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[Music] welcome back to the policy VI podcast I am your host John schwabish have you ever wondered about those charts and graphs and Exhibits that members of US Congress bring to the house floor or to the senate floor they have the big poster sitting behind them on foam board or they have a snowball that they hold in The Well of Congress well if you have not checked out the floor charts Twitter feed that's been around for sever years now you really should because the guy behind it who you may not know the single guy behind it Bill Gray has been collecting screenshots of members of Congress showing their charts their graphs their exhibits their data visualizations their diagrams their photographs for the last several years and so I'm very excited to finally be able to have Bill on the show to talk about the work that he's done to pull this great resource together how it's started how he does it and what interests him about these different ways of visualizing data in Congress on the floor of the house and the Senate so I'm going to turn it right over to our conversation so here's my chat with Bill Gray the author behind floor charts and I hope you'll really enjoy this week's conversation on the policy viz podcast hey Bill we did it we got together at last it's been so long good to see you how are you hey John it's great to see you yeah it feels it's been basically a year where we've been punting calendars back and forth being like when is there not a crisis when are we not on vacation when is there not a flood or leak or Lord knows what else so yep getting hurt kids getting sick Oh man um well it's great to see you because it has been it has been a while um and excited to uh to talk all things comms policy floor charts all the all the good stuff um here for it so I I think so you know I usually ask people when I do these interviews to talk a little bit about themselves but what's interesting is when I do that is most people know you know Sarah Smith they know who Sarah Smith is they just you know maybe don't know their background right but interestingly I'm not sure most people like know the guy behind floor charts so this is like for many people like the introduction to the guy behind floor charts so um yeah so maybe just like who you are where you came from what you're doing now and then we can then we can we can talk about all the four charts stuff in a bit but yeah absolutely yeah so first off floor charts is me it's not 27 people um I do feel like because I never sleep people are like oh somebody the floor charts responded and I was like no it was me uh so yes uh so you and I met way back when when I uh kicked this crazy project off in 2012 when I was uh a night producer at C ban just my day job was watching and producing the house and the Senate constantly and I'll get into more of the background later but basically that intersection of like tumblers High Point with news's interest and then Twitter being the place like anybody who loved infographics anybody who loved charts you found yourself on an online platform you know you me Robert Caro like just being like that newspaper chart is no good why did we make a chart of that or what was Congress just doing and in your own CBO background it was like oh this is just cool like we found after high school after college in the Work World you found a bunch of nerds who kind of wanted to talk about nerd things right uh know making cool pictures exactly basically um so yeah like I said like 2012 is when all this started so we have 10 plus years of fun to cover um but for yeah for those who don't know like my name is Bill Gray I I live in DC I work in policy Communications uh similar to you right like trying to take those great ideas and Shrink them enough to be digestible um right without missing the point um you know went from being a journalist and realizing that as much as I loved journalism and you know for me I I came to DC explicitly to work for c-pam right like that wonderful place that everybody forgets exist sometimes because it's always on and that was the dream right like not to be the story just to like absorb everything right and then realized after a few years that I enjoyed talking about the work they were doing more than I enjoyed producing the work itself right and because for anybody who doesn't know C-SPAN it's not the house senate and white house it's also Decades of interviews and books and like there's even like an award-winning miniature documentary of someone sculpting Abe Lincoln's head in life siiz narrating his life as it ages like there is so much history that I was like oh I've just got to talk about this all the time yeah right and you know Howard mortman who's their communications director who is you know one of my Idols um he he and I used to talk and he was just like you love love doing what I do almost more than you love journalism and I was like oh that's really smart I should just go talk about policy and journalism of these things much more um and so over over 10 years found myself eventually where I am now which is uh I'm communications director for a a growing Think Tank called the R Street Institute um probably everybody knows us because shash Weissman um of Twitter Fame uh senator of East Virginia um in all tongue and chicness uh is our digital communications director and she's prob tweeting South Park memes at you to explain electricity policy today um we you know we love Pirates and Star Wars and all the nerdy things in the world uh have a director of K9 policy because we like dogs um and my day job is basically taking 30 40 Scholars worth of work and being like how do we amplify for impact this kind of what we call policy victories at the margins of like until Texas