Our VizChitra Journey

VizChitra is an Indian Data Visualization Community, started in 2025. This short deck provides an inside look in to "The VizChitra Journey" – covering both how we are thoughtfully going about building this community and planning for our first in-person conference on 27-28th, June in Bengaluru.

It shares the participating & engagement opportunity for everyone - by becoming a member of the "Friends of VizChitra" community, giving a talk or doing a workshop at the conference or becoming a sponsor to recruit / showcase / network / evangelise to a passionated group of Data Visualization practitioners and professionals.

Transcript

1. Our VizChitra Journey Building an Indian Data Visualization community & conference from ground up
 
 vizchitra.com
 
 March 2025

2. The Community Ethos / Mission / Community / 
 Members / Building from the ground up
 The Conference Goal / Audience / Themes / 
 Strategic Partnership
 Your Participation Forum / Speaking / Workshops / Sponsorships / Contact Info
 TABLE OF CONTENTS
3. The VizChitra Community Ethos & Mission
 Community Member
 Groundup Buildup
 An INDIA focussed DATA VISUALIZATION group vizchitra.com
4. “To build a strong community of interdisciplinary individuals with a shared interest in the practice of data visualisation across India”

5. The VizChitra ethos A space to connect and create with data
 INCLUSIVITY Welcomes all skill levels and diverse perspectives
 HUMANITY Emphasizes empathy, authenticity, and human connection
 COLLABORATION Fosters knowledge sharing and community growth
 CREATIVITY Celebrates the artistic process and values exploration
 
 Our ethos is based on these four Core Values:

6. The VizChitra mission A three-pronged approach to drive the community 
 Consider & Curate Build a rhythm of curated events to spread the practice of dataviz 
 • The VizChitra Conference (yearly cadence)
 • Talks & Mini-Events (quarterly cadence)
 • Thematic activities online (bi-monthly cadence)
 Cultivate & Care Nurture a fertile space for learning & sharing of data visualisation skills
 Create & Collaborate Express and co-create to push the boundaries of data visualization
 • Mentoring & Community Channels
 • Workshop & Learning events (for all levels)
 • Project & Internship opportunities
 • Discovery of novel/innovative work, ideas and implementations 
 • Collaborative projects with Industry & Academia
 • Create space for exploring new mediums and data art

7. VizChitra core team includes CEOs, founders, educators, programmers, designers, communicators, researchers, and consultants who regularly use data visualization to supplement narratives and push boundaries of visual storytelling on the internet and in-person. 
 The VizChitra community VIBRANT INCLUSIVE DATA-DRIVEN + + Interdisciplinary members across dataviz spectrum
 “To foster a vibrant community of data storytellers in India, bridging technical analysis & design expertise, to shape perspectives & drive change”

8. The VizChitra members A 25+ diverse core team building the community Gurman Bhatia
 Founder @ Revisual Labs
 Dataviz Studio, Data Journalist
 Amit Kapoor
 Educator @ amitkaps
 Data Analytics, Dataviz
 Rasagy Sharma
 Design Manager @ Capital One
 Designer, Data Artist
 Ipsa Jain
 Communicator @ Independent
 Science Comm, Author
 Rukmini S
 Founder @ Data for India
 Data Journalist, Author
 Hamsa
 Founder @ Thoughtput
 Designer, Data Stories
 S Anand
 CEO @ Gramener
 AI & Data Visualization
 Apoorv Anand
 Data Ops @ Data for India
 Data Engineer
 Kashvi Bansal
 Editorial Designer @ The Ken
 Data Designer, Researcher
 Arpit Arora
 Product Lead @ Data for India
 Data Storyteller
 Poojil
 Comms Associate @ CEEW
 Writer and Designer
 Swati Singh
 Designer @ Revisual Labs
 Data Stories
 Anand Katakam
 Graphics Editor @ Reuters
 Data Journalist
 Nithya Subramanian
 Founder @ PoppadomCo
 Data Designer, Illustrator
 Divya Riberio
 Designer @ Revisual Labs
 Communication, Data Stories
 … and many more…

