My Upcoming Talks, Spring 2013

I've got a busy few months ahead! Here's where I'll be speaking...

PyData SV 2013 in March

Peter Wang from Continuum.io asked if I'd submit something to PyData SV, perhaps after I noted the lack of women speakers at the last 2 events. :-) This small conference is the best place for python data science talks -- I've enjoyed and learned a lot at both previous ones. I'm happy to be talking about using the Pythonic versions of Nodebox as tools for data visualization.

Lean UX NYC in April

In April, thanks to Will Evans, I'll be giving a workshop on quantitative skills and analytics for product designers at Lean UX NYC. Here's an interview with me on their website, talking about becoming quantitative and lean data organizations. I'm still toying with the final content, but I expect to cover some advanced Excel maneuvers, a little bit of Google Analytics analysis, and some stats of use in UX work.

OpenVis Conf in May

It's a new visualization and data conference, the OpenVis Conf! Bocoup.com and @ireneros are running a great new event in Boston, and I'll be speaking too! Here's my talk plan (titled "The Bones of a Bestseller"):

How do Dan Brown and Stephanie Meyer do it? Most text visualization focuses on word counts: in this talk, Lynn will illuminate how fiction "looks" at a meta level, using a combination of meta-linguistic analysis and simple machine learning. Beyond just words, long texts are composed of sentences, paragraphs, and chapters, and the pacing and theme are reflected in these as well as word choice. With a little finesse, we can detect and graph the famous story arcs that screenwriters and fiction teachers are always talking about. With a little more finesse, we can write an action scene detector or a sex scene spotter and visualize how exciting a novel is — in all senses.

I know a bunch of Twitter friends are coming to all 3 of these conferences... I can't wait to see you all!