froze over a few years ago did you think about where your electricity came from right you know the youth vaping crisis and how do you balance harm reduction for adults with a youth vaping crisis right like those those kind of like deep policy issues at the state and federal level don't always make the front page but when they do we're we're standing there like all right who wants to talk about a solution first mindset you know because our goal is not always perfect absolute you know end end of day nobody could write it better solution it's what is feasible that's going to save lives what is feasible that's going to improve lives and then keep iterating during implementation right that kind of you know policy first you know politics second kind of agenda um and it's fun to be there until you realize you're talking about flood insurance during hurricanes right electricity during freezes and that like every day you don't get the policy done there's real world impact on it right and so you know it bleeds it leads drives news and for us I you know and I feel like you're part of this you know at the urban Institute like policy is slow and change but when it happens it can be Monumental right and impact right um so yeah we we've got I think a nerson Communications events and digital team and it's different kind of fun every day great so before we get into floor charts I want to I want to talk about your the digital Comm strategy because floor charts is a Twitter lives in Twitter Twitter depending on your perspective Twitter is dying is dead is whatever um but over the last 10 years like the digital landscape has changed so tremendously so I guess uh the question's fairly General here I guess but like where where are you and your team thinking about digital comms now with the this changing landscape yeah so and and you you for those who don't know and you probably do John has a book called Elevate the debate about policy coms and and I'm just flagging it because I bought this when it came out and I give it to a lot of my communications team because our street especially we are a grass Toops focused audience specifically we are not Grassroots which means we left Facebook behind a long time ago right and so our our digital lead sh Weissman you know and I knew each other before I went to work at our street uh and be her boss and it was always kind of two major platforms Twitter and Linkedin right like Twitter because the the bar to entry was so low right every member of Congress had a Twitter account you know after hard work by Twitter to make sure that that constituent policymaker communication Bridge was built um and now you know we're trying she she's trying every platform under the sun because for us especially because we also do state policy the ability for her to just get pinged by a state person to be like hey we've never encountered this policy problem do you guys can you guys help us do you know somebody who can help us um and and you know I can't I can't say enough to people that you know if you had told me you know when I came to DC that you know a digital media director who loves to post South Park memes was gonna be invited to Utah and Colorado to to sit down with policy teams and say let's talk about occupational licensing and barriers to like nurses crossing state lines to like help during a pandemic yeah I would have been like what who you know like that didn't cross the mental lexicon at the time so you know I think we're on Twitter until basically the day it dies right but but for us it's kind of following the audience right like because you know the policy you policy types you know there's post there's blue sky right there's all of these and we're on all of them but like you know um I don't know if people know Daniel Schuman formerly of demand progress now over at popbox Foundation you know Daniel Schuman has been doing you know Lion Share of work to make sure that all of those Congressional experts all of those you know staff and members that if you're moving platform to platform he's creating those lists on every platform for you so that if you're that guy who really likes that CBO expert who does tweet right you can find them again and and it's like the amount of work now to rec create the environments in the nerd circles you and I found ourselves in yeah right where you know uh and I and it was funny um so one of the products AR Street did before I got there that still exists um shashana and one of our judicial experts did a database of like oral arguments right and things like that that was searchable and then axios puts out a story I think it was earlier this week maybe last week that was all about like how often the various people presenting the Supreme Court get interrupted yeah and in in original Twitter land you could have tweeted at the scholars you could have tweeted at the axio people and I guarantee you shashana which she did would have found in like 24 hours someone called her and said you want our nerdy database why do you want our nerdy database right and now it's like no I've got to go find the story find the emails make it sound disarming that I'm actually interested in this really nerdy thing you did right and like it's just another level of like okay the communications Bridges aren't all built the same way right because that's also you know for me me I mean I found my jobs because of Twitter I mean I met my wife because of Twitter right like and and the communication ecosystems where like I've worked for journalism I've worked on the center left I've worked on the center right because I like the policies and like Twitter let me break those walls down for those people to be like yo you work in campaign Finance you work in you know harm reduction you two should know each other