Are you sharing the replays with attendees?

Captions increase the accessibility of our recordings, making it easier for attendees with hearing issues, audio/tech glitches, and non-English speakers to follow our ideas.

In this lesson, you’ll learn about embedded captions with Sue Griffey.

(Embedded captions means that the captions are “stuck” or “burned” inside the video file itself, not as an extra button that viewers have to remember to click.)

Resources Mentioned

https://www.descript.com

Transcript

[00:00:00] I’m Ann Emery. You’re watching Dataviz on the Go.

And in this video, you’ll learn about embedded captions from Sue Griffey.

All right. This is a, a progression of how I’ve done in captioning as Ann, working with Ann over the last four years, made me more and more aware of accessibility. And LinkedIn also, who were a couple of years ago, really focused on making sure we caption everything.

Um, I took to the opportunity when I do mentor time, and most of these slides are from the half hour professional development topic I do twice a month, um, to explore how to use My tools and the best tool was Descript because I could use it for editing and it also embeds captions. I wanted them embedded because people I work with globally told me they don’t always have the opportunity to turn on captions.

People get confused in YouTube about where to go [00:01:00] and that way I knew whatever was already done. So, this is now just the last, I would say, four to six months in, because this is a screenshot, and traditionally in the bottom of the screen I would put the footer for whatever reference I was extracting from.

And this is when Descript went from one kind of caption to All sorts of captions. They now have a range of them, and this was the default one. It’s huge, but it was like, I just got to get it done. So I did get it done. Not pretty, but it was there, and I do hear people tell me it’s useful. Then I realized I could take the time to adjust the captions, but what was bothering me was the fact that it overwrites things.

Yes, there was a lot here on this slide, but it What I was saying is this woman has a way to evaluate your biases. You can go see it later. I brought it to [00:02:00] Ann and to Office Hours to say, I really am needing to have captions in a way, and I’m thinking that I need to adjust my, my band at the bottom to make it wide enough just for the captions.

So, I’m I told Ann that I would try it out and then I came to office hours with captions and discovered that, um, with moving it around, I have a 1. 1 inch band at the bottom and Descript will let you do a single line, but sometimes it pushes you to a double line anyway. Add. a readable size. I think this was 36.

And Ann said to me, Sue, wouldn’t it be great if you could, I thought first you were saying, Ann, wouldn’t it be great if you could make the gray match each section, and I have three sections, a blue section, a green, a red section, and a green section. I know, well, I realized that when we talked. You were [00:03:00] saying make it transparent, and could you make the, the, font match what’s the font you use on screen.

Descript lets you change the size of it and it has some fonts, but this font was the closest I found to my font. Um, so this is what I now can do with Descript. I still have one troubleshooting thing. This is with a transparent background, Ann, but it still sort of puts a block around it. It’s like it’s a little darker.

And I don’t know if I’m choosing the wrong transparent and I haven’t had enough time to futz with it. But it now comes up as by itself. Anything that I need to for URLs are now above the red band. And I’m really happy with how it looks. It doesn’t look sloppy. And my, my, basically my available space is in the white.

So I don’t always have full bleed photos unless I’m doing a, a, uh, a [00:04:00] slide separator. But this is how it is, and I’m thrilled with it. I love this progression. I love the idea of just making the footer of the slide. What did you say? 1. 1 inches? 1. 1 inches. Measurement. Yep. Is that set up in your SlideMaster?

It is. Can I show you my SlideMaster? I’m so proud of it. I’d love to see it. Everything matches. Everything’s labeled except the dark red. I thought I had renamed that green, but yeah, I’m so happy with it and it makes me so restful now because I was trying to use a different one for teaching and a different one.

Now I’m like, nope, just one set. So, yeah, that’s, it’s all in there, everything’s set, and no problem with, the only thing I have to do, Descript doesn’t let you set an automatic setting for your captions, you have to choose the caption, I have to change the, um, size, I change the size from 50 down to 28, which is what I want.

