This site turns two today. There have been frantic periods of posting and periods of silence. There have been times when I thought nobody would read this and times when I had more than 50,000 visitors in a day. Here is a bit of history, some thoughts on what the site has accomplished, and what I am planning for the future.
The idea for the site goes back about five years. I wanted to write about visualization and art, and have a platform for a bit of outside-the-box thinking. In August 2004, I registered the domain. The idea came from another website called equaleyes. It had a nice ring to it, but something was missing. When I came up with “eager eyes,” I immediately bought the domain name. I still haven’t gotten much feedback on whether it sounds good or dorky or weird, but I like it. In any case, I’m stuck with it.
The misfits.
It took me another two years to get the site running. There were some embarrassing early versions with my custom made CMS and nonsensical articles. I also wanted to build something similar to Many-Eyes and Swivel for some time, until I realized that I simply couldn’t do that by myself. Another thing that took forever was finding the right content management system. There are simply too many, and I was very picky about things like URLs, caching, etc. I spent way too much time on this, but I’m happy with my choice now.
The rebels.
What is the mission of this site? I guess to put it in as few words as possible, it is to shake up visualization. While this is still a very young field, it already seems to be set in its ways, and I don’t think we should be at that point quite yet. In fact, I hope that this field stays alive and flexible for a long time, so it can grow and change. And I don’t think we even begin to understand how visualization even works, let alone how we can use it for the most effective communication, representation, and insight.
The troublemakers.
This is not a blog. When people call this site my blog, I usually argue with them. The goal is to organically build a website over time that will have some more or less well-organized information about visualization methods, basics, applications, etc. Part of it is a blog, yes, but that part is filed under the blog category. The other articles do appear in the feed when they are published, but they are meant to have a much longer lifetime than the usual blog entry. They are also longer, better researched, and take a lot more work to put together.
The round pegs in the square holes.
This site is also about original thought and projects, rather than rehashing or pointing at what other people do. Because, let’s face it, that is exactly what most blogs do, including a few visualization blogs. I have no interest in that. Of course, this means that I can’t update this site every day. Projects like the ZIPScribble Map, the iTunes Store Visualization, the square pie chart redesign, Presidential Demographics, etc. take time. Plus, I also have a day job.
The ones who see things differently.
This site is about passion. I criticize what others do, and I can be very frank in my criticism. But I scare because I care. I want to get my readers’ attention, and I want to point out things that I think are wrong. Some of my statements may be harsh, a bit more sweeping than is called for, and sometimes maybe wrong. But among reasonable adults, I think a frank and open discussion must be possible. And just as I am ready to dole out criticism, I am very receptive of what others have to say about my points of view.
They’re not fond of rules.
At times, this site has been a bit of an echo chamber. There is the odd comment, but not a lot of discussions have started. I can’t believe that the hundreds of people who visit this site every day all agree with what I am writing here. This is doubly true for my regular visitors who subscribe to the RSS or Atom feed. Why don’t you say something? Don’t be content with mere consumption! Let me know if you agree or disagree. Tell me what I missed. Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me what you think we need to talk about. Let’s put all that fancy Web 2.0 technology to work.
And they have no respect for the status quo.
So the goal for the next year will be to make this site more open for discussion, and start a bit more of a conversation. I am not the person for cheap provocation to get discussions going, they have to happen naturally. But by providing the means and perhaps some starting points, I hope to foster more comments and discussions than have happened so far. I have recently changed the settings so comments appear immediately without my approval. That approval step was there after some initial problems with spam, but that is well under control now.
You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them,
I am not planning any radical changes, but there are a few things I want to do. One is a live-microblog from InfoVis and VAST in three weeks. Other things include more interactive visualization applets, more open-source visualization software, and potentially a discussion forum (if the current stream of comments continues). I have also been trying to talk people into contributing articles, but have not been successful so far.
disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.
This is a non-commercial website. I make it a point not to have advertising, not to post affiliate links, and not to sell anything through this site. This is my naïve little contribution to a better world. I share because I care.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.
What has the site achieved? It has certainly helped me get recognized. As egotistical as it may seem, it is a great feeling to email an influential, senior InfoVis person to ask for a list of influences and then be told that he or she knows the site and is happy to oblige. I have also been greeted by strangers as “Mr. EagerEyes” at conferences and been told by others that the site has changed their view of visualization.
Because they change things.
That’s a good start, but the next step is to get people to actually act on that, to ask questions and to demand more foundational work in InfoVis, more InfoVis for communication, and a deeper understanding of how it all works. All of that exists in one way or another, but it is not enough. We don’t understand our own field, and we need to change that.
EagerEyes does look a lot like a blog :P. You’ve got the entries on the left and recent posts and comments in the sidebar and everything sort of flows like a blog. Maybe a homepage that shows a greater separation between what belongs to “blog” and what belongs to something else might help with the mistake?
You’re right, and I’m actually working on a design for the front-page that will make it look less bloggy. But I do like the list format, so there will still be pages that list articles from particular categories or just the “feed.” It takes a ton of tweaking to combine the best of both worlds and find a good balance for how much stuff to show – and not be overpowering or look bare.
Hi Robert, Congrats on crossing the 2 year milestone. It takes huge amounts of passion and commitment to keep on talking about topics you care about. Keep up the good work.
On the comments front: you said this site has been a bit of an echo chamber.
This trend has been a concern for me as well. But as I visit more blogs, follow discussions everywhere I am seeing a trend that may be we dont discuss unless we hate something or *strongly* like something. When the reaction is negative usually comments / discussion begin fast but when it is positive or neutral it takes greater energy to be part of the discussion. Dont you think so?
Thanks for the kind words! It does indeed take a huge amount of time to produce something worthwhile to write about, then write about it, keep the design fresh, etc.
I agree with your observations on comments, though that is actually something I talked about above: I’ve seen a few instances where postings on blogs or even more “serious” websites were quite obviously written to incite arguments and drive up “participation” and traffic. I just don’t want to do that.
I also shouldn’t complain too much, I’m quite happy with comments lately. Keep them coming!
I guess inciting / inspiring users to sit up and take notice of things is a technique most famous blogs use. But I more interested in proving the general phenomena of “negativity is more than positivity in comments” by taking a look at a cross section of comments from social sites (like youtube, reddit, digg, flickr and popular blogs lifehacker, smashingmagazine, readwriteweb etc.) and going through a hundred or so posts to analyze the content (look at the comments of these sites, take the words and rate them based on plus words or minus words) and then see if we can conclude something.
Do you know any good techniques / automation to do something like this?
I’m sure you’re right about the negativity. There was a study recently that said that people who tend to post comments are more likely the ones with extreme world views, whether they know anything about the actual subject or not. And they will more likely attack things they don’t agree with, than slap the writer on the back. I can’t seem to find anything on that right now, though.
There is software that can analyze text for positive/negative statements (and more than that), but I don’t know any that’s free (it’s actually very expensive, because it’s not exactly the kind of software that sells millions of copies). If you collect data, I might be able to get somebody to run that through such a program.