Bursting With Dataviz: My Wishlist by Silvia Romanelli

From September to December 2022, I took some time off from work for myself, to hone and expand my skills in data visualization, and give space to creativity through personal projects and collaborations.

I felt deeply grateful for this opportunity, and looking forward to all the interesting things I could learn. Instead of constraining my wishlist of activities to a simple spreadsheet, I decided to turn it into a visual portray of my enthusiasm.

I plotted each activity on my list as an ink spot on a radial chart. The size of each spot indicates the estimated time the activity should take, and its position shows the level of priority I assigned to it.

For some activities, I decided to write only an approximate description of the content on labels, as my personal program was still evolving, and for books this would have taken up too much space.

Over the weeks, I kept a record of what I did each day. At the end, I realized I had achieved only half of what I had planned (as it’s always the case for me!), but I had also dedicated a lot of time to things I hadn’t originally planned to do, especially networking and connecting to other people active in the field. Crossing paths with other dataviz practitioners was probably one of the best way to evolve on my own journey.