[00:05:00] What most of my, this slide, um, the last slide I showed you was. It comes out looking professional and I can manage just fine. Can you talk me through, like, what do I need to do to do the embedded caption magic that you’ve done? I literally don’t know where to click. Yeah, go to the far right. And the second from the bottom choice in that panel, this is called Underlord, has all these helpful things.

And I use the classic one. It’s about two thirds of the way down below the yellow. I use classic. So, click on it so I can show you what comes up in the panel. So, you see it inserts the box, and you can adjust the size of the box. You can move it all the way down, you can make it smaller, you can make it wider.

So click on the, click on the box itself[00:06:00]

and it should, I’m trying to remember where it comes up, maybe it’s, there it is, yeah. So you see it automatically comes up in white and 50 with man rope whatever. So click on the white. Now that’s where I was choosing the transparency next to the Great. To the right of that. I chose that as transparent.

That was the lightest thing I could find. Yeah, and you know, it’s interesting then for me to think through what’s the opposite of that I have to do, because these aren’t slides, this is Excel, so I need the filled background. Right. And then it’s like, where does it fit with the webcam? Because a lot of times in the editing, I’ll go from full screen to the inset webcam and back again to keep it interesting.

Yeah. I think this webcam is set to be Whatever percent in Camtasia, like 25%. So when I do make it small, it is consistently that size. So I literally didn’t even know this was [00:07:00] all possible. This is so fascinating. You move the box over, make it wide, make it small. Yeah. Um, but then let me show you, hit the classic button.

under classic, and that’s where you get the border and the background. So background is where I then, um, yeah. But yeah, that’s your fill color, so you want to change that to black, uh, to, you want to leave that white or whatever. Oh, you’re purple. I don’t think I want to do purple. I think that would be too hard to read.

Um, I’m just noticing they have an upper in here. Oops, I didn’t mean to click on that red. Um, black? No, white. White. White on black. Just go down to the white button. Go to the color panel down below and hit the white button. This is my font color. I don’t know. Font. Black font. Okay, then go to background.

Yeah. White background. [00:08:00] With maybe a hair. Transparency?

Nope.

Yeah, you’ve got, it’s just bolded around, it’s just white around the day, the text itself, not the whole box. Active word, that’s an interesting one. Yeah, there’s, I mean, it’s fun to play with all of these. Yeah. I’m working with someone now who’s neurodivergent and I chatted with her the other day about what’s not working for her in the course, and she loves captions, but I said, do you want it where it highlights each word?

And she said, no, that would be too distracting, so. Do export at the top left. Yep. And then You hit video. I export the transcript first and then I export videos. So, but that’s just me. I like [00:09:00] to have a word doc of everything because people often want to go back and see what the actual wording was that we struggled through on their CVs or whatever.

I think Descript is still the captioning tool. It is. I don’t think there’s one that has more features and more correctness than this one out there. New tech gets invented all the time, but. If anybody here wants to try one, Descript is the starting point. They have a free trial, too. I forget how much it is after that, but I’m sure the site spells out the different levels of subscriptions.

Thank you so much, Sue. You’re welcome. It’s fun to geek out on this.

The post Add *Embedded* Captions to Recorded Presentations with Descript appeared first on Depict Data Studio.

Maybe the numbers simply went up over time. Or down.

Other times, it’s more complicated.

Here’s how to explain multiple takeaway messages in presentations: with multiple slides, one per takeaway message.

Before: Everything Smushed on One Slide

Here’s what I typically see: lots of possible takeaway messages shoved into a single graph on a single slide.

