2024 Information is Beautiful Awards Ceremony Manager

Posting date: February 17, 2025
Application deadline: March 10, 2025

The Information is Beautiful Awards

In 2025, the Data Visualization Society (DVS) will host the Information is Beautiful (IIB) Awards for the third year. The IIB Awards are a global celebration of excellence in the field of data visualization, recognizing experienced practitioners and teams as well as emerging creators. Past winners have stated how the awards have inspired them, helped them land new opportunities and brought them into the dataviz community. The Awards showcase serves as an invaluable educational resource, creating a repository of dataviz projects each year.

The Information is Beautiful Awards Ceremony

In 2022, DVS hosted the Intersections Workshops in the two days preceding the Awards. The workshops included skill-building sessions, lightning talks with the behind-the-scenes of the shortlisted IIB Awards projects and discussions about current themes in the data viz field. Given how exciting it was to hear directly from award shortlistees about their processes and projects, the event was revamped into the Day of Inspiration in 2023. The Day of Inspiration included lightning talks from shortlistees, a hands-on session about building a creative practice in dataviz and two keynote presentations.

In 2025, we are excited to announce that the ceremony is taking on a completely different format as we combine the 2024 IIB Awards with DVS’ flagship conference, Outlier. The Awards ceremony will be a three-hour event on the evening of June 12th in Miami, Florida designed to highlight the shortlistees and winners, as well as the behind-the-scenes of the Awards’ projects, and strengthen the connection between the IIB Awards and the Outlier Conference. This is a 250-person awards ceremony with seating, food and drinks, presentation of data visualization projects and pre-recorded content on a projector screen, and podium for emcee and trophy presentation.

About the role

The IIB Awards Ceremony Manager will play a crucial role ensuring that the programming and event logistics for the evening event run smoothly. This part time role will lead the team organizing the ceremony and will collaborate with the team organizing the IIB Awards overall as well as the team organizing the Outlier conference to ensure harmonious integration of the two events. 

To carry out these duties, the Event Manager will collaborate with the DVS Programs Director, DVS Events Directory, Outlier 2024 Director, and the IIB Awards volunteer team as well as relevant Board members and Committee members. This will include regular updates and check-ins to be scheduled by the IIB Awards Program Manager. The compensation will be US$1,250 per month for three months. The total contract value is US$3,750.

The role is expected to start in mid-March 2025 with a commitment of five hours per week. That commitment will likely increase to 10 hours per week six weeks before the event and 20-25 hours per week three weeks before the event. After the event, the time commitment will be 3-5 hours a week to wrap up event reflections, documentation and any follow-up action items.

Duties & Responsibilities

  • Venue & Logistics Coordination

    • Work with the IIB Awards Event team to identify and secure a venue and set up virtual streaming.

    • Coordinate event logistics, including catering, A/V requirements, event layout, and vendor management.

    • Arrange for a freelance photographer/videographer to document the event.

    • Manage attendee accommodation requests and accessibility needs.

  • Team Management & Volunteer Coordination

    • Manage a team of volunteers to support all aspects of the event, including setup, registration, stage management, content creation, and guest assistance.

    • Delegate tasks effectively and oversee volunteer roles for day-of operations.

  • Event Programming & Run-of-Show

    • Develop a programming schedule and detailed run-of-show in collaboration with the DVS Board and IIB Awards team.

    • Coordinate with emcees and award presenters to ensure smooth program execution.

    • Set clear expectations for day-of responsibilities for all key participants.

  • Budget Management

    • Work within an allocated budget, tracking expenses for venue, vendors, catering, A/V, and other event costs.

  • Collaboration with Outlier Conference

    • Partner with the Outlier Events team on ticketing, cross-event promotion, and coordination for IIB Awards shortlistees and speakers attending Outlier.

  • Shortlistee & Winner Coordination

    • Communicate with shortlisted participants to determine in-person vs. virtual attendance.

    • Collect pre-recorded acceptance speeches from winners who cannot attend live.

    • Manage trophies for in-person winners, ensuring they are correctly assigned and presented.

  • Event Assets & Materials

    • Design and produce print and digital assets, including: event agenda, shortlistee booklet, attendee badges, swag items

  • Communications & Engagement

    • Attend IIB team standup meetings for ongoing event planning updates.

    • Work with the DVS Communications Manager to draft and schedule pre- and post-event communications for attendees and speakers.

    • Organize behind-the-scenes content creation (e.g., setup photos)

  • Speaker & Participant Management

    • Collaborate with the DVS Assistant to collect signed speaker agreements and presentation slides in advance.

    • Manage Eventbrite registrations and generate the final participant list for both in-person and virtual attendees.

  • Post-Event Follow-Up & Documentation

    • Participate in event debriefing, identifying key takeaways and areas for improvement.

    • Finalize documentation and key processes to assist next year’s team in planning the event.

About You

You are an enthusiastic, highly organized person with experience managing complex projects and turning ideas into unforgettable community experiences. You create positive energy in team environments and thrive in a world of spreadsheets. You pay attention to the little details that sum up to our attendees’ and speakers’ overall experience and have a knack for problem-solving. You view everything you do through the lens of inclusion and accessibility. 

You are comfortable working remotely and collaborating with a distributed team across continents (primarily Europe and North America). While interest in data visualization is a plus, we are really looking for an event planning pro who can bring the event to life–from vision brainstorming to making sure everything runs like clockwork on the big day!

Proximity to Miami, Florida in order to scout and evaluate potential event locations and set-up is a bonus. If not located in Miami, Florida, ability to travel to Florida will likely be necessary. 

About The Data visualization society

The Data Visualization Society is a registered 501(c)3 organization founded to serve as a professional home for those working across the discipline while leading others into this growing, dynamic field, and to increase the visibility and value of data visualization to the general public. 

We seek to achieve this mission by investing in communication platforms and events to connect members, education platforms for teaching and learning, and leveraging those resources to foster skills growth, knowledge exchange, and meaningful critique. Our community will grow by engaging and encouraging underrepresented voices, and giving a place for ideas to be shared among data visualization developers, designers, artists, teachers, enthusiasts, and users.