A newsletter to learn about practical ways to decolonize your research and data work-lives with byte-sized drabbles about the daily life of a data professional.

Behind the Scenes

Hello hello! I’m spending a lot of bandwidth on drawing rat characters for my game while I look for my next gig. I started on backgrounds and went down a rabbit hole of animation techniques for drawing perspective, coloring, and such.

I also submitted an invited book proposal! I added lots of details so when I re-look at it in 6 months, I’ll remember what the heck I said I’d write.

Snap peas, spinach, and strawberries are in season by me. Find out what’s in season by you and take time to replenish your energy.

-Dana

Curated Content: Funding Opportunities

I’m really interested in fellowships and contests lately because I had the thought that we-as data professionals-do a lot of invisible labor that should be paid like writing, research.

2025 AICA International Art Critics Prize

Submit a 2000-3000 word art critic essay with bibliography on the theme: Imaging/shaping/re-thinking the global south through art. It’s open to critics (commentators, curators, educators) writing from anywhere, newspapers, magazines, television, radio, internet and the first place winner is invited to read the essay via Zoom at the Congress. AICA (Association Internationale des Critiques d'Art) is a network of critics, curators, scholars, and art historians.

Cash Prize: First Place €1000 (or dollars); Second Place €500 (or dollars); Third Place €250 (or dollars); Certificates emailed after Congress.

Submission due July 27, 2025 23:59 CET (this is 5:59 PM Eastern Time FYI)

Curated Content: Portfolio Piece Ideas

Write up a blurb about your work and publish it online somewhere (e.g. your website, blog, a journal, magazine). It’s a great way to show off your data work that doesn’t fit into a cute dashboard or screenshots.

Good for DAM/UX design/Taxonomy Sectors: Infographics by Grad Students at the Toronto Metropolitan University’s DAM Creative Showcase

Scroll through 2025’s finalist designs and past years work to see digital asset management infographics on DAM topics like user experience, metadata and taxonomy, sustainability, and future trends in DAM. A quick trick to keeping up-to-date in the data field is to look at what graduate students are learning/doing.

You can use infographics to communicate data like a report card (grade a specific project and describe your rating scale), showcase all your publications with screenshots of their first page, or use it as a template for a presentation.

Good for Cultural Heritage/DAM/Creative Sectors: Article by Benjamin Henry

Their article talks about finding some an interesting piece of correspondence when doing archival processing work. You could write something similar by describing an interesting or unique piece of data you worked on, an anomaly in your research dataset, or describe what type of chart you used for a data dashboard and why.