Encoding, decoding.

The act of encoding and the act of decoding are two phases of interpreting the same message.

For us, encoding is the action of taking data and stories and turning it into something that is codified — this is often the role of the practitioner. The act of decoding is the other side; it is all of us who are watching, who are using, who are reading these stories or this codified data. One cannot exist without the other and this is how the name Encode came about.

As part of London Design Festival 2019, Encode will be a two-day festival exploring the intersection of data design, journalism and education in London. Bringing the creative community together to share and explore the future of data-driven stories.

It is about creating a big festival that is about all the things that we are passionate about. Encode is ultimately the experience we would love to have if this was the next data event we went to. Through this shared experience, we hope to connect the dots between education, what we learn about data-driven stories, to the practice and production of these journeys in the commercial world.

The three strands of data design, journalism and education are interconnected by the talks, workshops and panel debates. It’s imperative that it’s not just about hearing different talks and taking notes and then walking away inspired. We want that inspiration to be passed on to others by creating a platform for collaboration and discussions between educators, practitioners and students. Thinking beyond Encode 2019 for one moment, we want to facilitate partnerships, conversations and collaborations. Knowing that these may start here with us at Encode is super exciting.

This isn’t a one-off. This is just the first version of Encode, we don’t know what the second version will be. We want to learn every year and we have a lot of faith in those attending to help us steer what we should be considering for our curation next year. The beauty of Encode is that we are already realising that for the second version we will probably start from scratch. What will stay is Encode.

Here are some of the amazing speakers, panellists and workshop runners part of Encode 2019, ranging across information design, journalism and education:

Wesley Grubbs / Pitch Interactive. Marie Segger / The Economist, Matteo Moretti / Unibz, Caroline Goulard / Dataveyes. Ludovic Riffault / Dataveyes. Quayola, Caitlyn Ralph / The Pudding, David Sheldon-Hicks / Territory Studio, Andy Kirk / Visualising Data, Thomas Clever / CLEVERºFRANKE, Gert Franke / CLEVERºFRANKE, Gemma Hitchens / Financial Times, Shadi El Hajj / Refraction Labs, Yaryna Serkez / Wall Street Journal, Stefanie Posavec, Miriam Quick, Marcus Wendt / FIELD, Vera-Maria Glahn / FIELD, Maaike van Neck / Ravensbourne University, Matthew Falla / Signal Noise

Valentina D’Efilippo, Angela Everitt / The Economist Group, Bronwen Robertson / DATA4CHANGE, Stina Bäcker / DATA4CHANGE, Michael Brenner / DATA4CHANGE, Maral Pourkazemi / MADDthing, Krystina Shveda / The Times and The Sunday Times, Charles Nduka / Emteq, Rebecca Conroy / Beyond Words, John Burn-Murdoch / Financial Times, Cedric Kiefer / onformative, David Hunter / Ravensbourne University, Adrian Leu / Emteq, James Britton / Stink Studios, Federica Cocco / Financial Times, Mark Kennedy / Imperial College London, Julie Freeman, Lawrence Zeegen / Ravensbourne University, Rachel Ara and Connor Upton.

We hope you can join us!