Vote for NICAR23 Lightning Talks

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Thanks to everyone who submitted a Lighting Talk idea for the 2023 NICAR Conference. Now, it’s time to narrow the ideas down to the 10 talks we’ll hear during the conference. The polls close on Sunday, Feb. 19.

Lightning Talks are 5-minute presentations on particular skills, tools or techniques. Pitches are submitted and voted on by NICAR23 attendees. The presentations will be shown on Friday, March 3, as part of NICAR23.

Each attendee can vote for as many talks as you'd like, but please only submit your vote once (if you do, we’ll keep only your first submission).

The pitching and voting process is anonymous to encourage a more diverse group of people to submit pitches and bring more focus to the content of the talk in the voting process.

Register for the conference here: ire.org/training/conferences/nicar-2023/nicar23-registration/

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Vote for your favorite pitches (Choose up to 10 pitches you'd like to see.)

My own personal data analysis soundtrack // When I work from home (or even in the office), I tend to talk to my data ... or scream at it in frustration. So, I'd like to present data about the noises I make while I analyze data, such as the highest decibel level achieved, a sentiment analysis of what I say during this process, and what the data ended up looking like toward the end.

Bad Bunny and passion data side projects // I'll talk about how I find inspiration outside of work and use my data skills to build fun side projects. Specifically, I'll share how my idea to build a Bad Bunny themed Wordle resulted in an opportunity to practice my Python skills and a game that was enjoyed by thousands.

How ChatGPT makes my job easier (but wont replace me anytime soon) // Since the introduction of OpenAIs ChatGPT a few months I have been using the tool incessantly. In this presentation I will outline how I use the tool to write faster code, translate code from different languages, explain difficult concepts and brainstorm stories and pitches. I'll also discuss the tool's limitations, and why it wont replace data journalists anytime soon.

How to battle a webmaster and win // This is a hopefully funny tale of battling webmasters and winning, featuring anecdotes from my time writing and running web scrapers for ProPublica, Mother Jones and The Baltimore Banner. This will be informative about the many tools you can use to keep scraping a website when a webmaster doesn't want you to, like using useragents, proxies and CAPTCHA solving services. It will also highlight the value of persistence, ingenuity and Googling really, really, really well in the face of coding adversity.

News Director Secrets // 10 Secrets News Directors Don't Tell You (But Should)

Take This Job And Shove It? Maybe Not. // Five tips for staying in... or leaving a journalism job - so either way you don't ruin your career

Pitching For A Data Journalism Job // Can't find a data journalism job? How to pitch your skills to a TV News Director, even if there isn't an opening

What Journalism Can Learn from Existentialism // What drives us to tell stories with impact? What can existential concepts like engagement, freedom, subjectivity, being for others, the human condition and facticity reveal about our practices?

A data-driven investigation: Is Nashville country music all trucks, beer and boots? // In five minutes, let's go through (at least) five years of country hits to analyze the lyrical themes, diversity of the genre and most commonly used phrases. Welcome to Nashville!

A quick run through of the numerous quirky visualizations, mistakes, and unique data challenges that were created along the way for an investigative series about the effects of North Carolina’s poultry industry and the waste created.

How to calculate when a separation agreement isn't worth signing // Layoffs, terminations, and other unexpected job losses can be difficult enough. Sometimes, the terms of a separation agreement can make the experience even worse. This talk will highlight what to look out for, what terms can be negotiated, and when it's worth walking away entirely.

Ergonomics for data journalists // After hand-entering more than 1,000 rows of data, I developed tendonitis that required three weeks of physical therapy. I’m going to share what I learned about creating an ergonomic workspace and stretching routine so that this doesn’t happen to you.

Browser extensions to help journalists deliver truthful content to people // As part of my research, I have built 2 browser extensions that I hope can help journalists in their quest for delivering truthful content to people. I want to introduce these extensions.

Data journalism nightmares and tips: A mem story // Recurring pains in data journalism shown with GIFs/memes and how to over come them with copy-paste data-science browser-based tools.

Think like an accessibility engineer: Make real improvements to your content in minutes // There are so many accessibility checklists and supposed "shortcuts" floating around. We know accessibility is important, but it can be hard to know where to start without an engineering background. The good news is that there are easy ways for journalists to identify real issues (not just alt text!) AND fixes for your articles in minutes; I'll demonstrate.

Cut your books in half: Crossing the final line in book degradation // The point of books is to read them! And if that means bisecting them, so be it. I'll run us through my favorite way to deface classics like War and Peace and new favorites like Red White and Royal Blue, and also explain why I believe the best and best-loved books look like dumpster fires.

GitHub, the ultimate anti-censorship tool // Newsrooms are familiar with GitHub as a convenient way to store and modify source code. What is less known is that GitHub is hard to fully censor, even in China or Iran, because of its strategic position in the modern software ecosystem. This, in turn, means that GitHub can be leveraged to disseminate journalism in authoritarian countries.

Scrape-GPT: How AI can help you automate your data processing tasks // Although current AI language models, like OpenAI’s GPT-3, are in their infancy, they can be leveraged to automate tedious data processing tasks. Even more promising is a technology called LangChain, which enables you to combine real code and AI models. In this demo, I will demonstrate how LangChain and GPT-3 can help you build a web scraping program with just a few lines of code.

How coding can change the very journalism you do // Coming from an environment where we mainly relied on spreadsheets and off-the-shelf tools for visualization, I thought doing data journalism with Python full-time would be like using spreadsheets on steroids. I was wrong.

10 data story ideas about ARPA funds for every newsroom // ARPA funds is a lot of money, and ARPA data is a lot of numbers. What are the most low hanging fruits in terms of data-driven stories about COVID-relief spending?

3 New File Formats for your Toolbox // CSVs, JSON, and GeoJSONs are so last decade! Many new file formats like Parquet, SQLite, DuckDB, and FlatGeobufs have the potential to simplify your work, cut down your compute and storage costs, and make your life easier! This talk will be a brief overview of these file formats, how they can help in your data analysis work or in your newsroom, and provide recommendations of helpful tools and tutorials for Python, R, and JavaScript users!

Reject Dataframes, Embrace SQL // Instead of using dplyr, Pandas, Spark, or D3 to manipulate and query datasets, why not just use SQL? The 50-year-old query language has continued to survive and thrive, and new tools and applications like SQLite and DuckDB make it easier to use SQL locally without setting up servers. This talk will go over when you should choose SQL over traditional dataframes in your projects, how SQL can "level the playing field" inside your newsroom, and some tips and tricks to getting started with SQLite, Datasette, and DuckDB.

3 Tips when Building Search Engines for News Applications // ProPublica's PPP Loans database, COVID-19 vaccination maps, and 2020 election results - what do all these recent, popular news applications have in common? Search engines! This talk will go over a few ideas to consider when adding search into your news applications, including different tools/databases to try, full text search vs semantic search, and feature ideas that will have your data reach your audience!

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