 Good morning everybody. I am so psyched that you are here with us to kick off our fifth open Viscons. Oh my goodness I'm really glad you can make it I hope you are caffeinated and ready to go you can probably tell that I am and I will continue to do this all day For those of you that don't know me my name is Irene Ross and I am going to be your emcee I'm also the director of data visualization at Boku. Those of you that don't know who we are Consulting company headquartered here in Boston We work with clients to use and create open source things and products for the web And we care a lot about web applications and data visualization, which is why we are here We love to do things for the community and we love you guys so And this is a really special year for us So some of you have been here before this is actually our fifth conference, which is amazing every year Thank you, thank you I'm really excited that you chose to spend these two days with us because this is a really special event for us You can tell that we chose a really amazing venue when the Sun kind of goes up above us We'll open these blinds as well for the full vertigo that you all came here for a Gorgeous Instagram view just waiting to happen So normally I jump right into logistics But I thought I would be remiss if I didn't cover a few like really fun little facts about us for the last five years So I had to pull just a couple of numbers. It would be obviously necessary. So a few really fun things We keep growing this conference and you guys keep coming, which is really amazing So we've had a total of seventeen hundred people come through here And twelve hundred unique folks so many people come back, which is really exciting for us I Promise you this trend is not linear because there's not a lot of venues in Boston that can fit more than this number of people So we're gonna plateau but nonetheless, that's where we've been and we've been selling out the last few years So thank you so much for being here and supporting this event and making it real a Few more fun facts 13% of you guys have been here more than once which is really cool So my jokes didn't Get you guys not to come back. I'll not talking about the other 87% 9% of you have been here for more than three conferences And there's a few folks that have been here to all five which is super cool that are not staff I should say obviously I've been here for all five and our conference videos have been watched a crazy amount of times a hundred fifty thousand times on YouTube which is really amazing and we've managed to bring 18 diversity scholars Through the years and really we only started three years ago So that's a really huge number for us and every year we've managed to grow that so I'm really jazzed about that And I find this amazing I just pulled a Google analytics and we've been visited from a hundred and forty one countries Which is crazy. I probably can't even name all of these So I should do a better job of that but it's really amazing to see so many folks come and Look into our conference and see what we're about and hopefully watch our videos and things of that nature So thank you again for you know for being here to support that And we've tried to make that even easier. We've tried to build these really goofy little interfaces for exploring the videos The top one was made by my colleague Yannick Many years ago looking at color and slides and then another colleague of ours that made this first text-based one and then Peter Beshai made this last one Last year which was a crazy combo of top terms and text analysis and slides and it was so fun to play with Watched a lot of videos, but I played around with it a lot But you guys did a lot of fun things for us too, which was really amazing Over the years. So one of our speakers John made There he is has done an amazing amount of all kinds of network visualizations of the various Tweet now Twitter networks and other things. So I've been I always play around with his tools after open Viscont to kind of see what happened We also had Jim my colleague make a whole bunch of different projects show a couple This is looking at tweets from 2015 and 16 and looking at speaker tweets and our tweets and mentions We've also had Shirley a speaker coming up in this first block make a whole bunch of awesome blocks looking again at Twitter I only caught captured a few but there's all kinds of fun ones in there And then Jim also looked at some other conferences and seen the speaker overlap Which is kind of amazing to see how folks move between the conferences that we all go to so that was really fun And you helped us take lots and lots of notes, which is really amazing I still get emails from people asking where those documents are They're still referencing them people update them still like I really had an update this week to 2016 So that's amazing. I'll ask your Nikki case is one of the speakers took a whole bunch of little sketch notes I said other folks So thanks for that. We'll do that again this year, and I'll show you guys the link to that And you wrote lots and lots and lots about the conference to you, which is really amazing I know a few of these folks are here. Sienna. I saw you somewhere And we really appreciate all these write-ups that you guys do people really, you know folks that can't be here Especially really appreciate them so keep it up, and we'll always be happy to share what you guys create This is one of my favorites One of our attendees last year just came up to me and gave me this beautiful 3d print of our logo which I just have laying on my desk And then he made this chocolate 3d print of the rooster Which is the logo for Boku and they just both sit there and really remind me of what a great community we have So thank you Andrew if you're around somewhere We really appreciate it, and I'm sorry we couldn't get y'all a 3d printed rooster. I know I'm bragging but It was pretty great So yeah, so I'm glad that you guys are here And we'll just jump right in to some logistical details, and then we'll get started I know you all want to know what Mike has to say me included so Obviously, you can always find us online openviscom.com if you need to find any last-minute details But you can also reach us on Twitter anytime you tweet at us my phone will buzz Adam's phone will buzz We are all on top of it Please share stuff on the hashtag. We know people are going to be following We're going to be retweeting you as much as we can and so on and so forth And you can always reach us you can also find anyone who's a staff with this red Staff badge on the bottom and the red lanyard Please do feel free to ask us any questions if there's any issues that you want to talk to us about We're all very equipped to help or at least we know someone who is so and If you do choose to leave the venue which make sure you have your badge when you come back and show it to them And they'll let you right back in although I don't think it'll be an issue if you don't but I have not tested this theory so Don't be the first I'm really excited about all the topics that we're going to cover this year This was yet another Challenging year to pick talks because there were so many amazing talks that you guys have submitted and other folks have submitted But obviously we're