The presenter says something like this:

“Next, let’s talk about gonorrhea diagnoses in our state. We’re looking at the number of diagnoses per 100,000 people. We’re also looking at age ranges. This is the person’s age when they were diagnosed with gonorrhea. We’ve got five years’ worth of data: from 2018 through 2022. Let’s look at a few key findings. Gonorrhea diagnoses were highest for people in their early twenties. In 2020, for example, there were 735 gonorrhea diagnoses per 100,000 people ages 20-24 in our state. Gonorrhea was lowest for ages 40-49. In 2022, for example, there were 88 diagnoses per 100,000 people ages 40-49 in our state. Here’s another pattern we found: Gonorrhea diagnoses generally went up from 2018 through 2020. For the three younger age groups, at least. And, gonorrhea diagnoses went down from 2021 to 2022 for all age groups.”

And while you’re talking through allllllll those numbers and age ranges and timeframes, the audience only sees this:

You see the problem, right??

The presenter is talking about one thing… but the audience is probably looking at something else.

That’s the very definition of Death by PowerPoint.

After: Describing One Takeaway Message at a Time with Multiple Slides

Instead, let’s use multiple slides!

We’re aiming for a single takeaway message per slide.

That way, what we say = what the audience sees.

There should be a perfect cohesion between sight and sound.

The presentation would look and sound like this:

“Next, let’s talk about gonorrhea diagnoses in our state. We’re looking at the number of diagnoses per 100,000 people.”

“We’re also looking at age ranges. This is the person’s age when they were diagnosed with gonorrhea.”

“We’ve got five years’ worth of data: from 2018 through 2022.”

“Here are the patterns at a glance. Next, let’s look at a few key findings.”

“Gonorrhea diagnoses were highest for people in their early twenties. In 2020, for example, there were 735 gonorrhea diagnoses per 100,000 people ages 20-24 in our state.”

“Gonorrhea was lowest for ages 40-49. In 2022, for example, there were 88 diagnoses per 100,000 people ages 40-49 in our state.”

“Here’s another pattern we found: Gonorrhea diagnoses generally went up from 2018 through 2020. For the three younger age groups, at least.”

“And, gonorrhea diagnoses went down from 2021 to 2022 for all age groups.”

Finally, you’d show the “full” graph again, pausing for questions and a discussion.

The Bottom Line: Use More Slides!!!

We’re not making the presentation longer. We’re speaking for the same amount of time as before.

We’re not rushing or slurring our words. We’re speaking at the same pace as before.

We’re not wasting paper or ink. These are the slides shown on screen during a presentation. If you want to print something, just print the “full” graph (which is slide 462 in the screenshot below).

We’re syncing our words and visuals.

We’re keeping our audience’s attention.

Because if they’re not even paying attention… How will they possibly understand, remember, and use the findings for decision making?!

The post When Graphs Have Multiple Takeaway Messages appeared first on Depict Data Studio.

Maybe you’re getting ready for a talk at a conference.

Or, maybe you’re sharing updates with coworkers in a staff meeting.

In this blog post, you’ll learn how to explain dense graphs one slide at a time, which makes it easier for our audience to follow along.

Before

Last summer, I was keynoting the National Birth Defects Prevention Network’s annual conference in Atlanta.

Here’s what one of the health department’s original graphs looked like.

We wanted to make a presentation-ready version.

If you work in public health, then you know that the tiny text and statistical terminology is pretty common in scientific graphs. (BUT IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE!!!)

After

We don’t need a complete overhaul.

I made some very light edits to the existing graph:

• Direct labels (instead of legends) ensure that the graph is “Big A” Accessible (a.k.a. 508/ADA compliant).
• Horizontal text (instead of vertical text) is faster to read.
• I removed the grid lines.
• I enlarged the font (the body font is size 18, which is my bare-minimum font size for presentation slides).

Storyboarding for a Live Presentation

Now that we’ve tackled the quick edits, we’re ready to adjust the graph for a presentation.

We’ve already done the hardest part: Getting the “final” slide ready.

Now, with a few more minutes of planning time, we’ll create the “build-up” slides, like this:

What the Presentation Will Look & Sound Like

For statistical graphs, I often begin by explaining the axes.

