Adults only conference (graphics)

The big black keyhole on the front of the Malofiej Conference programme this year promises the audience some special views – some startling insights – some hidden secrets revealed at last …

Well thanks, I’ll look forward to just that.
The selected members of the judging team will step up one by one and give their presentation about infographics, visual journalism and who knows?

Conferencing for 10 hours thursday
Let’s have a look of the announced content:
First – I love an ambitious and packed programme – just look at that thursday: We start out at 9.30 with Ivan Kemp telling us ‘how to survive’, and carry on the whole day with the last speaker, Manuel Canales, scheduled to enter the podium at 18.45 telling us how a small department can think big. That’s 10 hours of infographic conference in just one day. Inspiring.
And I have never seen any of the Thursday-speakers perform before, so there is plenty of room for interesting surprises:

- Thomas Molen has titled his speech ‘The infographics Nerd’ – could end up funny, although he’ll be among equals, so the anecdotes will have to be sharp to make an impact.
Svetlana Maximchenko is going to show us graphics from the Wild, Wild East. In this case that means Russia – room for surprise again, as I would’ve sworn that the Wild East when it comes to infographics really is Hong Kong and Taiwain.
Scott Byrne Fraser is the only judge, who I have seen has announced himself as a speaker on their personal tweets/sites – that should mean he is pretty excited about showing us how to design cross-platform infographics in his session ‘As seen on tv’.
Kaitlin Yarnall will cover the making of smarter maps, – this could be another session with possible trick of the trades revealed?
Thursday will also bring us Francesco Franchi and Alvaro Valino speaking about projects they have been involved in. Such sessions can be wonderful, if the speaker connects well with his audience, and inspires everyone to go home and improve their own graphics – let’s see what happens.

Heavy German influence on Malofiej this year
Next day is where the ‘Germalofiej’ kicks in with two german speakers, – former colleagues turned competitors: Lukas Kircher and Jan Schwochow. Lukas even brings another colleague to assist in the judging – maybe the three germans will make an impact on the judging outcome this year? At least they get the chance to make an impact on the audience – especially Jan, who is planned to deliver a spanking session right before the prizes are announced.
We’re also going to get a glimpse through the keyhole to the data-viz taking place at NY Times, when Hannah Fairfield will show how to make dots, lines and curves tell visual stories.
But the tough morning-call is left to Alejandro Rojas who will talk about ‘graphics with the nails’ – I’ll try to get an update on that topic, as soon as I see Alejandro, as I could fear some empty seats from late-stayers at the Jumping Jester who would rather not hear the screeching sound of nails to the blackboard this early in the morning.
What is so good with Malofiej is the attempt to bring in judges and speakers from outside the actual newsrooms – Connie Malamed is such an outsider, who could bring the audience some good perspective on the theory behind the visual language. Her book ‘Visual Language for Designers’ is subtitled ‘Creating Graphics that People Understand’ – that could be an important lesson.

Find the programme (pdf) here: