[ddj] What Excel tutorials would you like to see on ddjnet?

Mon May 13 13:53:52 UTC 2013

Hi,
based on my experience in a fair number of trainings with journalists the
whole concept of data-driven journalism is still falling from the sky for
most of them. What I often detect is a certain pattern, a distribution of
know-how and motivation: A few participants are very open (they do their
first JSON insertion on the first day), those are often pre-trained. A
small number might be quite hostile and not interested (which always makes
me wonder why and how they got into the training). They question the whole
concept of data, of data quality and that the role of the journalist should
change. The largest group is between shock and revellation - so most
trainings are as much an excercise keeping people from crying (not a joke)
and pushing things forward.

The recent tutorials done by Tony Hirst and Abott for the School of Data
are going into the right direction - the "one liners" where just great.

The three aspects I would suggest to strengthen for upcoming tutorials:

- General overview (Why spreadsheets? Which Software? That should encompass
Excel, Open Refine, Data Wrangler and the two new kids on the blog
QueryTree (which is actually quite different to Yahoo! Pipes and useful, if
you know what you want) and finally I think that StatWing is very
interesting.

- Starting point: A complicated issue in all #ddj tutorials is that the
users are a very diverse crowd. Some tutorials that are a no-brainer to
more computer-literate people are putting journalists off. Often it is the
use of too many uncommon words, the assumption that everybody is fluent
with the command line.

- Output goal: The closer the actual example is to some real newsroom
problem the better and easier it is for the journalists to see the new
options. I am using the Titanic passenger data a lot to let them explore.

For the Data Journalism Handbook we had those great diagrams showing the
ideal workflow of a data project. My best guess and suggestion here is to
(a) yes, provide more tutorials for Excel, but combined with (b) a visual
overview adressing the diversity of possible paths and prior knowledge.

Hope this is agreeable, if not - voice in.

Mirko

2013/5/13 Hanna McLean <mclean at ejc.net>

> Hi everyone,
>
> Excel trainer Abbott Katz behind spreadsheetjournalism.com is writing
> Excel tutorials for us and would like to hear what people need to learn.
> Here are the tutorials he wrote so far:
>
> 1. Adding Value(s) to Your Spreadsheet: Turning Text Data into Numbers? -
> http://goo.gl/y3vqt<http://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fgoo%2Egl%2Fy3vqt&urlhash=tWNc&_t=tracking_anet>
>
> 2. Setting the Record(s) Straight: Dealing with Bad Data -
> http://goo.gl/L3ICj<http://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fgoo%2Egl%2FL3ICj&urlhash=jtFD&_t=tracking_anet>
>
> Let us know what tutorials you would like to see, so that we can let him
> know :-)
>
> Thanks!
>
> Cheers,
> Hanna
> ===
>
> Hanna McLean | Community Manager | European Journalism Centre
> Sonnevillelunet 10, 6221KT Maastricht, The Netherlands
> Tel. : +31.433.254.030 | Fax : +32.240.042.20
> Email : mclean at ejc.net
>
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