Building Out the Income Guide

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Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Work on my Illustrated Guide to Income is continuing. As of today I have more than 35 pages completed. Though it sometimes feels like I am just running in place, it helps to take a look at my progress each week to remind myself how much I have accomplished.

Also, I am experimenting with Google Docs as a way to publish my underlining data set online inspired by the work of DataBlog at the Guardian (@datastore) and the Texas Tribune (@TribData). These are two news organizations who have done some great work in the area of data journalism.

Besides researching, cleaning and gathering data while creating infographics, they have made a commitment to sharing the data with their readers so that they can contribute to the "sense-making" part of the project. In the case of the Guardian, they ask readers to post visualizations and mash-ups on their Flickr Group while the Tribune's data set on government salaries (gathered through the Texas Public Information Act) has been very useful for my own project on Income in the U.S. as I plan to use it to illustrate state government salaries.

I recently found a great co-working space here in Hoboken, N.J. called Mission50. It has giving me "co-workers" again, something I have missed since I left the 9-to-5 office world. I can bounce my ideas off people and get suggestions when I am working through a problem I haven't tackled before, for example where to find a good printer. And after 15 years of going to work each day, I find I missed that routine and I am glad to have it again.

Finally, I am presenting my work on the Illustrated Guide to Income at The Big Picture Conference Oct. 11 here in New York City.

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