because you're both building coalitions and you can learn things and now nobody has time for Twitter because the algor AL is busted right it's not it's not showing you things that you want to see anymore and so it's like you know kind of that and it sounds silly that old school I've got to go through my literally my virtual Rolodex or if you're us probably a stack of business cards to be like all right who haven't I talked to in six months because I don't see him on Twitter anymore yeah right like and so yeah I I'm so sad that it is basically dying and I I count myself lucky that I I only get harassment when basically a member of Congress tweets something that includes me and everyone doesn't like that member for that moment you know but like LinkedIn like not not the same thing and and how many of us you know God bless LinkedIn for a lot of things want to say yes to every single person who friends us on LinkedIn yeah um you know so we'll keep trying just like I'm sure you will um you know and hopefully with remote work these virtual platforms will catch up right to this kind of we're online we can do this more if if if the technology and the social Community catch up and we stopped you know kind of hating the Set Pools right like and and cuz cuz for you and me right and and everyone who's in you know again like Robert Caro kind of these data visualization communities you know when I started floor charts there was another charts uh blog called I love charts that was basically just pictures of charts that they loved and they had books they had books off of this deal right like they used to invite guest people to like post for a week at a time and and it's just like I'm not going to find that again right like you know WordPress doesn't have that discoverability mechanism Tumblr has gone through multiple owners so it's like okay right and it's like what's the next thing right and I Still Love Tumblr I'm still on it but like when when I started I I hit this really unique moment after the 2012 elections where Tumblr was trying to really encourage discover ability and so when you signed up they would have this grid of like 15 blogs based upon your interest that you should immediately follow and as somebody who apparently popped one that was like news politics government and like nerd I ended up in so many of these cross-sections that within like the first year it was like 20,000 followers yeah and I and I was like I don't even know what to do with 20,000 followers right when I'm just posting photos of like Chuck Grassley and a de and deficit Dragon but they they liked it right and like they wanted more and now like if I were starting this from scratch I wouldn't know where to begin right because my my view of and I love doing floor charts it is a passion project for real but like my view is that I am actually doing what the Library of Congress should be doing right like you know and we we'll get into this because we talked data Vis but like archiving the photos that taxpayers pay for right sourcing these things right because you can't always read The Source material right and it's like it's not impossible and and highly resource intensive but like so many times the point of the floor speech or the debate is actually the chart or the poster right and and I love that C-SPAN is the one archiving all of them but like not everyone's going to be me and watch a whole lot of C-SPAN every day yeah right so yeah no like uh I I Will Follow You John whichever platform you choose to go to um you know just be a podcast right it just be the podcast I mean I yeah I I agree with everything you just said I mean for me personally and I and I've I've written about this and other places I mean I'm I'm not adding platforms I'm just subtracting I mean and I think you know kind of to your point a little bit I think there's a generational kind of not Gap but there's a generational change like I mean I'm sure there's good dat of his stuff on Tik Tok but I like I'm not GNA do that I just it's it's really labor intensive I've got a job I've got a full-time job I've got kids I've got other Hobbies right like so you know maybe maybe blue sky or or I don't know about threads but like I don't know maybe those other ones there'll be a community but so far I'm with you I haven't heard of any of the friends that I've made all through like in the DAT of his world through Twitter um I you know there's still every once in a while there'd be some little conversation on Twitter that pops up be like hey is anybody here like am I just screaming Into The Ether like and and and it's it's true it's just kind of yeah it's it's I think it's sad for a lot of us who were able to stay out of the the muck and the and the terribleness that that can be on social media and just were able to use it for for for good um but having said all that you you did a very nice lead into uh into floor charts so I think first question is do you just sit in front of your TV watching C-SPAN 24 hours a day because you said it's just you which I don't know I don't know how many listeners will be in you know how many listeners are like wait what like it's like it's one dude just doing this it's not like a team or an AI or something like so so what so what is the what is the process like yeah so first off anybody wants to do this with me for free you're more than welcome to come on board right and and I've said it for years but it's also like not being a coder not being you know the most tech-savvy so to speak right like yeah someone wants to figure out how to pull screenshots from C-SPAN with AI that accurately codes Congressional bio IDs and like everything else like come come forward right um yeah no so it's interesting because you know there's I I categorize floor charts in