ONS Digital

For those who don’t know, Reddit is a source for what’s new and popular on the web, often called the ‘front page of the internet’. It’s full of people sharing and creating memes, gifs and communities, and almost every viral trend will have passed through Reddit at some point. As ONS progresses further in the digital sphere, we need to find emerging platforms to showcase and discuss our data. Even on Reddit, there is a home for us- a 2 million strong community of data professionals and hobbyists called ‘Data is Beautiful’. Data is Beautiful is currently one of the most popular online communities dedicated to data analysis and visualisation. Users share links to data visualisations, discuss their merits and create their own original content. If you visit it, you may find anything from a map of the UK based on pub locations (seen below) to a visualisation of the chords used in Clair de lune. Recently the Data is Beautiful community have started hosting AMAs (Ask Me Anythings) with key data visualisation professionals. They give anyone the chance to ask questions about data viz and surrounding practices. Recently there has been an AMA hosted by Nate Silver from FiveThirtyEight and many data viz professionals are coming up in the next few months, including us on September 23rd from 3-5pm. We now sit on the schedule alongside some of our data viz heroes: Albero Cairo (author of ‘The Functional Art’), Mike Bostock (creator of D3) and David McCandless (author of ‘Information is Beautiful’). On the day of the AMA, we will be setting up a key team to answer any questions that come our way. We have Matt Jukes to answer questions about the development of the new Beta site, and Rob Fry who is Head of Data Visualisation and the Visual.ONS site. This will all be coordinated and promoted online by our social media team. We know it’ll be a challenge; we will have to respond quickly and respond in a non-corporate way. However, this is a chance to share our data, our code and techniques with fellow professionals, and put a human face to our organisation. Make sure you check out the AMA on September 23rd, we will be promoting on our ONS Twitter account all day, as will Data is Beautiful on their account. Also, look out for upcoming AMAs in October and November when we will be focusing on population statistics, and economic statistics.