Without fail, this question would come up when I would present to evaluation teams on why they should consider changing the way they report. It would usually come from a senior member of the team. Likely one that had never heard of me before another team member suggested they bring me in for a conversation. […]
My 5 How Questions for the Coming Year
At the end of every year you get loads of advice for how to approach the next one. Lots of that advice centers around resolutions, words, or statements. I decided to do something a little different this year and give myself a list of how questions. Will it be useful in the coming year? Who […]
Evaluation Christmas Cartoons 2022
Every holiday season I try to draw a set of Christmas comics. For whatever reason, it was harder this year. SIMON: Do you still pick up the pen? SPIEGELMAN: I pick it up, but it’s a very heavy instrument right now. And I’ve got little notes and little doodles and drawings. I have no idea […]
No More Writing for Google
In today’s post I talk about an upcoming change to how I blog and why writing for Google works, but for me, shouldn’t be the point. It works. But that’s the problem. There is pretty simple logic behind writing for Google. People use Google to find information, often in pursuit of answers to their questions. […]
Alt Text in Canva – finding a workaround
How do you add alt text in Canva? Short answer, you don’t (Canva doesn’t have that feature). Long answer, read on for a workaround. As much as I love Canva for creating infographics and micrographics, as a website publishing tool (and a PDF creator) it is a failure. It’s missing some key features required to […]
Agile for One
How do you manage all the stuff you need to do each day? In today’s post I’m going to walk through my indie consultant project management process, which I call Agile for One. I am a creative with an ADHD brain. If you have followed me for awhile that sentence will not be a surprise. […]
Reader-Focused Report Assessment
How do you tell a good report from a bad report? That’s what I hope you’ll be able to do with my new quick 2 page assessment. So a little while ago I created a resource, it was a short 18 page eBook that walked through a 6 step process. If you’re interested you can […]
Human Centered Report Design
Are you searching for a modern reporting strategy that leads to visual reports other human beings would actually appreciate? I wrote you an eBook. Here is what you’ll find inside the 35 page visual eBook. It’s a super easy picture book that should only take you a few minutes to get through. The Why Behind […]
Make Dissemination Easy
Sharing our work well takes skill and experience. But not every data person has these skills. Should they? Qualified to Do the Work ? Qualified to Share the Work The vast majority of PhD and MA programs are not going to give their students enough training around digital dissemination to make them experts in sharing […]
Designing a Seesaw Graph with Canva and Flourish [Walkthrough]
So welcome to a new series of blog posts. Each will be a type of design walkthrough. In these posts I will start with a chart or piece of information found in a real report and adapt it into something different (not always better, but always different). I’ll walk you through my design process as […]
New Free Course on Micrographics
I’m trying out a new style of course, and for the moment, it’s free. Even the best designed full reports are only read by so many people. It might be the marquee deliverable you pass on to your client. The thing that addresses everything you learned and documents everything you did. But ultimately long reports […]
14 tips to make reporting easier.
Looking for ways to make reporting easier? In this blog post I share a collection of tips. When talking about my book with folks I get a lot of head nods. But then the obvious question comes next… “Okay, but what do I do about it?” The truth is, as important as you think it […]