pre-pandemic and then post-pandemic right pre-pandemic uh floor charts I had I started my job at R Street two days before the covid-19 lockdown um and uh was very blessed that basically when I was at C-SPAN I had a four-day work week in like an overnight shift because news happened at night which meant I had three days off to just go be a nerd and like watch a lot of cpan off clock um when I went to a small Advocate and and also a journalism organ between right like these were not 247 jobs I wasn't at the director level at the same way so like leave work at work yeah right like go home you know if my my girlfriend now wife was at work right like had some of those free times um and also you know in that high moment of Twitter staffers were beginning to learn if we talk to him or let him know something is coming it will get to the blog faster right or in my case because I was a reporter first I followed every Congressional reporter Under the Sun like Neil lesnoski is my reporter God that I still think and talk so much about right and so it was like when you know that these reporters were watching the floor and they were watching C-SPAN when there was a moment like ch um uh what's his name um not Ken Conrad we're gonna talk about Ken Conrad later um Republican H Republican senator uh Cuts up a CR card I'm not I'm going to have to redo this but I'll I'll respe it hold on it's one of the most popular charts on my blog hold on I have this thing pulled up I haven't heard the name Kent Conrad in a long time oh we're gonna talk about Kent Conrad yeah I know no nobody thinks about Kent Conrad right like hold on uh senator from Oklahoma Tom cobber all right so let's I'm gonna restart in that moment you can splice okay um so um I was a reporter followed almost every Congressional White House report repor on social media that I could right in part for my job uh at C-SPAN but also in part because you know like these were the guys that like their literal job was being glued to the House and Senate movement so if there were slow times which is how SE how floor charts got started you know these guys were being like hey look at what's happening on the floor and if I didn't have cban on I could be like okay I can turn it on and like now we're good um and one of those iconic moments was Senator Tom Coburn Republican of Oklahoma um got up on the senate floor and literally tore up a giant visual credit card uh of the nation's debt and said I'm done with the credit card and and I say it was iconic because he did it it I was out at dinner and with with my then now wife then girlfriend who was a staffer on the hill at the time and I every single version of reaching me my phone rang 50 million text messages DMS everybody in that day had nothing better to do than to watch a senator be like I'm shredding a credit card and then you know probably not unironically like two weeks later or so cban Q&A the long form interview program LED with that moment for an interview with him right and then everybody who didn't watch House and Senate but really was glued to that Prime Time programming was like hey let's remind him it happened again and I was like oh no I know I'm very well aware right so you know in some phenomenal ways this ecosystem bubble of like government staff including people like you right like the private sector nerd or what I call you know the public interest nerds right like who watch that sort of stuff and are like okay that's funny and and I have to do this for my job anyway I'm going to Tweet about it all kind of started intersecting into this world of like okay congress not always fun to watch but in those moments they were starting to realize more and more the internet basically memeified a lot of Congress right and and it just all hit that Peak right because the starting of floor charts was it was I think the the day after not the day the week after the 2012 presidential elections um dick Durban went on the floor when they were talking about um regulating Five Hour Energy drinks um and those kinds of like you know brand new to the market sort of things and he had a Five Hour Energy drink and Neil's lusi and Elise fully at huffing post Neils is at roll call um were tweeting back and forth that this existed and basically were asking each other why is there no Archive of all of these crazy things and I was at home and was watching ban because I had nothing better to do um and always had it on and was on Twitter and I literally just went to Tumblr and created Senate charts. tumblr.com popped it up I emailed Howard mortman our communications director CP at the time and was like FYI am doing this I know it's late at night but do you guys want this right like does cpan want to take this and his response was like no like it's your thing go ahead but in the kindness of his heart and and this is where cpan really shines cpan always likes to support when regular people love to use its work right like not in just a like hey cool story method but like book TV and when the bus used to go around it was this kind of ecosystem of C-SPAN and so you know cpan enjoyed the fact that like all of a sudden Congressional reporters were like there's an entire archive based on this so I'm going to go send this guy all the crazy charts that I've been taking screenshots up for my entire life and you know it was like it was funny because in the first month I had I when the Tumblr following increased I started getting messages being like can you post Less on Tumblr because my entire feed is you now and I was like oh wow I didn't even think about like basically feed dominating these 20,000 followers and blessedly you know Tumblr has always had a schedule function kind of queued in right and like all of these things but like you know in in the world of