Science Online Bay Area (SOBA) is a monthly discussion series on how science is carried out and communicated online. Their first event focuses on the topic of data visualization and data journalism in science.

Although not yet exactly common in science reporting, data journalism and data visualization are a natural fit to the material. But how does one go beyond the use of tabular data and basic analysis to data scraping and sophisticated statistical techniques? They’ll discuss the issues, methods, and tools of data visualization and data journalism and explore the cutting edge of these fields with some of the leading practitioners in the Bay Area.

Date: April 19, 2012
Time: Doors Open 7pm, Event 7:30pm – 8:30pm
Location: swissnex San Francisco, 730 Montgomery Street, San Francisco, CA 94111
SOBA

Speakers

Peter Aldhous is San Francisco bureau chief with New Scientist magazine, reporting on biology, medicine, social sciences and the environment. He also teaches in the Science Writing Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Michael Porath heads up the Engineering team at Visual.ly. The startup creates tools that aim to democratize the creation of data visualization.

David Kroodsma is an independent climate change consultant and journalist who has spent much of the past decade communicating climate science. He recently spearheaded do-it-yourself data journalism while writing for the Climate Central, where he used basic online tools to communicate climate science to a lay audience.

Shane Shifflett is a software developer and reporter for The Bay Citizen who learned how to interrogate data while telling a story at Northwestern’s Medill School.