158 | Viz Agencies: CLEVER°FRANKE and Interactive Things

Data Stories

This is the first episode of a mini-series of Data Visualization agencies. After so many years producing this podcast we realized we never really focused on agencies and we decided it’s time to rectify! Agencies have slowly become one of the most relevant realities of the data visualization ecosystem and business landscape. In this first episode, we have Thomas Clever to talk about Clever Franke and Benjamin Wiederkehr from Interactive Things. They have been around for more than 10 years and they have produced some really amazing work.

On the show we talk about their quintessential projects, what makes agencies different from individual freelancers and other organizations, the realities and challenges of running an agency and much more.

[Our podcast is fully listener-supported. That’s why you don’t have to listen to ads! Please consider becoming a supporter on Patreon or sending us a one-time donation through Paypal. And thank you!]

Enjoy the show!

Links:

• IXT: Education Inequalities + Education Progress
• CF: Chicago’s Mobility
• Paper: Data Changes Everything
• Sensor lab (https://www.sensorlab.nl/)
• Blog post on the process boards used to organize work at IXT

https://datastori.es/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/158_Made_by_Headliner.mp4

Hoofdstukken

1. Welcome back to Data Stories! (00:00:27)

2. Our podcast is listener-supported, please consider making a donation! (00:01:02)

https://www.patreon.com/datastories

3. Our topic: Dataviz agencies (00:01:52)

4. Our guests: Thomas Clever Co-Founder of CLEVER°FRANKE (00:03:39)

https://www.cleverfranke.com/

5. and Benjamin Wiederkehr, Managing Director of Interactive Things (00:04:23)

https://www.interactivethings.com/

6. IXT's quintessential projects: Education Inequalities (00:05:28)

https://www.education-inequalities.org/

7. and Education Progress (00:06:29)

https://www.education-progress.org

8. CF's quintessential project: Mobility index (00:07:57)

https://www.cleverfranke.com/work/chicago-s-mobility

9. What makes VIS agencies different from other types of agencies? (00:11:11)

10. Paper: Data Changes Everything (00:18:02)

https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.00192

11. Can data visualization teams be scaled in size? (00:19:25)

12. How to assemble teams and hire people? (00:29:58)

13. How has the field evolved? (00:36:20)

14. A question from Benjamin to Thomas: What is Sensor Lab? (00:47:47)

https://www.sensorlab.nl/

15. A question from Thomas to Benjamin: How to manage the "hat-switching" needed during dataviz projects? (00:50:23)

16. Blog post on the process boards used to organize work at IXT (00:53:57)

https://blog.interactivethings.com/process-boards-90a1a6689b42

17. Get in touch with us and support us on Patreon (00:56:36)

https://www.patreon.com/datastories