floor charts right like Twitter didn't exist this would not have happened right like and because I had a I had and not many people know this prior to Floyd DS actually had a Blog called overheard on c-pam right that was just watching all of these archival things right like Ed Rollins way back in Reagan's days talking about defunding the Department of Education in front of a bunch of students right like or like you know um Alfred Khan you know uh Jimmy Carter's DG guy doing like a final exit interview with C-SPAN and just watching these things and being like this is fascinating but also all these policy conversations are sick right you know I was in my 20s and being like all this is coming around again right right um and and just and just throwing these things up on a Blog and being like this is fascinating we're like my favorite one there's uh there is old school Batman Hawking treasury bonds um in the cban library right and and every once in a while I'm like yo does anybody remember that this the government did this right like or um uh the the big for people who don't work in Television right like those big kind of like you always hear about these trade Association like big junkets in like Vegas or other places new TV technology right like new digital technology these huge things um there used to be on at some of these they would do like game game shows with like TV Executives there's one where like before CNN really got like got dominating like where they all were just dunking on Ted Turner right like all the other news Executives and you're just watching Ted Turner pre the CNN domination yeah in this moment where you can see him kind of like being like Oh I'm going to get back at you all but like I'll enjoy it and it's all just there right in this library of archival video and it's free yeah right and and like you know it was just kind of this moment where it was like there and there were followers on that blog right and it was fascinating that there were but like at the same time like nowhere near the Nexus of like funny image meets board reporters meets congression staff realizing oh I can and this this has been the the policy Communications getting back to the podcast this has been the change Congress and staff don't need earned media anymore right like you know that that direct to constituent or direct to whatever audience youd want to speak to the internet enabled that in a larger fashion social media Juiced it and they all realized oh wait right like I all of a sudden can do something that will probably generate earned media in some fashion if I want it to but like yeah if you're flipping TV and all of a sudden you see um you know Chuck Grassley with a giant dragon right and you're like why like why is always the first thing and you know and and you will remember as I do like John Stewart used to feed off this stuff oh yeah right like Rachel mattal featured featured this once I got this going she featured all of these things right like television feeds off television sometimes and so it just that you know and I will I will always give props to like Adam sharp and the OG DC Twitter people for getting Congress engaged on Twitter and getting government engaged on Twitter um but you know the supercharging of like you can't not every story is going to earn some media right like mixed with younger people in Congress controlling the levers of social media yeah right like you know uh the the single most well the the most viral moment to me that's positive and then there's the funny moment which was the snowball on the senate floor right um exactly but you know uh it was I think last year um Sean Caston right member of Congress his digital direct digital director turn communications director uh made hot FK summer go viral um in and and went and got earned media in every place you would imagine from like you know basically like Teen Vogue to all the TV programs because she had Sean Cason go up and do a little freestep musicing to the notion of like F this Federal agency helping solve climate change and it's this you know like 20 plus year old staffer who just realized I need this to be fun I need to make policy Communications break through yeah but in a way that was also unlike someone like me who is Twitter first was like Tik Tock and visual and video first right and and that kind of like Evolution because all of a sudden it went from her and i' and I've met Amelia Amilia no longer works for Sean Caston um but we got coffee and I was just like I have to give you huge props as a policy Communicator because you leveraged like trade publication to National publication to television yeah an entire dialogue for for weeks about hot FK summer right you know and like never would have been hold on sorry I can't I think I muted you maybe by accident can you unmute yourself did I do it I think you did I did sorry I was trying to clear my throat and I clicked the wrong button so no it's fine do you know when it was right at the end it was fine um but I'll just I'll put the cut for this part um all good yeah um and I know I'm talking a lot so if you want I was just trying to clear my throat for my next question um oh I remember what I was to say so it is interesting the way the way you you describe that sort of growth because it reminds me of of SNL Saturday live like when like Andy Samberg sort of like figured out that like YouTube was gonna be the thing and started making like these smaller V I mean they went viral all of a sudden it's just interesting how it took so long I guess for I guess members of Congress to realize they had the they could do the same thing right like the same they the same power to build these visual I don't want to say products that's not the right word but these these visual moments right