Sometimes, less is better than more

Today, during the EuroSciPy conference, I gave a presentation titled “Three most common mistakes in data visualization and how to avoid them”. The title of this presentation is identical to the title of the presentation that I gave in Barcelona earlier this year. The original presentation was approximately one and a half hours long. I knew that EuroSciPy presentations were expected to be shorter, so I was prepared to shorten my talk to half an hour. At some point, a couple of days before departing to Trento, I realized that I was only allocated 15 minutes. Fifteen minutes! Instead of ninety.

Frankly speaking, I was in a panic. I even considered contacting EuroSciPy organizers and asking them to remove my talk from the program. But I was too embarrassed, so I decided to take the risk and started throwing slides away. Overall, I think that I spent eight to ten working hours shortening my presentation. Today, I finally presented it. Based on the result, and on the feedback that I got from the conference audience, I now know that the 15-minutes version is better than the original, longer one. Video recording of my talk is available on Youtube and is embedded below. Below is my slide deck

Illustration image credit: Photo by Jo Szczepanska on Unsplash