I wrote this on my phone one night after my 4th makeover. I didn’t work up the courage to publish it at the time, but I am going to do it now (~9 months later).
For those who don’t know me, my name is Dorian, and I discovered MakeoverMonday about 10 months ago.
I got heads over heels about it, and I started participating almost every week since then. Below is a list of my “why”‘s I wrote back then.
My thoughts from June 28th 2018 at 00:26:
For me, the key word is progress. If you’re not growing, you’re dying.
- Negative feedback – it doesn’t mean you’re bad, it just means you have to keep working
- You can literally see how your skills are improving every week
- Not a week goes by without learning something new
- Showcasing your work in front of top-class professionals
- You can ask them questions and they will help
- A sense of belonging
- Accountability: the others expect you to create
- Workout
- It’s always there – it creates a routine
- Excitement for the next challenge
- Cool data
- Cool tools Tableau, Tableau Prep, Exasol, Data Studio, Yellowfin, Power BI
- Learning interesting tricks
- Reducing the learning curve
- Producing eye candy for social media
- Starting a portfolio with your work
- Ideas for your actual work
- Watching others showcasing new ways to look at the same data
- Improving your creativity; inspired by this Ted Talk: Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?
- If these Andy and Eva take the time every week, how can we not?
- There is no prize! Someone asked me if I won. It’s not about winning a race, it’s about finishing the marathon
- People are doing it purely out of love of work
- It’s a new theme every week – a sense of novelty
- It has a lot of history – I can smell it
- It starts on Sunday afternoon – nice to fill this time with something else instead of re-watching the Sopranos for the 30th time. It’s also good if you don’t want it to eat out of your working week.
- You can do it in an hour, but you won’t (I usually spend more than that)
- Anyone can participate, from every part of the world
- We benefit not only from feedback to our work but from what that of others
- The people are not overly excited
- Inspiring people around you when they see what you’re actually about
- Opens up your mind/broadens your horizon
- It strengthens your focus muscle
- The new logo looks very cool
- The recaps are useful – you can go back to the favorites and lessons when you need it
- Becoming fluent in data – something we all need now and will definitely need in the future
- It’s live video
- A great sense of satisfaction when the reviewers are actively using your viz to draw conclusions
- It’s a group of people that love what they do
- There’s a competitive spirit that pushes you forward
- Getting to know popular datasets – presented at meetups/conferences (like the London Cycle Hire one)
- Andy and Eva do the makeovers themselves – learning from their perspective
- You might be doing things the wrong way for some time and you might not even realize it – learn to do things the right way
- Developing both EQ and IQ at the same time – not only learning how to do cool stuff with Tableau but gaining insight from how people react to your work
- Finding a sweet spot between design and storytelling
- Grow into a mindset of iteration
- Failure is part of the process
- If you don’t give 100% it will reflect on the viz
- You have the opportunity to mess up, badly
- It’s like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get
This here represents a part of the world I always dreamed of finding. Pure altruism and selflessness! I guess the cynical part of me never thought this could exist.
Positivity might have a chance at winning this thing after all.
I did just 4, but I have such a good feeling about this! I felt the need to write this down and share it with the world.
Highly passionate about data, analysis, visualization, and everything that helps people make informed decisions.
I love what I do! I am working to improve speed in every aspect of my life and that of our clients.
I find comfort in helping people, so if you have a question, give me a shout!