I’d show the y-axis, and say, “Next, let’s talk about coarctation of the aorta. We’re going to look at the prevalence per 100,000 births.”

I’d click, move to the next slide, and say, “…and we’re looking at data from 2007 through 2019. The numbers vary a lot each year, so we’re looking at 5-year moving averages in this graph. The moving averages are going to help us focus on the bigger picture.”

“Here’s what we predicted would happen. You can see some slight variations over time, but we generally estimated that there would be 3.6 to 3.7 cases of coarctation of the aorta per 100,000 births.”

“Here’s what actually happened. There were slightly fewer cases of coarctation of the aorta than what we predicted. And the numbers are actually going down slightly over time.”

Finally, I’d click, move to the next slide, and say, “Here’s the confidence interval with a 95% band.”

The graph is explained piecemeal, RATHER THAN SHOWING EVERYTHING ALL AT ONCE.

If we show everything all at once, then my audience would be looking at one thing while I’m talking about something completely different. That’s Death by PowerPoint.

The Bottom Line

We don’t have to delete or dumb-down our statistical graphs.

We just have to explain them piecemeal.

It’s counterintuitive, but sometimes we need more slides — one slide per sentence or two of speaking points.

We’re not talking for longer, or running over time.

We’re not talking faster, or slurring our speech.

We’re simply clicking through our slides one at a time to match our speaking points.

A few more minutes of planning time on our end… to make sure our audience can follow our dense graphs. A necessary trade-off.

Learn More

Browse more examples of storyboarding in these blog posts.

You’ll also practice this technique inside Powerful Presentations.

The post How to Visualize Confidence Intervals in Presentation Slides appeared first on Depict Data Studio.

I got the opportunity to work with a public health agency which I was really exited about.

Until I had to present my research to a group of policy makers…

Before: The Dusty Shelf Report

Condensing two full chapters—73 pages of my thesis—into a short report for the policy making group seemed like an impossible task.

That’s when Report Redesign came to the rescue!

As this research was being conducted in an academic setting, I couldn’t entirely do away with all the technical details (or what Ann would call the Dusty Shelf Report ).

But I did manage to apply the 30-3-1 principles to summarise the two chapters into:

1. a shorter 23-page report (with appendices) and
2. 11 slides for a 10-minute presentation to the policy making group.

Choosing the Final Outputs: A Short Report and a Slideshow

Working with the public health agency, I realised that although they were expecting the technical details on the study methods and results to be included, the overall format expected was different compared to what I had been used to in academia.

They wanted slides which were to be presented to the policy making group and an accompanying report with more details on the study in case some of the members wanted more detailed information.

I thought this would be a good opportunity to apply some of what I had learnt during the Report Redesign course.

Choosing Which Findings to Include

We had a few meetings with the research group to identify the most important findings to include in the presentation and report.

Given the audience was technical, we agreed to include:

• An overview of the study
• A sentence on what the goals/aims of the study were
• Survey respondent characteristics
• Results section that highlighted responses to main questions in the survey
• Limitations

Just focusing on these areas, I was able to whittle down the two thesis chapters into 23 pages with some additional information in the appendices.

The Shorter Report

In the original version of the write-up, I did have some tables, but they were too technical (too many decimal places; statistical terms like p-values).

I also had some graphs that used the default settings made within my software program without any editing.

For the report, I aimed to have one or more visuals on every single page (a goal covered in Report Redesign).

This included flow charts, graphs, tables, text boxes, and icon arrays. Whatever was needed to best communicate the takeaway finding from the research.

The agency was going to use their own design team for the final branding and layout, so I didn’t have to bother with that.  

The Presentation Slides

I further had to whittle down the report into 11 slides for the presentation.

I decided to limit the background information and focus on the key results.

The post Redesigning a Thesis Chapter appeared first on Depict Data Studio.

Are you lucky enough to have historical data at your fingertips?! Woohoo! What a treat.

Let’s weigh the pros and cons of a few different viz options.

