Editor’s Note – We’ve got an updated list with 2016’s the new dates and other great events here: Data Visualization Conferences 2016
With the new year coming up, and new travel budgets being set, it’s time to see what data visualization conferences are really going to be worth your time.
JANUARY
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Big Data Innovation Summit and Business Analytics Innovation Summit
Las Vegas, USA — January 22nd and 23rd
Speakers from Ford Motors, Netflix, Capital One, StubHub, Yahoo, Ebay, Twitter, Visa, Boeing, Google
Innovation Enterprises put on a massive list of big data & visualisation conferences around the world and throughout the year. Featuring a wide variety of speakers and a fast paced format, you’re exposed to a lot of great ideas quickly. A full calendar of Innovation Enterprises events can be found here.
FEBRUARY
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Developer Week 2015
San Francisco, USA — February 6th – 12th
An event including 60+ events and 200+ speakers, developer week encompasses pretty much everything about modern tech you can think of. Among this year’s conference tracks are Data Science and Machine Learning, Web App Dev, Mobile Dev and HTML5. More of a fun environment but with still some great networking and learning potential, this is a good balance to the VDAs below.
VDA 2015
San Francisco, USA — February 8th – 12th
Speakers: Peter Nugent, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Ken Joy, University of California, Davis
Running since 1994, the Conference on Visualization and Data Analysis (VDA) is more of an academic conference, but offers the chance to see some cutting edge ideas. VDA covers a wider range of topics than many other conferences and gives you a chance to delve deep into some of your data problems. This is the real reason you’ll be in San Fran this week, so you can check out Developer Week
MARCH
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Malofiej World Summit
Pamplona, Spain — March 23 – 26th
Instructors: Alberto Cairo, John Grimwade, Geoff McGhee
Considered to be the Pulitzers of infographics, the Society of News Design have set up these events annually since the late ‘70s. The awards show aside, the summit and the “Show, Don’t Tell” workshop are going to be your best chance to see what the best from around the world are doing in infographics and learn some new techniques.
APRIL
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IEEE PacificVis 2015
Hangzhou, China — April 14th – 17th
While most of the details are still being set, this conference is in its 8th year and has been able to set up an environment that encourages better exchange between data researchers and practitioners. Including workshops, keynotes and tutorials, this is a good conference to make connections in East Asia.
Chi 2015
Seoul, Korea — April 18th -23rd
A Human-Computer Interaction focused conference, Chi looks to showcase advancements in a myriad of fields around HCI, including visualisation. This year’s theme is “Crossing” and it looks like you’ll see a lot of elements from the multiple disciplines coming together in many of the featured research papers and applications.
Big Data Week
Events running in over 40 cities around the world — April 20th – 26th
You’ll have to visit the page to see what is happening and who is speaking in the cities near you, because this is an absolutely massive event. There are bound to be several interesting events in the city closest to you, but look into others to see if a trip is worthwhile.
MAY
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EurorVis 2015
Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy — May 25th – 29th
Program will be announced one month before conference.
A Eurographics and IEEE co sponsored event, this conference focuses on the exchange of ideas between researchers and practitioners from around Europe. This event also features co-located events, so if you can’t attend in Italy there may be a piece you can still participate in.
JUNE
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ICCS 2015 (The International Conference on Computational Science)
Reyjavik, Iceland — June 1st – 3rd
Speakers : Tim Cornwell, Petros Koumoutsakos, Xin-She Yang
More of a science based conference, ICCS offers a chance to see cutting edge visualisations of some of the most complicated systems being attempted. The theme this year is “Computational Science at the Gates of Nature”, focusing on drawing inspiration from nature as well as better understanding nature through visualization. There are many elements of the conference focusing on the arts and humanitarian fields as well.
Eyeo Festival
Minneapolis, USA — June 1st – 4th
Covering art, interaction and information, Eyeo is a newer conference quickly building a solid reputation for itself. Eyeo gives you the opportunity to get hands on in their workshops in several labs, listen to a laundry list of great speakers and mingle with the full spectrum of web and application producers. Their Vimeo has a sample of past talks.
JULY
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EVA London
London, UK — July 7th – 9th
Speakers will be announced here.
A bit more arts and culture focused then some, EVA is an excellent event to share ideas and pick up new approaches from the less business focused side of things. Including a workshop, EVA looks to inspire both the artist and the production developer to bigger and better things.
AUGUST
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Siggraph 2015
Los Angeles, USA — August 9th – 13th
Some details are already published here.
One of the biggest computer graphics conferences, Siggraph is at the top of most lists for conferences. Everything from technical papers, research, industry applications, a job fair and an animation festival are part of Siggraph. Most of the application deadlines for submissions fall in late spring, so by June/July you’ll see more concrete details on what’s available this year.
KDD 2015 (Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining)
Sydney, Australia – August 10th – 13th
Started in 1989, this is the oldest and largest data mining conference worldwide. KDD is able to not just showcase best practices in industry and government, but also highlight innovative research. Because of this it has a long tradition of showcasing talent that would later go on to great accomplishments.
SEPTEMBER
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ONA 15
Los Angeles, USA — September 24th – 26th
The Online News Associates Annual conference and awards. There aren’t a lot of details about this year’s event yet, but ONA draws in some of the best and brightest in digital journalism. A great chance to see what new technology and approaches are being used for the very specific set of problems that news visualisation can present.
OCTOBER
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IEEE VIS 2015
Chicago, USA — October 25th -30th
Again, not much about this year’s, but IEEE events are some of the best that you can attend. Really three conferences, Visual Analytics Science and Technology (VAST), Information Visualization (InfoVIS), and Scientific Visualization (SciVis), you are bound to find a great deal of information and inspiration.
