What if your next data presentation felt less like a spreadsheet and more like a blockbuster movie? In this episode, we're joined by Angelica Lo Duca, Researcher at IIT-CNR and a master of transforming numbers into narratives, to explore the intersection of cinematography and data storytelling. Learn how to extract a "hero" from your data, structure your analysis like a compelling story, and tailor your presentations for different audiences to ensure maximum impact. Angelica reveals how the techniques filmmakers use—focusing on key characters, building tension, and delivering climactic resolutions—can be applied to data storytelling. She'll also discuss the role of the data storyteller as a guide and how to strike a balance between clarity and creativity. Whether you're presenting to executives, stakeholders, or teammates, this episode will help you level up your communication skills and make your insights unforgettable. What You'll Learn: How to identify and extract a "hero" from your data to drive a compelling narrative. Cinematic techniques that turn complex analyses into engaging stories. How to tailor your data presentation to resonate with different audiences. The responsibilities and creative power of the data storyteller.   Angelica is the author of Become a Great Storyteller: Learn How You Can Drive Change with Data. Find it here!     Register for free to be part of the next live session: https://bit.ly/3XB3A8b   Follow us on Socials: LinkedIn YouTube Instagram (Mavens of Data) Instagram (Maven Analytics) TikTok Facebook Medium X/Twitter

Send us a text Welcome to the cozy corner of the tech world where ones and zeros mingle with casual chit-chat. Datatopics Unplugged is your go-to spot for relaxed discussions around tech, news, data, and society.

In this episode, we dive into the world of data storytelling with special guest Angelica Lo Duca, a professor, researcher, and author. Pull up a chair as we explore her journey from programming to teaching, and dive into the principles of turning raw data into compelling stories.

Key topics include:

Angelica’s background: From researcher to professor and published author

Why write a book?: The motivation, process, and why she chooses books over blogs

About the book: Data Storytelling with Altair and Generative AI

Overview of the book: Who it’s for and the key insights it offers

What is data storytelling and how it differs from traditional dashboards and reports

Why Altair? Exploring Altair and Vega-Lite for effective visualizations

Generative AI’s role: How tools like ChatGPT and DALL-E fit into the data storytelling process, and potential risks like bias in AI-generated images

DIKW Pyramid: Moving from raw data to actionable wisdom using the Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom framework

Where to buy her books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Angelica-Lo-Duca/author/B0B5BHD5VF https://www.amazon.com/Become-Great-Data-Storyteller-Change/dp/1394283318 https://www.amazon.com/Data-Storytelling-Altair-Angelica-Duca/dp/1633437922/

Snippet: https://livebook.manning.com/book/data-storytelling-with-altair-and-ai/chapter-10/16

Connect with Angelica on Medium for more articles and insights: https://medium.com/@alod83/about

Great data presentations tell a story. Learn how to organize, visualize, and present data using Python, generative AI, and the cutting-edge Altair data visualization toolkit. Take the fast track to amazing data presentations! Data Storytelling with Altair and AI introduces a stack of useful tools and tried-and-tested methodologies that will rapidly increase your productivity, streamline the visualization process, and leave your audience inspired. In Data Storytelling with Altair and AI you’ll discover: Using Python Altair for data visualization Using Generative AI tools for data storytelling The main concepts of data storytelling Building data stories with the DIKW pyramid approach Transforming raw data into a data story Data Storytelling with Altair and AI teaches you how to turn raw data into effective, insightful data stories. You’ll learn exactly what goes into an effective data story, then combine your Python data skills with the Altair library and AI tools to rapidly create amazing visualizations. Your bosses and decision-makers will love your new presentations—and you’ll love how quick Generative AI makes the whole process! About the Technology Every dataset tells a story. After you’ve cleaned, crunched, and organized the raw data, it’s your job to share its story in a way that connects with your audience. Python’s Altair data visualization library, combined with generative AI tools like Copilot and ChatGPT, provide an amazing toolbox for transforming numbers, code, text, and graphics into intuitive data presentations. About the Book Data Storytelling with Altair and AI teaches you how to build enhanced data visualizations using these tools. The book uses hands-on examples to build powerful narratives that can inform, inspire, and motivate. It covers the Altair data visualization library, along with AI techniques like generating text with ChatGPT, creating images with DALL-E, and Python coding with Copilot. You’ll learn by practicing with each interesting data story, from tourist arrivals in Portugal to population growth in the USA to fake news, salmon aquaculture, and more. What's Inside The Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom (DIKW) pyramid Publish data stories using Streamlit, Tableau, and Comet Vega and Vega-Lite visualization grammar About the Reader For data analysts and data scientists experienced with Python. No previous knowledge of Altair or Generative AI required. About the Author Angelica Lo Duca is a researcher at the Institute of Informatics and Telematics of the National Research Council, Italy. The technical editor on this book was Ninoslav Cerkez. Quotes This book’s step-by-step approach, illustrated through real-world examples, makes complex data accessible and actionable. - Alexey Grigorev, DataTalks.Club A clear and concise guide to data storytelling. Highly recommended. - Andrew Madson, Insights x Design Data storytelling in a way that anyone can do! This book feels ahead of its time. - Avery Smith, Data Career Jumpstart Excellent hands-on exercises that combine two of my favorite tools: AI and the Altair library. - Jose Berengueres, Author of DataViz and Storytelling

