present certain data terms. You can find ways to connect with her listed in the show notes associated with this episode.

Are you "drive-by" critiquing or have witnessed others do this online publicly? In this episode, I share advice on how to tactfully provide feedback to people sharing their data work online...as well as how to ask for it for your own work.

I'm sharing 5 ways you can improve your data visualizations. It doesn’t matter which tool you use to make your charts since these tips apply to most tools. This isn't an exhaustive list so let me know if you want to hear more tips. You can email me at [email protected].

In today’s episode you'll learn how to start your virtual presentation in a way that engages and captivates your audience’s attention from the very beginning. This is actually one of the lessons from my new course on virtual presentations. Enroll today to get it at a discount: https://trending-analytics.com/virtual-presentations/.

In this episode I’m going to explain why you should take opportunities to improve your audience’s graphicacy and some suggestions on how you can start doing so. I'll also share why *not* showing unfamiliar charts to your audience can sometimes be a bad thing.

In this episode I open up more and share about my communication struggles and journey. I also share lessons I've learned more recently working in the data field about these skills.

In this episode, I provide an overview of data visualization as an effective form of communicating data. We also talk about exploratory vs explanatory visualizations and when providing visualizations can help your audience vs showing them all the data.  You can find show notes here: https://trending-analytics.com/episode-5-why-you-should-visualize-your-data/

We are going to be talking about data storytelling predictions for the coming 5 years. There are two particular predictions that have stuck out to me and grabbed my interest. So I’ll focus on these two for this episode. As always, I'm curious to hear what you think so give this a listen and message me with your thoughts at [email protected]. You can find show notes here: https://trending-analytics.com/episode-2-data-storytelling-predictions-for-2022-and-beyond/

Let's discuss the different ways you as someone who works with data could be expected (if not already) to communicate data with others. You can find show notes here: https://trending-analytics.com/episode-3-know-these-different-types-of-data-communication/

We’ll be talking about how to put your audience first when communicating to them, whether it’s through reports, data viz, presentations or whatever other form of communication. I gave a version of this training to the Phoenix Tableau User Group in Dec 2021 (the training covered more than just this topic) but I think you can benefit from this material as well. You can find show notes here: https://trending-analytics.com/episode-4-how-to-put-your-audience-first-when-communicating-data/

In this first episode, I want to share why this show focuses on data communication skills and why you should be honing them to help you with your data career. I also share the light bulb moment I had in graduate school that made me realize the importance of such skills. You can find show notes here: https://trending-analytics.com/why-focus-on-data-communication-skills/

I was inspired to start this podcast because you didn’t ask me to. Most people who reached out to me asking if I can teach them how to use data viz software or create a course on the latest data tool everyone is talking about. It’s precisely because of these requests that I created a show dedicated to communication skills for data people because we obsess over technical skills and do not work enough on these other so-called “soft” skills. So I decided to create this podcast to help you hone these skills. If you want to come on the show as a guest or submit your experience for me to share, feel free to email me at [email protected].