going to talk about a variety of exciting things anything from D3 to design process to WebGL We have a couple talks about that time lines just facial data networks tools for education story telling Uncertainty empathy canvas polygons text mining style guides Declarative visualization creativity data color personal data and exploratory data analysis visualization. Whoo So it's going to be a packed couple of days if you can be here and be present if you can shut your email down I know that's what I'm going to do Try it's going to be really amazing. We know that you guys are busy, but you're here So I'm sure a lot of these talks are going to stick with you. They always do with me So I also want to welcome actually it's not nine. It's eight typo But still eight diversity is called ship recipients, which is really huge for us It's more than it's one double than last year So that's really amazing and I want to thank all of our sponsors that have enabled that these are the first Sponsorships that folks seem to buy they really want to support the community in this way So I'm really happy that we were able to bring more people will do that again next year If you think your company might want to sponsor somebody coming here, please please let us know it really helps a ton a Few scheduling details, so hopefully this morning you got to grab some bites We'll have a light breakfast from eight to nine a.m. Upstairs We'll have talks gone between nine and about five forty five And we extended our breaks you guys asked for a little bit more time in the last year So our breaks are longer. They're two forty five minute breaks and the lunch will be 90 minutes and lunch will be in Upstairs there's kind of two rooms to the side and there's a room downstairs So lunch is kind of all spread out and they'll be coffee all the time so Which was the thing I kept saying last year and then didn't happen But I think this year is really happening and if it doesn't let me know But yeah, the entire schedule is on the back of your badge and really tiny print But you I'm sure you can make it out. So if you have any questions find the folks with the right badges Wi-Fi, which you've all found is Longwood guest happy event as we all know Wi-Fi is a finite resource So turn off your Dropbox syncing your Google Drive syncing don't stream your Netflix don't stream your Hulu Don't sync your other whatever cloud something document data thing and that would really help us a ton If there's any issues with the Wi-Fi will be trouble shooting them this morning Obviously try not to have like all three of your devices signed in if you can but we'll see how this goes Oh is a surprise Charging stations you may see you don't have power cords at your chairs That's probably would be kind of a fire hazard, but we do have charging stations. There's one over there There's one over there. I feel like an an airline suit is the exits are over there Charging stations over there. Yeah, feel free to just pop in and plug in your stuff And leave it there because we all trust each other So or just stand there next to your stuff. That's also an option There are a few folks who don't want their photo taken that is totally reasonable You may see have a photographer running around right there He's gonna take photos of all of us I would like to put them in the reels we put them on the website sometimes if for every reason you don't want your photo Taken this applies to everybody if you're gonna tweet a bunch of things in the conference Make sure that folks don't who have yellow yellow lanyards are not in your photos. That would be really great As I mentioned sharing is caring There's a lot of people who aren't here who are watching what's happening because not only do we have our transcript here Which I'll get to we also have it streaming online. So folks are watching Twitter and our transcript We're seeing numbers of people. There's definitely more Folks than we even expected. So, you know share what you guys are learning. I think people really appreciated who couldn't be here I mentioned transcription, which is a really exciting thing that we were able to bring back again Thank you act blue for sport Last year was the first year that we tried to have a transcription So I'm sure you can see my words flying really quickly on these tiny TVs But and it was really amazing folks really loved it I don't know if you've ever seen the actual hardware required to make the transcriptions happen But you can go check it out over there and we're really grateful To have our friends come back and help us with this kind of live Captioning stream. So that's pretty awesome As I mentioned, we're gonna do community note taking again So this is just a shared Google doc. You should all have right access to it You can pop in add your links add whatever it is. Do you want to share with the community? It's a free-for-all doc. You can put gifts in, you know, if that's kind of How you're feeling about the conference. That's totally fine. So OVC dash 2017 dash notes cool and obviously code of conduct, I think this goes without saying but This is a safe place for everyone folks of any race and gender and any kind of other Choice of self identification, so please make sure that you adhere to our code of conduct We expect you to be respectful to everyone and if for any reason, you know, you feel that you or someone else is being you know Mis-treated, please do let us know the folks in the red badges You can also email us at openvinsconf at boku.com or lots of ways to get to us But please you know this community has always been great every year. I really never have to deal with this stuff But nonetheless, it's really important. So And you may have seen Us starting to set up our actually draft so last year We had this little robot and it was drawing lots of pictures of stuff this year It's going to draw more pictures of stuff and during the breaks We'll actually have a little montage of a drawing more pictures of stuff really fast But we're also taking requests are your requests for plot feel free to Tweet at us with this hashtag actually draw and Adam my co-organizer who's pacing upstairs in the red and yellow Jacket will be making sure those get plotted so you can stop by anytime. It'll be by the registration area Just plot in a way. So we're a big fan of the actual And we are gonna have a conference reception today from six to seven o'clock upstairs Thanks to click who are have very generously sponsored This event will have an open bar and some snacks and it's gonna be really amazing So please stick around. It'll be pretty much right after the talks. I will have a quick brief break And again, I want to say thank you to all the people who sponsored us the variety of different kinds of sponsorships You may have seen the amazing book that is in your in your gift bags. We just got this amazing note from Graphic press and who said hey, we have these books who would love to give them to that attendees So thank you Edward Tufty who's not here, but who very generously donated these books to To all of you guys So yeah, and we're really thrilled that they could do this for us every year You know, these folks really support our cause. So we're really grateful for that So we are gonna go ahead and get started that is all