where they could actually do a better job of communicating their data do you yeah go ahead well you you know just briefly like there is a house printing office right like there's a government printing office right but there's there is like House Creative services and you know no one I mean cpan actually has video from inside back in I think I want to say late 80s early 90s um nowadays no you can't get a camera inside right of that sort of thing but like there there is this office that that members can say like I need this printed I need this designed right or some of them can go to FedEx Kinkos or they're back in their District but like this this power does exist and it's actually funny because and I'm I'm gonna pull it up in real time um here if I can find it real fast like the I actually had somebody on Twitter again pointing to this um uh pointing to this moment right like where uh he um G chatted me or he tweeted at me and this is back in 2016 um that he was reading a book by David McCulla and he was like hey did you know they had charts way back when I was like okay Define way back when right I've been watching a whole lot of cpan right um and and he was like um no like and I'm gonna like preview the like read a bit of the passage right and it's and I and I forget which Mulla book it is I think it's path between the Seas um and he and it's this story right about like Senator uh Marcus Alonzo Hannah um delivering a speech right and and the description of the chamber that is given is the chamber was nearly full and all about were hung enormous maps and plans one map of Central America and the Caribbean islands reached from the gallery railing to the floor showed the location of every volcano active or extinct right and it's just this notion of like pre- camera like pre-tv they were doing this right like they were using visual aids to drive the point home yeah and and what basically happened thanks to cbands cameras is all of a sudden the lights went on and it it the audience just exploded outward right like and so yeah like I am I I've never done the math and I will not do the math but if you are a nerd want to do the math I'll let you um like charts the self-describing FL floor charts is basically charts props and posters right because it really does usually those are the easiest categories charts are minimal right like they used to be more like we we Kent Conrad you and I you and I mentioned right like Kent there is a chart uh that by Senator Chris Coons of Kent Conrad's rise right when PowerPoint became a thing yeah and then the exponential increase of charts by Kent Conrad right like I think I counted one time he brought like 30 to the floor at once right and I was just like oh you're the budget guy like but those were literally charts right like line graphs and all of that sort of stuff and now like the last most popular thing I posted on the blog right was like Ted Cruz with a photo of like China spying on you from a computer right like you know like um you know memes and photographs right kind of took over and even I mean the props are less but those who who are C-SPAN junkies and if you're not you'll you'll Google this there was a time I forget which member it was uh came to the floor and literally built a Southern border wall right and like from Home Depot parts and talked about like is there a way we can Electrify it right and I was like you literally just built a wall on the floor from Home Depot Parts there's there's definitely a joke to be made here about how many miles of the Southern border of the wall has actually been built there but I'm going to I'm going to leave that alone yeah right but like but it was one of those things where it's like yes like it it is less charts in data right and more now photographed meme and occasionally prop right I um I think it was Debbie watman Schultz one once brought like a bobblehead elephant to like showcase like the yes vote right just back and forth right right but like you know uh and for those who don't know and ask Neils lusi right like Neils is is the dean of these sorts of things there are rules about what you can bring to the floor what you can't bring to the floor right and you know there um there was there has been only one time in my life uh and I'm I'm trying to remember the member where I got a I got a phone call was after I had left cpan and they said hey our our prop has been blocked from coming to the floor would you like would you like us to come talk about it uh and I was like yeah I mean I'll I'll come to your office it's after hours it's fine um and and if I remember the member's name every single person will remember who this guy is because it's the member who said the Republican plan for healthcare was for you to die quickly um and the prop that got blocked was for those who were who were in DC there was a new New York newspaper cover of of I think it was um Abraham Lincoln covered an experiment right and it was this John bainer negative speaker moment and the parliamentarian had said that that visual image demeans the body right and that was one of my first Entre to oh this is an interesting moment that like somebody can actually stop these things from coming to the floor as I said Neils knows the rules better than I do because I no longer am that nerdy of a congressional person but like I have I have not heard of many more being blocked right and and there are plenty of things that we all see make it to the House and Senate where we're just like you know that's basically a Twitter image or a PowerPoint meme that's just been shoved onto a poster right um and but it's like that that's now the purpose right like the you know I I I am a chart nerd I am a data Vis nerd right I am the guy that probably like you if somebody uses one