Notebook
Here's where we post periodic updates on what we've been up to at Fathom. Reflections on the interesting stories that emerge from our client work, side projects, after-hours rabbitholes, and other miscellaneous threads of inquiry.
You can also follow these posts as a feed in your feed reader.
We had a remarkably busy summer this year. With client projects to develop, workshops to teach, and a host of interns and new hires to welcome, there was never a dull moment. As we’re settling in for the fall, we’re taking some time to look back on everything we accomplished during the summer months.
This past summer, the team at Fathom hosted a class week in which we took an abbreviated look at Fathom’s information design methodology. Students in the class learned some of the core principles of information design and explored new ways of representing data using p5.js, a JavaScript library for creating graphic and interactive experiences based on the original Processing software. During that week, we asked our students to create their own weather apps. We provided some examples of prior work to give students a good starting point. Yet, we found that these examples often confused our students, who frequently noted difficulties understanding what certain parts of the code were doing.
Recently, several members of the Fathom team had the opportunity to attend Mayo Clinic’s Transform Conference in Rochester, MN. The conference brings together innovative minds in health care. It features talks from leaders who are implementing experimental technologies and new protocols, and frank discussions about the underlying causes of major problems with the current healthcare system.
Since the invention of the transistor, we’ve been living in the Information Age. Which sounds a bit like we’re enjoying a sci-fi utopia but mostly means that we all have 20,000 unread messages in our Gmail inboxes.
It only takes a couple of sentences to get a feel for the character of a document.
Two weeks ago, the team adapted coursework from our MIT course into a week-long class for Fathom’s interns, new employees, and some family members.
At Fathom, we celebrate diversity in political leaders, cultures, and within our team.
“Let’s draw some happy little trees.” “Just beat the devil out of it.” “We don’t make mistakes, just happy accidents.”
Launching Myriscope, providing ConText for the Mueller Report, and visiting the Mayo Clinic
In the last decade, we’ve waded through lots of talk about data—and worse, Big Data—as a kind of frightening “other.” Bruce Schneier described data as “the exhaust of the information age,” which is perfectly apt—but this is usually read the wrong way, giving us an excuse to treat data as a kind of artificial nuisance. We’re led to see data as an abstract, inhuman thing stored in the cloud, or maybe just in the computer.