The next Tech@State, happening September 23 and 24, will focus visualizing development data. It’s exciting to see the State Department lead a discussion on how data visualization — and open data and open formats — will improve how we communicate and share development data, as well as lead to overall efficiencies in the international development sector.

The first day of Tech@State will include panel discussions on topics like open data, using data visualizations in disaster response, and best practices for interoperability. Edward Tufte will keynote the event, and folks from organizations like the World Bank, Center for Global Development, and of course the State Department will all present.

Eric is participating in the panel Visualizations for Aid Transparency and Management, where he’ll discuss how to use our map tools TileMill and TileStream to quickly make and share maps of custom data, and walk through some examples of how we’ve mapped data around the famine in the Horn of Africa, the Japan earthquake, and other aid scenarios. Dave will be on the Standards for Visualization panel talking about best practices in data visualizations and open formats, including the MBTiles file format we use in our maps. Alex, Nate, and I will also be attending and can give anyone interested a live demo of how to make maps with TileMill and share them with TileStream.

The full agenda for the first day is posted here and is being updated as it solidifies. You can register here, and we’ve heard that more spaces will be opened up this week as it sold out fast.

The second day of Tech@State will be an unconference that will provide the opportunity to dive into more detail on the topics discussed on Friday, as well as introduce new topics. More details and registration for the unconference are available here.

We’ll be tweeting from the event, and you can follow Tech@State directly too.