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Comment by macintux | Hacker News Reader

For anyone who hasn't had the opportunity: I highly recommend taking Tufte's one-day class. You get a copy of his books and get to see at least one or two truly historic texts (it's been 20 years for me, so I don't remember off-hand what he had with him).

Plus he's a tremendously bright man with entertaining anecdotes.

So, even though I don't think that anything he shared that day has been useful in my career, it was a life-enriching experience.

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I took the class earlier this year. Like others have said, it’s a multi-hundred people affair, not very intimate.

Having read the books, the lecture provided no value whatsoever for me besides the “cool” factor of seeing ET in flesh (and a sneak peek at his next book). At best I would say that the lecture is a good crash course for people who haven’t read his books yet (the fact that you get the books as part of the fee supports that theory), at worst it’s mostly self promotion (he spent a solid 10 minutes showing us his twitter timeline and pointing out his favorite tweets that he had retweeted o_O).

I would be more interested in the course he puts together with other designers, if he ever does that again.

On the other hand, I found his one-day lecture banal and wildly over-priced.

Same here - loved the book and was very excited for the one day lecture but it was probably the most boring and banal one I’ve ever attended.

Agree. More like some kind of a monotonic presentation rather an educational one. Books are great for reference though. If you had a choice, just buy all the books and skip one day session.

I'm a bit more mixed. I found his presentation style pretty terrible and his specific contributions (viz and software) not terribly exciting. But he's a master at analyzing other people's visualization work with an almost mind-altering critical eye. His books are incredibly valuable.

I think it's probably just worth it to buy the books and read them, but I did find his walkthrough of a few visualizations enlightening.

I still recommend the class, but with the caveats mentioned above.

Interesting; I've also been highly discouraged from attending his class from a recent attendee. She felt he wasn't invested in actually presenting the material and it just felt like an advertising racket to buy his books. Things may have changed in the past 20 years.

I attended the "See, Think, Design, Produce" one-day session that Tufte put on with guest speakers Jonathan Corum, Bret Victor, and Mike Bostock (back in 2014). It was a great set of lectures, but TBH, felt that Tufte's talk was the least engaging/practical/applicable.

I'm definitely a bigger fan of Tufte's books than his in-person lectures.

It would be a shame if true. I suppose if I gave the same talk for 20+ years my enthusiasm might wane.

I went to his one day event maybe 6 years ago, with a group from grad school.

Had the same experience, while it was cool to get all of his books, the actual presentation really wasn't that great.

There was also like 200-250 people in the room at least. Way too big for "intimate" learning.

I went earlier this year and I thought it was a good experience. The key is to arrive on time and sit there and do the silent reading that he assigns before the lecture starts.

I sat in the front and he approached me. He was friendly, asked me what I did, made some suggestions on books and articles to explore. He also signed my book, which was cool.

I'd take the class again for sure.

I think it's important to just go in with an open mind and not treat everything he says as gospel. I think he presents some ideas that very much cut against the conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley and that was nice to hear.

So yeah, I think it'd be worth your time to go. Plus, just because someone else didn't like it doesn't mean you won't get a lot out of it. Unless you go and see for yourself, you can't really know.

Fwiw the books are included if you buy a ticket, and the books are the medium of much of his work so it would make sense for him to extensively reference them

I would agree with that assessment. When I went, I attended in a huge room with hundreds of other people. It was not a seminar in the sense of being able to interact with the teacher, but a lecture. And the lecture did not present a sequenced set of actionable principles, but bits and pieces consisting of the history of design, critiques of existing designs, an occasional bit of advice, and a lot about Tufte. Overall, I did not feel that I'd received enough value to offset the entry fee and the time.

Edit: clarity

Tufte is focused on his sculpture garden (http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/hogpen-hill-farms). At an event I attended he got frustrated with someone asking questions about data visualization, replying, "That's my old life, I'm an artist now."

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