The Table

Here’s what their tabulated data looked like, sort of.

Let’s pretend we’re looking at the number of doctor’s appointments that took place within their healthcare system.

That’s not the real variable, and these aren’t their real numbers, but you get the idea: They wanted to visualize patterns over the past four years.

Before: 1 Graph per Year

Here’s what their initial visualization looked like: a separate graph for each year.

Idea 1: Lonnng Column Chart with Bare-Minimum Edits

First, let’s tackle the Quick Wins, a.k.a. the Bare Minimum edits for branding and “Big A” Accessibility:

• Brand colors and fonts
• Darker font for better color contrast
• Sized for a slide (size 18-point font, 13 inches wide, 5 inches tall)
• Arranged left to right, rather than a grid
• “Grouped” all the graphs together for easier copying and pasting into a slide
• Horizontal text only
• Consistent scales to make comparisons across graphs easier
• Fewer demarcations on the y-axis (one label every 25,000 units)
• Changed the y-axis to a “number” format so that a zero appears at the bottom, not just a dash
• Then, only showing the left-most y-axis
• Wider columns, a.k.a. a smaller gap width

It felt inefficient to keep four separate graphs — too much extra work to align everything and then group everything — so I turned this into a single column chart.

Yep, I had to rearrange the four tables into one table in order to transform the four graphs into one graph. At the bottom of this blog post, you’ll see a link to download my Excel file so you can explore the behind-the-scenes tables and graphs for yourself.

Idea 2: Lonnng Column Chart with Data Storytelling

I’ve written about spoken about traditional vs. storytelling graphs a lot over the past decade. If these terms are new, then you can watch the most recent public-facing conference talk here.

In this version, I intentionally used data storytelling. This data was intended for a busy upper-management office, and leaders often prefer when we cut to the chase, instead of burying them in graphs that don’t say anything.

The presentation slide might look something like this:

• A takeaway slide title
• The topical graph title underneath
• Dark-light contrast
• Labels only on the columns of interest – for September and October

And no, I don’t love how the September labels are right-aligned while the October labels are centered, but this probably isn’t the winning approach, so who cares.

Idea 3: Lonnng Line Chart with Data Storytelling

Another option is a line chart with gray shading for the peaks.

Yes, this is a combo chart in Excel.

The presentation slide would look like this:

Idea 4: Single Line Chart with Data Storytelling

A final option is a single line chart that stretches from January to December, with each year’s data “stacked.”

Comparing All 4 Ideas

My favorite is Idea 4 because we can easily see the seasonal peaks.

Which one is your favorite, and why? Comment below.

This isn’t an exhaustive list.

Can you think of additional options? Comment below.

Giving a Powerful Presentation

Idea 4 is a sort-of dense graph — and it’s definitely a spaghetti line graph, so we’ve gotta continue adjusting it.

We’ll want to present it piecemeal to match our speaking points.

Otherwise, our audience will die of boredom.

Our bosses will wonder why they hired us.

And nobody will be able to make data-driven decisions based on the data… because while we’re explaining one piece, they’re looking at something else (the very definition of Death by PowerPoint).

The meeting might sound something like this:

I hope you enjoy my kindergarten photoshopping skills.

PowerPoint’s animation works fine for bullet points.

But, to “animate” graphs to match our voice, it’s usually easiest to create a bunch of different slides.

Download My Excel File

Want to explore how I made each graph?

You can download my spreadsheet here.

The post How to Visualize Multi-Year Patterns appeared first on Depict Data Studio.

…and the rest was history!

YouTubing, blogging, and speaking at conferences just for fun quickly transformed into a fulfilling, creative business that’s taken me all over the world and enabled me to work with dream organizations. I never intended to start a business; it just kind of happened naturally thanks to YouTubing and blogging.

Here’s what the YouTubing portion of the journey looked like.

Why I Started YouTubing

A decade ago, I was working full-time as an evaluation consultant in Washington, DC.