The Presto community has mushroomed since its origins at Facebook in 2012. But ramping up this open source distributed SQL query engine can be challenging even for the most experienced engineers. With this practical book, data engineers and architects, platform engineers, cloud engineers, and software engineers will learn how to use Presto operations at your organization to derive insights on datasets wherever they reside. Authors Angelica Lo Duca, Tim Meehan, Vivek Bharathan, and Ying Su explain what Presto is, where it came from, and how it differs from other data warehousing solutions. You'll discover why Facebook, Uber, Alibaba Cloud, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM, Intel, and many more use Presto and how you can quickly deploy Presto in production. With this book, you will: Learn how to install and configure Presto Use Presto with business intelligence tools Understand how to connect Presto to a variety of data sources Extend Presto for real-time business insight Learn how to apply best practices and tuning Get troubleshooting tips for logs, error messages, and more Explore Presto's architectural concepts and usage patterns Understand Presto security and administration

We talked about:

Angelica’s background Angelica’s books Data journalism How Angelica got into data journalism The field of digital humanities and Angelica’s data journalism course Technical articles vs data journalism articles Transforming reports into data storytelling Are reports to stakeholders considered technical writing? Data visualization in articles Article length The process of writing an article Finding writing topics How Angelica got into writing a book (communication with publishers) The process for writing a book Brainstorming Reviews and revisions Conclusion

Links:

Data Journalism examples (FENCED OUT): https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/world/border-barriers/europe-refugee-crisis-border-control/??noredirect=on Data Journalism examples (La tierra esclava): https://latierraesclava.eldiario.es/ Small medium publication aiming at being Stack Overflow of Medium: https://medium.com/syntaxerrorpub Example of a self-published book on Data Visualization: https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Data-Visualization-Storytelling-Scientist-ebook/dp/B07VYCR3Z6/ref=sr_1_4?crid=4JRJ48O7K8TK&keywords=joses+berengueres&qid=1668270728&sprefix=joses+beremguere%2Caps%2C273&sr=8-4 My novels (in Italian) La bambina e il Clown: https://www.amazon.it/Bambina-Clown-Angelica-Lo-Duca/dp/1500984515/ref=sr_1_9?__mk_it_IT=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&crid=2KGK9GMN0FAHI&keywords=la+bambina+e+il+clown&qid=1668270769&sprefix=la+bambina+e+il+clown%2Caps%2C88&sr=8-9 My novels (in Italian) Il Violinista: https://www.amazon.it/Violinista-1-Angelica-Lo-Duca/dp/1501009672/ref=sr_1_1?__mk_it_IT=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&crid=12KTF9EF5UKIG&keywords=il+violinista+lo+duca&qid=1668270791&sprefix=il+violinista+lo+duca%2Caps%2C81&sr=8-1 Course on Data Journalism: https://www.coursera.org/learn/visualization-for-data-journalism

ML Zoomcamp: https://github.com/alexeygrigorev/mlbookcamp-code/tree/master/course-zoomcamp

Join DataTalks.Club: https://datatalks.club/slack.html

Our events: https://datatalks.club/events.html

Discover how to manage and optimize the life cycle of your data science projects with Comet! By the end of this book, you will master preparing, analyzing, building, and deploying models, as well as integrating Comet into your workflow. What this Book will help me do Master managing data science workflows with Comet. Confidently prepare and analyze your data for effective modeling. Deploy and monitor machine learning models using Copet tools. Integrate Comet with DevOps and GitLab workflows for production readiness. Apply Comet to advanced topics like NLP, deep learning, and time series analysis. Author(s) Angelica Lo Duca is an experienced author and data scientist with years of expertise in data science workflows and tools. She brings practical insights into integrating platforms like Comet into modern data science tasks. Who is it for? If you are a data science practitioner or programmer looking to understand and implement efficient project lifecycles using Comet, this book is tailored for you. A basic backdrop in data science and programming is highly recommended, but prior expertise in Comet is unnecessary.