Data storytelling & visualization Workshop

Overview

I’ve had clients tell me their staff is “in a PowerPoint and charts rut”. Everyone who is thoughtful about the current state of affairs is seeking to improve their communications to internal and external audiences. Beehive Media provides half-day and full-day workshops, customized from its standard curriculum for helping clients become more comfortable working with and creating engaging visual experiences out of data and other content.

Bill Shander leads every workshop, which follows a well-established format, working from theory to practice throughout the session, allowing attendees to work on hands-on challenges.

In individual and team exercises, attendees work their way up from basic conceptual and communications exercises to creating full outlines and plans for static and/or interactive infographics/visualizations/PowerPoint decks/reports. They practice converting abstract ideas and data into visuals, allowing them to conceptualize and produce a complete infographic or presentation that will engage an audience and maximize impact.

Primary Takeaways

  • Strategies for creating memorable and effective communications for your organization
  • Creating narratives that connect with any audience, particularly when communicating “up” to leadership
  • Information hierarchy and data visualization best practices
  • Neuroscience and psychology behind how your audience will receive your visual displays
  • Research-based best practices for design and communications

Inspired

Your people want to be inspired so they are excited to turn what they learn into action. They will see best-in-class examples from great data storytellers of our time. They will walk away thinking differently about data and what they do every day to share data with their audiences. People leave this session inspired to meet a higher bar of visual data communications.

FOCUSED

Everyone has trouble communicating with data. Many know the “what” and “why” but struggle to communicate the “how”. They will learn how to focus in on the most important components of their work so their audience can gain insights that lead to better decisions. It’s all about the story and the visual.

Educational

Everyone needs practical lessons they can turn around and translate into their day-to-day work. They will be exposed to research-driven best practices that will make them better data storytellers and able to create visualizations with impact. It’s all about visual perception, pre-attentive processing, and just doing less (stripping away, editing down to what’s most important.)

Curriculum

Introduction
The day begins with a brief “why we are here” context-setter for the day, followed by introductions.

Group Discussion
We take an existing output from your organization (a PPT deck, a report, an interactive experience, an infographic), and talk about it as a group. We first gain an understanding of the project’s goals and audience, and then discuss how it worked, what could be improved, etc. This is a very productive and fruitful conversation – and very accessible – since it is based on your organization’s actual work.

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4X4 Model
Next, Bill discusses the primary challenges communicators face trying to reach audiences in today’s world. The solution to these challenges are many, but revolve primarily around his “4X4 Model for Knowledge Content”, which is a simple framework for presenting content to people in different layers and with key aspects, including visualization and storytelling.

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Heather Huerta – CALPERs

We invited Bill to come share his expertise with 24 members of public affairs and stakeholder relations teams. Bill customized a dynamic workshop specific to our needs. Bill provided a format that was engaging, educational, and inspirational. Our team is excited to put to practice his methodology and tools including his memorable acronyms for distilling messages!

Heather Huerta
California Public Employees' Retirement System
Katy Klaproth – Robins & Morton

Bill’s infographics workshop was tailored to my company and team’s needs, allowing us to develop infographics that will be used on presentations in the future. I would highly recommend this training to anyone looking for a way to tell their story in a visually impactful way!

Katy Klaproth
Robins & Morton
Kristina Gubanov

This was one of the best if not the best learning sessions I’ve seen at IX – immediate gains in my view and I already find myself adjusting how I present my data and I am sure others are as well.

Kristina Gubanov
Index Exchange
Rachel Richter – Dun & Bradstreet

As an Analytics & Insights team at a B2B company, we are in the depths of data and analysis all of the time and can become disconnected from the needs and preferences of our audience. Bill really helped us think about how to tell a compelling story and visualize data & insights in an engaging way. He worked through specific materials with us and gave us tips & tricks that will help bring our work to a new level.

Rachel Richter
Dun & Bradstreet
Steve Smith – Knauf Insulation

I thought the session this morning was EXCELLENT!! Really useful, expertly delivered and engaging. I’ve seen quite a few talks on data visualization but this stood out and gave me things I’ll try and implement from now on.

Steve Smith
Knauf Insulation
Brian Rus – Acxiom

Bill led our analytics team through a full day virtual data storytelling workshop and did a fantastic job! There was excitement and energy throughout the day with the use breakout rooms and exercises to keep us engaged. Our team has a wide range of data visualization experience and everyone was able to contribute and learn in a collaborative environment. Bill kept the conversation friendly yet productive, and we received outstanding reviews from attendees after the event. I would recommend this workshop for any team that works with data.

Brian Rus
Acxiom
Susan Justus – Betterment

Bill is an engaging facilitator and very knowledgeable on the topic of Data Visualization. He has a unique way of mixing the lecture with activities to make for an impactful and hands-on learning experience. He also challenged us to think outside the box by providing helpful frameworks that are tangible and easy to apply immediately.

Susan Justus
Betterment
Erin Souza – Charles River Associates

Bill Shander’s data visualization workshops have been well received across all roles and levels at our firm. Bill is clearly an expert on the topic and he is also a talented facilitator! His creativity and flexibility in the classroom bode well for true problem solving.

Erin Souza
Charles River Associates
Gretchen Hall – Strategy + Business Magazine

Bill started with a highly entertaining and informative history lesson on data visualization and then took our team through several exercises designed to give us the tools to think about our data and our content more interactively. It was an extremely successful session for us all.

Gretchen Hall
Strategy + Business Magazine
Bridget D’Angelo – Nativo

Bill provided a two day training for our team of Sales, Client Success and Marketing. Not only was it fun and interactive, we all learned a lot and had many immediate ideas to implement. He tailored it to our industry making our takeaways clear and actionable. Using a mix of small group activity and larger group discussion kept us all engaged, even over Zoom. I’d highly recommend bringing in Bill and we look forward to continuing to work with him!

Bridget D'Angelo
Nativo
Jenny Rone – US Department of Agriculture

Bill’s class inspired my staff. For example, he effectively led a critique of some draft visualizations, provided pointers, and walked the staff through a ‘before and after’ demo. That “real life” activity, in particular, has helped challenge the staff’s creative thinking and transformed their process and deliverables. It was tons of fun!

Jenny Rone
US Department of Agriculture
Joe Procopio – International Monetary Fund

Bill Shander’s workshop was perhaps the most highly praised workshop our department’s staff training committee organized this year. Bill was happy to work closely with us before the workshop to help tailor its contents to make it more relevant for our organization’s communications objectives and staff’s current skill level. Everyone left the day energized and more confident in their ability to tackle future data visualization projects.

Joe Procopio
International Monetary Fund
Melody Wilhelm

From the moment the team began working with Bill, our data visualizations improved, and we began to tell better stories. Bill’s relaxed style put the team at ease and helped open them up to the possibilities of using data to help tell impactful stories.

Melody Wiilhelm
Electronic Arts