What do you do if you want to advance your career in data visualization and build a strong network?

You are as good as the quality of the information you have. I have found platforms like LinkedIn Learning, Coursera, and YouTube to be good places to find quality information on data analysis and visualisation. There is no one perfect tutor; don't look for one. Explore as much as possible, ask questions, and be willing to get your hands dirty. That's how you can truly learn from the best.

Enhance Skills: Continuously learn and master new data visualization tools and techniques. Online courses, workshops, and tutorials can be valuable resources. Build a Portfolio: Create a diverse portfolio showcasing your best work. Include various projects that demonstrate your skills and creativity. Engage with the Community: Participate in data visualization forums, social media groups, and professional associations. Share your work, seek feedback, and contribute to discussions. Attend Events: Join conferences, meetups, and webinars related to data visualization. Collaborate: Seek opportunities to collaborate on projects. This can expose you to new ideas and methodologies while expanding your professional network.

the most applicable way to advance your career in data visualization skill requires applying combination of seeking a mentor, who has expertise in data visualization, to gain hands-on experience and receive the continuous feedbacks from mentor, committing yourself to self-education, and networking with people that works in this area by attending relevant events, webinars, etc.

Fancy doesn’t mean insightful. A misconception that as much your chart is fancier and complex, it will be powerful. Most of big decisions made in big companies are based on trend line chart and pivot tables. Your portfolio should reflect a solution for a real problem in a company. Our audience usually are not a tech person, and they need as little as possible information to digest and understand. Tools have a lot of similarities, what it matters the story you tell. Our minds are designed to understand stories more easily. Thus, building a sequence of charts that tell a story is impactful for business decisions.

Always listen carefully to the feedback from reliable people who think differently than you. Their point of view represents a perspective that we don't sense in the same way (at least not as important/priority as we think). However, for them, it is the way they see the world/circumstances. If you insist on your point of view and deliberately neglect their perspective, you will not convince everybody in the room with similar thoughts as them. Always try to adapt and include what you think makes more sense from their opinion. Showing that you made an effort to include at least part of their opinion will demonstrate that you are a person who respects their feedback. Thus, it is likely they will listen to you later too.

Keeping updated is very important for any job. However, due to the increased demand for specialists in data science and correlated areas, understanding the concepts more deeply and translating them to a wider (non-specialist) community will greatly impact your career, because you make other people understand the details too. Like any other career, you become a leader in a given subject/place/circumstance by being an example to others, and one of the best ways to do that is by helping others around you (for example, by sharing fundamental details that are not obvious to a general audience).

I think one of the most important things about data visualization and how it can impact your job/career is to always focus on conveying the relevant information in the simplest form. For example, when the data is displayed in a very good/clear way, there is no need for a detailed explanation, thus one can invest more time in the storytelling part of it or other nuances of interest when presenting your data, because the important message was already successfully transmitted.