writing | ben fry » talk

Learning from Lombardi

admin — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 19:35:02 +0000

Just posted an essay about the work of artist Mark Lombardi that I presented at Experimenta Design in Lisbon last week. I don’t usually post lectures, but this is a kind of work-in-progress that I’m trying to sort out for myself.

For the panel, we were to choose “an individual, movement, technology, whatever – whose importance has been overlooked” and follow that with “two themes that [we] believe will define the future of design and architecture.” In that context, I chose Lombardi’s work, and how it highlights a number of themes that are important to the future of design, particularly in working with data.

Bio+Viz in da ‘berg

admin — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 21:50:31 +0000

Give up those full hue heat map colors! Make images of biological data that even a grandmother can love! How about posters that no longer require an advanced degree to decipher? These platitudes and more coming next March, when I’ll be giving a keynote at the EMBO Workshop on Visualizing Biological Data in Heidelberg. Actually, I won’t be talking about any of those three things (though there’s a good chance I’ll talk about things like this), but registration is now open for participants:

Dear colleagues,

We invite you to participate in the first EMBO Workshop on Visualizing Biological Data (VizBi) 3 – 5 March 2010 at the EMBL’s new Advanced Training Centre in Heidelberg, Germany.

The goal of the workshop is to bring together, for the first time, researchers developing and using visualization systems across all areas of biology, including genomics, sequence analysis, macromolecular structures, systems biology, and imaging (including microscopy and magnetic resonance imaging). We have assembled an authoritative list of 29 invited speakers who will present an exciting program, reviewing the state-of-the-art and perspectives in each of these areas. The primary focus will be on visualizing processed and annotated data in their biological context, rather than on processing of raw data.

The workshop is limited in the total number participants, and each participant is normally required to present a poster and to give a ‘fastforward’ presentation about their work (limited to 30 seconds and 1 slide).

To apply to join the workshop, please go to http://vizbi.org and submit an abstract and image related to your work. Submissions close on 16 November 2009. Since places are limited, participants will be selected based on the relevance of their work to the goals of the workshop.

Notifications of acceptance will be sent within three weeks after the close of submissions.

We plan to award a prize for the submitted image that best conveys a strong scientific message in a visually compelling manner.

Please forward this announcement to anyone who may be interested. We hope to see you in Heidelberg next spring!

Seán O’Donoghue, EMBL
Jim Procter, University of Dundee
Nils Gehlenborg, European Bioinformatics Institute
Reinhard Schneider, EMBL

If you have any questions about the registration process please contact:

Adela Valceanu

Conference Officer
European Molecular Biology Laboratory
Meyerhofstr. 1
D-69117 Heidelberg
Tel: +49-6221-387 8625
Fax: +49-6221-387 8158
Email: valceanu@embl.de

For full event listings please visit our website or sign up for our newsletter.

Which also reminds me, I oughta finish cooking a few back-burner genetics projects before they go bad…

Lecture tomorrow in Northampton, MA

admin — Mon, 04 May 2009 19:02:11 +0000

I’ll be doing a talk on Tuesday evening (5 May 2009) for wmassdevs:

Author Ben Fry will be presenting “Computational Information Design” –a mix of his work in visualization and coding plus a quick introduction to Processing. We are very excited to talk to Mr. Fry and our thanks go out to this event’s sponsors: Atalasoft and Snowtide Informatics.

He will be presenting to the Western MA Developers Group on Tuesday, May 5th at 6:30pm at 243 King String, Poutpourri Plaza in Northampton, MA. This event will be hosted by Snowtide Informatics, beverages and snacks will be available.

Mmm, snacks!

Lecture in Cambridge, MA this Thursday

admin — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 16:36:55 +0000

The folks at the Boston Chapter of the IEEE Computer Society / Greater Boston Chapter of the ACM have kindly invited me to give a talk this Thursday, December 11.

The details can be found here, here, here, and here. They all contain identical information, but have different text layouts and varied sizes of my grinning mug. You can choose which one you like best (and sorry, none are available without my picture).