9. The VIZCHITRA Conference 2025
 Conference schedule release
 Talks & workshop prep
 Pre-events across cities
 Editorial talk reviews & selections 
 Oct 2024
 Community ideation
 Assembled core team & got organised
 27-28th June
 Jan 2025
 Apr 2025
 May 2025
 Mar 2025
 Feb 2025
 Nov 2025
 Dec 2025
 Building the Community Groundup Our thoughtful path for creating the community
 Made strategic partnership with HasGeek for conference
 Organized community workstreams – branding, events, editorial, sales etc.
 Start viz events & mentorship sessions
 VizChitra launched publicly on 21st Feb
 
 Started ‘Friends of VizChitra’ community
 
 Kick started call for proposal’ for talks & workshops
 vizchitra.com

10. Launched VizChitra to the Public “Building a tribe” for the Indian Data Visualization practitioners
 ANALYST 16% DESIGNER 53% DEVELOPER 17% DIVERSE PERSPECTIVE, MULTIPLE ROLES JOURNALIST 16% STUDENT 14% RESEARCHER 18% ARTIST 13% ENTREPRENEUR 11% EDUCATOR 13% Note: Self identified multiple roles of the 100+ participants during launch party online Did an online public launch for VizChitra Community on 21st Feb, 2025
 
 More than 150+ participants (out of 300+ confirmation) from diverse backgrounds attended the launch
 
 Great enthusiasm from the community in finally “finding their tribe” for data visualization

11. “Friends of VizChitra” community started in early February, 2025
 
 Rapidly growing 800+ participants in the WhatsApp community within a month
 
 Actively engaged with rich participation through diverse conversation on resources, books, leads & even polls
 Launch Day: VizChitra opens its gates to the community on February 8th
 The community hit over 500 member, within few days of launch
 Still growing at 70+ members added every week
 Growth of “Friends of VizChitra” Community Net added members on WhatsApp every day
 Kick started “Friends of VizChitra” Community 800+ people & growing WhatsApp Community
 
 

12. Mix of participants merging art (design, artist) as well as science/code (technique, tools, research) 
 
 Data visualization practitioners from
 leading corporates, academia, and independent professionals all in the mix 
 
 Willingness to both learn new tools 
 & technique and go deeper in to process & craft of data visualisation 
 Diverse Participants in the Community Multiple roles played by “Friends of VizChitra” members
 
 
 Roles played by “Friends of VizChitra” community members 
 Poll of the Day results: 
 Which role best describes what you do? Multiple options allowed, n = 220 

13. Themes & Topics
 
 The VizChitra Conference 2025 In BENGALURU 27th & 28th JUNE 2025 vizchitra.com/conference About the Conference
 HasGeek Partnership

14. “This first Indian conference brings data visualization practitioners spread across India from different industries & disciplines together, to facilitate learning & connections across a common interest in the power of visual data storytelling”

15. One day of talks & dialogues, One day of workshops
 The VizChitra Conference 2025 CONFERENCE DAY 27th June, 2025
 Bangalore International Center
 WORKSHOP DAY 28th June, 2025
 Across Bengaluru
 LIVESTREAM ATTENDEES ~50—100 
 live viewers estimated
 IN-PERSON ATTENDEES ~250—300 
 persons estimated
 FORMAT 2 parallel tracks 
 @ the conference
 vizchitra.com/conference

16. COMMUNICATION & DESIGN Journalism, Non-profits & Think Tanks, Media, Design Teams (UX, UI, Interfaces) DOMAIN SPECIFIC VIZ Public Policy, Urban Planning, Sports / Health Care / Legal Analytics, Fintech
 FUNCTIONAL ROLES
 BI, Generative AI, Data & Analytics, Marketing Communications, Planning RESEARCHERS & ACADEMIA
 Information Viz, Interaction Viz, Scientific Comms, Human Computer Interaction TOOL BUILDERS & CREATOR Data Viz Tool Makers, Dashboard Designers, Analytics & AI Tools
 Individuals @ Conference Individuals across disciplines e.g. designers, developers, analysts, business and storytellers involved in the process of creating data visualisations
 Target interdisciplinary people across Industries & Functions 

17. Target Profile @ Conference Aiming for a good mix of DataViz professionals to attend
 TARGET EXPERIENCE MIX 
 • Early career engineers, designers & practitioners, 2-3 yrs experience => 50%
 
 • Mid career practitioners, 4-5+ years experience => 35%
 
 • Late career professionals, 10+ yrs experience => 15%
 TARGET ORGANIZATION MIX 
 • Organisation with teams between <10 employees; aged 0-2 years => 15%
 
