Charts are charts, right? Wrong.
You have a lot of decisions to make when creating a chart, most of which seem benign. But some of those decisions can make a critical difference between providing insight into the underlying data and causing the reader to draw the wrong conclusions.
To illustrate just three of the ways charts can be made to be misleading, check out Ravi Parikh post on How to Lie with Data Visualization over at Heap’s Data Blog.
We’ve just released some exciting improvements to the data-export feature in ProposalSpace!
Continue reading Improved Data Export Feature
We’ve just released a new dashboard for the Session Tracker in ProposalSpace. The dashboard contains a couple of charts designed to help call admins track proposal activity over time and to monitor how many draft proposals are incomplete vs. complete. It also contains an Alerts section that displays issues that might require attention, like impending deadlines, submissions that haven’t been approved for review, and submissions that need to be assigned to reviewers.
The idea is to make the Tracker Dashboard a place where admins can stay on top of every aspect of a call. We’re always looking to make the feature more useful, so if you have any information that you would like to see on the dashboard, please let us know!
Three new merge fields are now available in the Messaging Module:
Continue reading New Merge Fields in Messaging Module
Dave Lutz, over at the Midcourse Corrections blog, lays out six really good ways to improve your conference committee.
Here at ProposalSpace, we always try to see things through the eyes of our users, so we especially liked his recommendation to “Walk in the attendee’s shoes”:
Many conference committees evaluate potential sessions and speakers using more information than the attendees will see. Attendees make the decision to attend based on session title, session description, and learning objectives. Embrace a blind review process. It will help eliminate personal agendas and challenge the committee to evaluate the program as a paying attendee would.
We’ve just uploaded a new video tutorial that shows how to update the photo associated with your ProposalSpace profile. Check it out.
Good news, call administrators: You no longer have to re-open a call just to create a late submission. Now, even if your call’s submission deadline has passed, you will continue to see it on the Start a Proposal page.
We’ve just posted a brief tutorial on YouTube that explains how to review submissions in ProposalSpace: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTWIBReUifc. If you manage a call, you might want to have your reviewers view the tutorial before they get started so they know what to expect.
If you have any suggestions for how we can improve the tutorial—or would like to see us create videos for other topics—just let us know!
If you are one of the growing number of organizations using ProposalSpace for managing award nominations, you might not have cared for the term “proposal” we use throughout the site (for example, “Start a Proposal” or “Edit Proposal”).
Well, good news. Now you can customize the term. The default is still “proposal”, but you can change it to “nomination”, “abstract”, “idea”, or anything else that fits your needs. Just pull up the call and look in the General Settings page for a field called Submission Type.
Global Equity Organization’s call for their annual conference really stands out for its clarity and conciseness. Our favorite part? The “What Happens After You Submit Your Proposal” section. Check it out at http://www.globalequity.org/geo/node/3265 and see if you agree.