Malofiej19 (2011) – the program is ready

The good people at the Malofiej-conference in Spain know how to keep their participants in suspense … We’re getting really close to leaving for Spain, and so it is with great pleasure that I found my continuous clicking into snd-e.com fruitful at last. The program is ready.

You can find it as a pdf here:

The first thing that springs forth is perhaps what isn’t there: No presentation by David McCandless. After it was announced that he was a confirmed speaker, it is indeed a shame, that he has decided not to show up. ‘It’s very disappointing’ as the organisers say. And, yes – I would have loved to see how a room full of infographic people would react to the McCandless-speech.

But let’s see what we get then:

Andrew Vande Moere – Persuasive Visualization. A must-see  (well, every session is for me, as I’m going to cover Malofiej2011 extensively on visualjournalism.com). Andrew, a Senior Lecturer at University of Sydney and Leven University in Belgium, maintains the very popular infosthetics.com and is a popular speaker. High expectations for this opening-session.

Stephen Few - Infographics and the Brain: Designing Graphics that actually inform. No Malofiej without some brainy connections. Another strong reason to go to Malofiej this year. Stephen Few lectures and does consultancy work all over the globe. Maybe he’ll show a few of the insights from his latest book. High expectations for this session.

Rafa Höhr - Print + web + iPad. Deadline is close. Oh my God! – This session almost sounds like a modern poem. Rafa Höhr is one of the best practitioners in the field, so it could be interesting to see, what he has in his slides.

Ryan J. Sparrow – Understanding the path forwards. Trends for the SND Digital Competition. A bit hard to know, what to make of this. It can go either way – very useful or mainly vague guesses. I don’t know Ryan yet, so he just strikes me with an uncompromising appearance. Very bald-headed in his facebook and twitter-profile. Maybe his talk will be to-the-point also?

Haika Hinze - The infographics moment in German Newspapers. Haika Hinze just finished the judging of Worlds Best Newspapers in SND32, awarding the Portuguese i as the world’s best. She was part of the jury in European Newspaper Award in 2009, which also selected i as the best. She must be used to judging by now – and her speech could reflect her experience with all the great stuff she must have seen.

Matt Perry - Chart Smart. Effective Approaches to Data Design for Print. (Or how to avoid a Data Design Disaster). What a long title!  Hopefully Matt will have time to talk after explaining what exactly he is going to show us. Always good to avoid design disasters, so this could be the direct and useful speech.

Pablo Loscri - The role of the web: Integrated projects. Clarin, where Pablo Loscri is the boss, has a special place with Malofiej – being Argentinian and consistently winning at least one gold. The topic sounds a bit dry – hopefully there will be some tango to it as well.

Jorge Cortés – 2010. Infographics in a year without a break. Surely they had a busy year in Chile last year. It will be nice to see some of the graphics again and hear some anecdotes about the production. Hopefully some new material will be in there as well – we all copied the work of Jorge and his colleagues, so we have seen a lot of it already.

Paul Blickle - ‘In Graphics’: A magazine for visual people. Not sure if this will be an advert for the magazine put out by Golden-Section Graphics. Never mind – I’ll buy it, if you bring some, Paul.

Chiqui Esteban - Trial and mistakes learning to stop doing graphics online. I’ve read the title of the session a couple of times now. I just don’t get it. I still look forward to see and hear Chiqui do his presentation though, as he is a fellow-in-crime maintaining his excellent infographics blog in both spanish and english.

Kat Downs – The infinite loop: Creating Graphics with user data. As long as she wears these earrings, she’ll be remembered whatever the content of her speech. Otherwise it sounds like we’re going to see a lot of US-maps being populated with data.

Joe Ward - Interactive Graphics. The Sports Edition. He will have plenty of great material to show – he is one of the graphics editors working at the New York Times. But as he follows right after the Washington Post-session, I hope he shows more than the portfolio.

Paolo Ciuccarelli - The aesthetics of conversations. From the website of DensityDesign, where Paolo Ciuccarelli is an associate professor, it looks like we can expect a very self-confident delivery here. These guys are ready to back up all their projects with a lot of thinking and talking. After this session it’s lunchtime – if Paolo doesn’t make sure to connect with his audience, we will hear growling stomachs soon enough.

Geoff McGhee - Meeting the Challenge of Big Data. Geoff produced the ‘Journalism in the Age of Data’-videos, and thereby showed the infographic world what a good producer he is. To present challenging, big datasets in an interesting way, can be a tougher nut to crack.

John Grimwade – Infographics that Make Me Crazy! The final session – just after the goldmedals have been presented. This should be hilarious and very funny – as anyone who has seen John perform will know. I wouldn’t rule out to see some of the former Malofiej winning graphics in this session too. It should make a good starting conversation at the awards dinner later in the evening.

See you in Pamplona …

Oh, if you haven’t signed up yet, there’s still a few days left to do so. Here are the form.  You should make a reservation at the AC Ciudad Hotel for convenience – they carry special rates for Malofiej participants – and don’t try to catch the plane home early Saturday morning. The awards dinner are seldom finished before midnight – and afterwards comes the Jumping Jester (The Irish pub just across from the hotel).