I was also finishing my master’s degree at a nearby university, tackling one course at a time in the evenings after work.

And, I was starting to give data presentations at conferences as a regular part of my job. I also went to plenty of lunchtime brown bags around the city to meet people who worked in similar areas.

After the events, we’d stay in touch, and I started getting requests for data tutoring. “I loved your talk!” the emails would say. “Can I hire you to teach me how to do that?” Or, “I have a job interview coming up. Can I hire you to help me prep for the Excel tests that I’ll have to take as part of the hiring process?”

I’d been a formal statistics tutor and Spanish tutor in college through a small invite-only program. I got paid $25/hour back then, which felt like a million dollars for an 18-year-old college student.

So, in my mid-20s, I started tutoring colleagues after work in coffee shops around D.C. I started charging $25/hour and worked up to months-long projects at $125/hour.

Pretty soon, my schedule was way too busy. Again. Story of my life!!

“How can I help more of my colleagues with their datasets?!” I wondered. I decided to start YouTubing! My plan was to make one video that could help infinite colleagues. Then, I’d make another video that could help infinite colleagues. And so on. I’d help more people in less time.

The Earliest Videos

In between regular work and grad school assignments, I’d record short tutorials on common Excel formulas and post them to YouTube.

I didn’t have a webcam; I used my laptop’s built-in camera.

I didn’t have a microphone; you can hear my fingers clacking on the keyboard. Subscribers complained about the poor sound quality, so I bought a $15 microphone after a few videos.

I didn’t know how to edit videos; I’d record them in a single take with a “show must go on” approach.

I was awkward on camera; I rushed through my speaking points, afraid that I’d say “um” or “uhh” if I stopped to breathe between sentences. I didn’t want people to get bored while watching the videos, so I talked reallyreallyreally fast in an effort to hold their attention.

I didn’t know where to post videos – online courses hadn’t really been invented yet – so they were created out-of-order and posted in random places around my blog’s pages. At one point, I had a single webpage with ~50 videos embedded in it. As you’d imagine, it loaded really slow! I created an html Table of Contents to make the page easier to navigate. I added toggle buttons to hide the videos that you weren’t currently watching. I added buttons with links to download the supplemental materials. I was essentially creating a structured online course before that technology had been invented. I saw the need for organized videos and materials, and was thrilled when tech like Teachable, Thinkific, Kajabi, and all the others were released later on.

If you want a good laugh, you can watch my very first YouTube video here!

The Middle Years

By 2014, thanks to blogging and YouTubing, there was so much demand for my dataviz training that I left the corporate world and started my own company.

I started having kids, which left me without any “let me YouTube just for fun!” time.

I’d also finished grad school, so I didn’t need any “productive procrastination” away from my papers anymore.

For a few years, I didn’t create any YouTube videos. (Although I did continue blogging 2-3 times each month.)

This Year

I don’t focus on revenue growth as a business goal. I’m not here to help you make a million dollars a year.

Instead, I’ve focused on mastery and quality: leading the best private workshops I can, creating the best online course experience I can, and producing the best public resources like blog posts and YouTube videos that I can. As you can imagine, revenue growth is a natural byproduct. When you master your craft and produce high-quality experiences, you grow your business.

Here’s how I’ve focused on mastery and quality on YouTube this year.

Upgrading My Equipment, Tech, and Skills

Here’s what I’m currently using:

• Shure microphone, custom-ordered in brand purple (farewell Yeti mic).
• Mic arm so the mic is an inch from my mouth and I stop slouching over.
• Windscreen to cut down on background noise.
• Circle light to make up for working in a one-window room.
• Colored LEDs for fun.
• Canon camera (farewell webcams) so that I’m in focus and the background is slightly blurred.

I upgrade my set-up every few months. The full, updated list of equipment is here.

Here’s what it currently looks like behind the scenes:

I invested in public speaking training so that I sound like myself on camera, don’t rush, and vary my tone and cadence.

