go premium!

Our mission at storytelling with data is to inspire positive change through the stories we tell with data. As part of this, we are constantly looking for ways to share what we have learned and what we are learning with others. I’m happy to announce that we’ve just launched a brand new way to do this in our online SWD community: premium membership. I’ll offer more about this momentarily; I’d also like to use this post as an opportunity to share a little about how we got here and what this new level of support means.

One of the aspects of our work that I’ve long appreciated is how broadly the lessons we teach can be applied. Being able to communicate effectively with data is a skill that is useful irrespective of industry, tools, or location: everyone stands to benefit from improving how they do this. I would like to offer ways to learn that are accessible to everyone, everywhere. SWD is a small team, which means to do this well, we have to scale thoughtfully. Making learning widely available continues to be one of our core tenets, which we do through this blog, the podcast, and the SWD community.

The SWD community is our newest resource. We’ve had the distinct pleasure of working with Z1 digital over the past year to build it. Z1 is a digital product design and development studio based in Seville, Spain. Randy and I had the opportunity to visit the team there last summer (it was great to get to brainstorm and refine in person, outside of this trip our collaboration has been entirely virtual; hear from CEO Héctor, engineer Juan, and designer Lucía directly in the think like a designer podcast we recorded while there).

The project started with two primary aims, first, to have a way to continue to support clients and individuals after they organize or attend a workshop. The second—and equally important—goal is to reach people in places or situations who may never have the opportunity to attend a workshop.

You actually don’t improve your skills by attending a workshop. Sure, you learn things there that have the potential to help your work. The way you really develop skills is to practice, identify good examples and emulate them, be aware of pitfalls and avoid them, get feedback, discuss challenges with others, and iterate. This is why we created the SWD community: to provide an online space open to everyone that facilitates all of these things. There are the monthly challenges that offer a given topic as a constraint, but great flexibility otherwise to identify data that is of personal interest and try a new approach or tool. Or you can undertake fully contained exercises from the exercise bank, where the scenario, steps, and data are all provided, allowing you to practice something super specific that will have broader application in your work. You can engage in conversations with others to ask questions or share experiences. You can discover great work—both from the SWD team and the growing galleries of the thousands of members who have joined so far. Everyone can access all of these resources.

Building on this great foundation, with the launch of premium membership this week, we offer a new level of access to and resources from storytelling with data. Those upgrading their community membership to premium get access to:

data storyteller office hours: Join a virtual session with an SWD team member to get personalized feedback on your project, ask questions, or brainstorm approaches to apply in your daily work. Our first office hours are this week!

monthly live events: Tune in to watch Cole present a data storytelling lesson, share examples, and answer popular viewer questions in real time.
The first community live event takes place on April 30th!

on-demand videos: From step-by-step segments on how to use your tools to big picture strategy that informs effective data communication endeavors, this growing video library is available for learning at your convenience. Take a look!

By upgrading to premium, you are not only gaining access to these resources, but also showing your support of storytelling with data and all that we aim to accomplish. Building the community has not come without a great investment of time, talent, and money. With premium membership, we’re hoping to offset some of these costs, while still maintaining accessibility and providing everyone everywhere access to great resources. I look forward to continuing to learn with you. I’ll see you in the community.