D3.js Workshop

Wed, Aug 1, 2012

I did a d3.js workshop at ThoughtWorks Bangalore yesterday (31st July, 2012). I split the workshop in to two parts. The first was a basic introduction to d3.js - SVG, Scaling, Axes etc. The second part was an exercise to hack together a Scatterplot with some Cricket dataset.

Around 30 people attended the workshop. I spent too much time on the first part and hence we did not have enough time to complete the second part. This was the first ever workshop I have done and my time plan was way off. I should fix it the next time.

It was a great learning experience for me. In the process of preparing for it and conducting it, I realised that giving talks and conducting workshops are way different. For a talk, you have the freedom to pick examples that are easy to explain. For a workshop, the examples have to be easy to understand and easy to put together during the workshop.

I was really looking forward to watching the video of the workshop and learning from my mistakes. Unfortunately, the video camera had some issues and ended up recording only the first 10 minutes of the 1 hour workshop. That was not fun.

However, the 10 minutes the camera managed to capture was still helpful. I realized that I no longer have the annoying habit of saying “Right…” when speaking in front of a crowd. I appear a lot more calm and collected. I am really happy to see that slowly but surely, I am getting better at this.

I did the slides in reveal.js and the slides are here. The examples I used are here