 • Organisation with teams between 0 to 20 employees; running for 5+ years => 50%
 
 • Organization with greater than 50 employees and at enterprise level => 35%

18. Themes & Topics @ Conference Explain & Learn Centered on fundamentals of process, design & communication for dataviz
 ❖ Process & practices of dataviz
 ❖ Storytelling & structuring narratives 
 ❖ Aesthetics & design principles 
 ❖ Accessibility, ethics & inclusion in dataviz
 ❖ Unique works by Indian practitioners`
 Explore & Play On practices of data exploration, interface & dashboard design for dataviz
 ❖ Dashboard & interaction principles
 ❖ Domain-specific data visualisations
 ❖ Collaboration & conversational interfaces
 ❖ Scalable data exploration processes
 ❖ State of data in India (availability, collection. ..)
 Imagine & Innovate Use of new mediums, approaches, AI & tech to shape how we do dataviz in future
 ❖ Usage of AI & technology in data visualization workflows
 ❖ Emerging mediums e.g. 3D, AR/VR 
 ❖ Beyond viz eg. sonification, physicalization
 ❖ Experiential viz e.g. data art, installations
 Three key themes based on Explain, Explore & Imagine
 vizchitra.com/conference

19. Strategic Partnership with Hasgeek Organize the conference, Support the growth of the community 14 years of organising & running community-led conferences in India Rootconf Premier DevOps Conference in India 
 The Fifth Elephant Premier Data Science & AI Conference in India
 hasgeek VizChitra is working with Hasgeek as its primary partner • Jumpstart the community building process
 • Aggregate audiences for the community
 • Provide quality control & share process guidance for executing editorial
 • Support with the experience & practice of organizing high-quality tech conferences 

20. Your Participation @ VizChitra Join & Engage
 Speak, Share & Instruct
 Sponsor the Conference
 CONNECT & ENGAGE with the COMMUNITY

21. “Join the “Friends of VizChitra” community, speak or teach at our in-person conference in Bengaluru or sponsor it to evangelize, showcase, connect, and support the Indian Data Visualization practitioners community.”

22. Nerd out on data visualization topics with your tribe
 
 Join & Engage with the community • Nerd out on Data Visualization topic
 • Includes focussed sub-groups like 
 ◦ VizChitra Book Club
 ◦ Jobs & Collaborations 🤝 VizChitra
 • Participate in the “Poll of the Day”
 • Ask questions, seek resources, share examples, get feedback…
 Join the “Friends of VizChitra” 
 group at vizchitra.com/friends
 
 Our community websites
 vizchitra.com
 
 “Friends of VizChitra” Group on WhatsApp
 This is our community group, including an eclectic group of data visualization practitioners and professionals, from from designers to researchers, from coders to analyst, from artists to educators. 

23. Standard, Lightning, Unconference, Workshop or Alternative
 Speak or teach at the Conference Lightning Talk
 Give a fast-paced, focused talk for introducing novel concepts or sharing specific solutions.
 Unconference/“Birds of Feather”
 Organise a community-driven gathering that bring together other participants with shared interests.
 Hands–on Workshops 
 Curate an immersive learning experience that encourages creativity, practical application and skill development.
 Alternative Session
 Have an interesting idea that doesn’t fit any of the above? A physical installation, a performance, a unique project showcase, anything else you can imagine?
 Pitch it to us and let’s collaborate to bring it to life together! Standard Talk
 Give a deep-dive talk in to a complex topics and share personal learnings, insights, and journey through your work
 30 mins
 15 mins
 
 45 mins
 ½ or ¼ day
 Call for Proposal is ongoing.
 Make a submission: vizchitra.com/cfp
 
 Have questions, drop us an email
 hello@vizchitra.com
 

24. Benefits of sponsoring VizChitra 2025 Conference
 
 Sponsor the Conference Connect with future employees & collaborators
 Support and grow the community
 Evangelise your tools & solutions
 Lead generation & customer discovery 
 Showcase your company’s innovative DataViz work
 Be identified as an industry leader
 PLATINUM SPONSOR SILVER SPONSOR … your company name here …
 For more sponsorship discussion, 
 please reach out to us at
 
 Email: sales@hasgeek.com
 Phone: +91 76763 32020

25. vizchitra.com Say hi to us on email at hello@vizchitra.com