I learned basic video editing so I can use a variety of imagery: full-screen direct-to-camera shots; the webcam embedded in the corner; B-roll; and so on. I currently use Camtasia to both record and edit videos.

I hired an animator to create intro and outro animations.

I add transcriptions with Descript instead of relying on YouTube’s auto-generated captions. Descript’s captions are more accurate than YouTube’s. And, uploading a transcription file helps with SEO. (When people are Google-searching for dataviz topics, then Google searches through my transcripts and figures out if my video is relevant to their question.)

Upgrading My Content Creation Approach

Most importantly, I’ve upgraded my entire content creation approach.

In January 2022, as I was setting my business goals for the year, I wanted to master what I call the Long-Form-Short-Form approach to content creation.

My approach involves:

• Choosing a topic to share publicly (typically, anonymized case studies from past projects or Quick Wins for daraviz best practices and accessibility).
• Creating new slides about that topic (so I’d have the option of turning that into a YouTube video, online course lesson, and/or conference presentation).
• Writing a blog post about that topic with the images inside the post. The video gets embedded in the blog post, too.
• Creating a downloadable resource to share, like a checklist, cheat sheet, or dataviz template. I share these free and low-cost resources via Gumroad.
• Recording a YouTube video (which is easy once you’ve already got the slides created, the speaking points written out in your blog post, and a resource to share).
• Making a thumbnail image. I have quarterly photoshoots with a brand photographer and make the thumbnails in good ol’ PowerPoint.
• Transcribing the video on Descript.
• Adding timestamps (chapters) to the video.
• Writing a newsletter to my mailing list (ConvertKit) to let them know about the new resources.
• Breaking up that long form video and blog post into several social media images (the “short form” version), which I make on Canva and schedule on Buffer.

Phew! That’s a lot of ways to repurpose and recycle content across multiple platforms.

I realize this is jargon for most of you.

But for the fellow bloggers, podcasters, YouTubers, and course creators reading this, I hope you can appreciate my mega transformation over the past decade. I’ve gone from “let me create this quick video just for fun” to “let me create conference slides AND write a blog post AND make a downloadable resource AND make a video AND add captions to help with accessibility and SEO AND add timestamps to break it up into chapters AND share it better than ever on social media.”

The Long-Form-Short-Form Approach in Action

Here’s an example of that workflow.

• I was invited to speak at a conference.
• I chose a topic (an anonymized version of a project I worked on a few years ago).
• I made a downloadable resource (the graphs that I’d be talking about in the presentation).
• I made slides and presented them at the conference.
• An hour after the conference, I recorded the YouTube video (since the speaking points were already fresh in my mind). This was a free public event for a small audience, so it was the perfect opportunity to repurpose the content for my own larger audience.
• I created a thumbnail image.
• I added captions (Descript) and timestamps to make the longer video easier to navigate.
• I wrote up my speaking points and turned them into a blog post. (I usually write the blog post before the conference presentation/YouTube video to help me organize my thoughts, but this time, I made the video before I did the writing.)
• I made several images for social media (Canva), scheduled the blog post (WordPress), scheduled a newsletter to my email subscribers (ConvertKit), and scheduled the social media posts (Buffer).

It takes a full workday to complete that entire process, which is much longer than my “lemme make whatever video I feel like, whenever I feel like” approach from a decade ago. But, it’s more effective, so it’s worth the time investment.

My Latest YouTube Stats

Between 2012 and 2022:

• 109 videos (and hundreds more inside my online courses)
• 9,100 subscribers
• 2,400,000 views
• $13,000 made directly from video ads
• $22,000 made directly from the downloadable resources that accompany the videos
• Millions made indirectly from people who watch the videos and hire me for private workshops and/or join my online courses

I do wish I had more subscribers. If I was a full-time YouTuber–and gave up my private workshops and online courses entirely–I know I could grow my channel to millions of subscribers.

