The program of the next InfoVis 2006 conference (the premier conference in the field) is out. I'm really surprised to note how large the proportion of papers about trees, graphs, and networks is.
There are 13 out of 24 papers, that is, more that 54%, classified either as: Graph Exploration, Network Visualization, Tree and Treemap Applications, or Graph Drawing.
I'm really surprised! I wonder why. Is the case that infovis is becoming the visualization of networks and such things only? Are we loosing ground in other areas? Or maybe is just a random variation happening this year?
In order to see things a little bit closer, I checked the last editions of the conference to see how the proportions have evolved. Here are the percentages:
- InfoVis 2006: 54% (13 out of 24)
- InfoVis 2005: 35% (11 out of 31)
- InfoVis 2004: 18% (5 out of 27)
- InfoVis 2003: 13% (4 out of 29)
What do you think, is it a real trend?
Anyway ... this year I will probably not go there and it's a pity since the conference is always so great. This year there is also the first VAST conference on visual analytics that seems to be a perfect companion of the symposium with some more real worlds studies, which is fine.
I'm also glad to see my friends Geoff and Alan with the following paper accepted to the conference:
Enabling Automatic Clutter Reduction in Parallel Coordinate Plots
Geoffrey Ellis, Alan Dix
It is the result of a research on clutter reduction we started together some time ago, so I'm glad they have developed things so much further. Good job! ;-)
