XTech heatmaps

Edd Dumbill — 2007-05-16T15:16:57Z

One of the fun and useful things we've been able to do in Expectnation with the personal scheduler is to use the data to help us as organizers.

We recently added in dynamic overlays to the organizer's view of the schedule, enabling us to create heatmaps of the most popular talks.

Screenshot of personal scheduler popularity overlaid on event timetable

As well as satisfying natural curiosity, the heatmaps let us identify issues such as possible room overcrowding in advance.

We're able also to record actual attendance figures as the conference goes on, and I will try and make an analysis of how attendees' intentions stack up against their actions.

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Using sparklines to aid conference proposal selection

Edd Dumbill — 2007-03-06T15:34:10Z

In a recent article I explained some of the mechanics behind putting together the schedule for XTech 2007. We've just added new visualization features to Expectnation that make proposal choice easier, and I thought I'd show some examples from the XTech 2007 review voting.

Sparklines, devised by Edward Tufte, are thumbnail sketches of data that succinctly convey patterns. When Nat Torkington used sparklines to show reviewer voting patterns for OSCON program committee, it seemed a helpful addition to make to Expectnation.

The profile of each reviewer is interesting — are they a harsh marker, or liberal with the top grades? — but sparklines really come into their own when drawn per proposal. Here are some small screenshots from this year's XTech voting, anonymized of course.

High flyers

Reviewers are pretty unanimous about this proposal, as 4.0 is the top grade in our scoring system. The lack of variance suggests that I ought to ensure that all the assigned reviewers put in their scores — this could be just one person voting.

These next two are the pretty typical distribution for highly graded proposals: mostly top marks and a few average ones.

Middle ranking

Some of the more interesting trends show up when the scoring isn't biased to either the top or bottom ends of the scale.

The reviewers are unanimous about this paper's soundness. It's not made anyone go "wow", but there's nothing to grumble about either.

This proposal clearly polarises opinion, and is such stands a better chance than the unanimous 3.0 above. Perhaps the subject matter or approach is controversial or timely.

Another proposal that divides the reviewers' opinions. It's also worth me checking here that I don't either have a pathologically strict reviewer, or at the other end, a reviewer with a wild passion for the cause this paper advocates.

Low scoring

The quality of submissions is usually so good that I don't give low graded proposals much attention, but the sparklines could alert me to potential oversights.

This proposal seems to polarise opinion between "rubbish" and "ok", so it's interesting to me to check out the subject matter and see if I'm missing something with potential.

These proposals were not received at all well.