Being a full-time YouTuber is an entirely different business model from being a dataviz speaker and course creator. I’m not interested in switching careers at the moment.

Video Highlights

Here are some notable videos over the years.

Most Views

I made this one in the middle of the night, “thanks” to my never-ending battle with insomnia. And it’s made me thousands of dollars in ad money. A couple hours well spent!

Most Controversial

People either think the Excel test is way too hard or way too easy.

I didn’t create the test!! I just recorded myself taking it.

Video That’s Led to the Most Paid Jobs

What a nice surprise!

(Executives recognize these “dashboard don’ts” in their staff, and they hire me to come and train their staff to make simpler dashboards.)

Underdog Award

I’m surprised this one doesn’t have more views.

The downloadable resource–the templates to create all the one-pagers–is such a gem.

But, the video itself is too long, and it was posted on aea365, which doesn’t get as many views as my own blog.

Favorite Videos on Other Channels

So many!!! Some of my favorite videos have been collaborations for my friends’ YouTube channels.

I especially love this lesson on using colored phrases for qualitative data visualization, which I made for Jon Schwabish’s channel.

I also love this video on starter dashboards for the “Data Is Not Scary” theme for Kate Strachnyi’s channel.

What’s Next

For years, I’ve dreamed about focusing on YouTube, rather than treating my channel as an afterthought around my private workshops and online courses.

For years, I haven’t made the time. And I haven’t been interested in switching from a private workshop/online course business model to a YouTube business model.

I’m not sure whether I’ll ever choose to make the time or make the switch, though.

I love teaching dataviz through videos. Learning software how-to’s through screenshots is the worst. It’s so much better to watch someone’s mouse move on the screen!

But, I’ve done that. I’ve created 6 online courses that involve recorded tutorials, live Office Hours Q&As each week, 1:1 consultations, swag bags, downloadable resources, guest speakers, and more.

YouTubing is still a fun hobby, but with running a business… raising 3 kids… going to the gym… gardening in my backyard… planning fun outings with neighborhood families… I already have a life full of wonderful hobbies. As usual, there isn’t time for much more.

That being said, there are some specific tweaks I’m working towards in 2023:

• Finally adding intro music to accompany the intro animation.
• Upgrading my recording/editing software. Camtasia only lets you record full-screen, direct to camera videos in 720p resolution, which is grainy. I want to record in 1040p resolution. Sometimes YouTubers record their full-screen, direct to camera shots entirely on their camera’s memory card. Then, they record their software demos and screensharing from their laptop. Then, they have to merge the various files inside their editing software (Camtasia, etc.). That’s a lot of extra files to keep track of! I’d prefer to find a single software program that does everything. If you have suggestions, please comment on this blog post and let me know.
• Keeping all videos to 10 minutes or less. People complain about short videos. People complain about long videos. I think the sweet spot for my topics is around 10 minutes.
• Figuring out which topics can/should be shared on YouTube. Everyone wants Excel dataviz tips, but I’ve got a course on that. Everyone wants dataviz accessibility tips, but I’ve got a course on that. I’ve also got courses on dashboards, reports, presentations, and formulas/pivot tables. So what goes on YouTube?? This is the most challenging aspect of YouTube and blogging for me: finding one-off topics that aren’t already covered comprehensively inside my online courses.
• Setting a realistic goal for videos. For 2022, I wanted to publish 20 blog posts, 10 of which would involve the long-form-short-form approach with the embedded YouTube videos and downloadable resources. I’ll finish the year with ~24 blog posts and just 6 videos. I’m not sure what’s realistic for 2023 given my other goals for online courses and private workshops, which take up the majority of my time. We’ll see! Stay tuned.

Your Turn

Have any YouTube questions for me? Post them here and I’ll respond ASAP.

It would mean the world to me if you’d subscribe to my YouTube channel here.

The post Celebrating 10 Years of Dataviz YouTubing! appeared first on Depict Data Studio.