VizChitra 2025: India's first community-driven Data Visualization conference

Anyone who has ever worked with data knows this. It’s so much easier when you have it ready. Except, given where we are (Hello, census when?) and how things are like - there’s a pretty good chance that you have no available sources of data on you. What’s the current population of Hyderabad? Where do you have pot holes in your neighborhood? How much does my city spend on toilets? Fear not, in this session - we learn the various ways you can build your own datasets and not rely on the forces above.

Participants in this session will learn the ways to sharpen the question they have, figure out how to go after data (if it exists) and build their own (if it doesn’t). I will draw in from my experience of building datasets on public toilets, share autos, labor addas and even slums for Hyderabad.

This is a session for anyone and everyone who has wanted their question to be answered. Very beginner friendly, i promise.

Harsha Devulapalli is a graphics reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, with a diverse background as a researcher, geographer, urban designer, developer and product manager. He is passionate about cities, maps, transit, languages, typography and history. For over a decade, he has worked with slimy datasets and got his hands dirty building data in India.