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Earlier in the year, when Chris Westlake hung up his #SportsVizSunday boots, we were given an amazing opportunity to expand the team and benefit from new voices to energise us for the months ahead and give us fresh perspectives to ensure #SportsVizSunday continues to go from strength to strength.
We decided to run an open casting for the new team member slots and give anyone from our amazing community to put their name forward to join us. We were excited to see who volunteered, but we never for one moment dreamt we would get such an amazing response!
17 applications were received and what really struck us was the authenticity of why people wanted to join the team. There was an overwhelming theme of #SportsVizSunday offering a unique place in the data viz community, founded on having fun, doing what we love about something we love. Vizzing. Sports.
So without further ado, we are delighted to be able to share with you are 3 new team members, and as we announce each one we will also share 2 of each of their #SportsVizSunday visualisations. One being their first every #SportsVizSunday viz and the other being our favourite sports visualisations from across their immense Tableau Public portfolios!
Simon Rowe | DataVizJourney.com | Tableau Public Profile
Active on Tableau Public since 2018, the last 3 years have seen Simon build up a formidable viz profile, participating in many community initiatives, with #SportsVizSunday becoming an ever growing part of his collection. You only need to look at Simon's latest Lewis Hamilton "100 Grand Prix Wins" to realise how talented Simon is, but what really shines through for us is his commitment to the community and his commitment to continual growth and learning. Simon lives and breathes this by keeping all his vizzes, even from his early days, visible on his Tableau Public profile, including his first every #SportsVizSunday viz showcasing England Cricketer, Ben Stokes.
CJ Mayes | CJ-Mayes.com | Tableau Public Profile
Not much needs to be said about CJ! A Tableau Public Ambassador who has been wowing us with his technical wizardry now for over a year. Yep that's right folks, when you commit yourself all in to the community you can become one of the very best in about as much time as it takes Watford to fire their manager! Joking aside CJ as an inspiration. Not only does he create amazing sports visualisations he also gives back to the community through an incredible website that is full of technical guides, viz reflections and interviews. As for those amazing visualisations, we encourage you to check out his "UEFA Champions League" viz which was a masterclass in custom shapes and visual encoding. Compare that with his first #SportsVizSunday about the career of Kobe Bryant which is..... oh hang on, CJ you do know your first viz is meant to be not as good as your best, clearly you didn't get the message!
Mo Wootten | Tableau Public Profile
We have to say Mo wrote the most amazing supporting text for his submission to join the team. It oozed commitment to #SportsVizSunday and a burning passion to help foster others to participate in our challenges and to benefit from the same growth that Mo has done through vizzing sports.
We have loved being able to regularly feature Mo in our weekly #SportsVizSunday Round-Ups; he continues to smash out amazing sporting visualisations, but his recent "NCAA Division 1 Lacrosse Championship" viz really stood out for us. It's an elegant small multiple, cleverly using shape and colours to analyse the performances of each of the Colleges. And the best bit? Mo even quoted his inspiration for the viz as being Simon Rowe!
Now for Mo's first #SportsVizSunday, "Football Compasses". When it was released we gave this one plenty of love, if memory serves us right, it was the cover viz for the weekly round-up blog and even now, it brings us a massive amount of joy engaging with it.
Whilst we are overjoyed at being able to welcome 3 new amazing team members, we cannot ignore the obvious elephant in the room. 5 out of the 6 members of Team #SportsVizSunday are now white males and we must do more to ensure we reflect the diverse community that we serve.
At #SportsVizSunday we strive to showcase diversity and have been proud to deliver on our commitment through:
A partnership with #DiversityInData for our March 2021 monthly challenge which focused on Adaptive Sports
Focusing our December 2020 monthly challenge solely on Women Athletes
Where ever possible ensuring we provide both a male and female perspective on data sets; for example in our January 2021 EPL and WSL Football monthly challenge, our April 2021 NCAA D1 Lacrosse monthly challenge, our July 2021 Olympics monthly challenge and a sporting Heroes and Heroines collaboration with #IronQuest
A #Data21 Braindate by Kate Brown to connect with other sports loving data women
And over recent months we have had so much pride to be able to showcase diversity within our #SportsVizSunday community thanks to the amazing work of individuals such as Abbie Taylor, Tina Covelli and Damola Ladipo to name but a few.
That said, clearly we need to do more and we are committed to working tirelessly throughout 2021 to ensure when the next opportunity comes to expand the #SportsVizSunday team we are able to attract and appoint greater diversity; and this is where we need your help. We would welcome your views, your ideas, your connections to help us deliver on this promise. Help us grow, help us thrive, help us be your #SportsVizSunday.
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