I'm looking at where the source is to be like where'd you get the data can I go back and find the actual report um right and like I I'm the one who's gonna gonna basically posted a member when you're in the back of the chamber you built a really shiny chart and the the light is reflective so I can't see it right like because for those who don't know like the the lights and House and Senate cameras they're controlled by Congress right like they're not controlled by private sector so they can and they have they have hundreds of camera angles they can choose from and I'm like you can move that light I know you can move that light is there a guy I can tweet at to move that light in real time right and so like uh I I like it when they use actual charts and data because then I can see what's your argument and there are only a few members and Senator Joanie Ernst is one of them who and her staff are exceptionally good at like saying to me in like two hours probably gonna be on the floor right and I'm like great thank you for that right like because even if I can't appear appear in real time I can I can flag it right um but some of these members and Jo ER office does this every once in a while they'll post the moment obviously to the constituent newsletter right or the website but they'll also frequently include the source right if they're actually citing stats and figures right even if it's a photo they'll include sourcing because Congress is inherently political like right that is the job but like for those of us who work in policy Communications we just want to know right like because one you could be the subject area we have expertise in that can solve the problem or two like you your data may actually be wrong which does happen sometimes like misprints happen right like you know there have been times where they've had the chart upside down right like and you know I I'll share with you so you can share with your readers or your listeners like there's a very famous peak oil chart that has like 17 different freaking axes to it that went onto the floor and I use it as an example of like not only bad visual design but I hope the purpose of that chart was to Showcase we don't know what we're doing yeah right right like um but like I wanted to know when I saw that I was like what member why and who yeah right like and because you know again you you worked you know at cbbo like you want to put those those connections together sure right like if even if you're just a data Vis nerd you want to know much less a policy nerd and a Communications nerd right right I mean it's really it is interesting that that there is someone who reviews or looks I mean I'm I'm surprised with some of the things like just margorie Taylor green bringing naked pictures of Hunter Biden like made it past some filter I guess um well again and I think there's differences between committee Rule and like House and Senate floor probably right like because because committees I think committees are institutions unto themselves but it is still a moment where if there aren't rules I would stand back and be like well why not right and if the rules are inherently political such as the chair gets to decide yeah one I would like to know that just in in almost any story that is written about those sorts of of props and images right like because there are funnier moments I think there was one where like Fred Upton and another member were had made a bet and we passing like a bottle of alcohol back and forth right because they lost a bet like a funny moment but there was also you know moments where I think it was I want to say it was Greg Walden brought in like a jar of water that had been contaminated right and it's like okay are there medical rules around bringing in a jar water that's contaminated like those little things where it's like journalism can only go so deep we know that right like inches inches matter in in in in regular print but for those of us you know I have met so many people in DC both Twitter and offline who will say like engaging with floor charts and the notion of like why was that made them want to be more engaged and some of them to go work inside of Congress yeah right and I'm like I'm so happy for that because the original point of c-pam was to kind of demystify right some of these things and for me like that was the point of Flo charts was to be like this is yours you pay for this right like if you if you pay attention like there's a responsiveness mechanism that can be had right and now it feels like there's almost no way right to like build that relationship again between like does the staffer want to engage on Twitter does the staffer want the email engagement right because I've I've tried um and I understand why most staffers aren't interested right but like when substack came out and I was like all right let's pop a Flo chart substack and talk about how you go from idea to chart right like and like you know most staffers you can only talk so much about the business of the office right like and like the create and the creative process some of them have much more freedom right and some of them by the time you get to talking about that the narrative has shifted negative on the policy issue right and so it's like you know once once you're back to the only way you interact with government is by the by the pipelines they that are they kind of decide right phone call to your member office email to your member office and not all these staffers are online some of them really just want to talk to people like some of them don't know maybe they shouldn't talk to people because like all of us will tweet at them all the time yeah um like there there was a couple of years there um where uh there's a guy named Yuri beckelman I think you know Yuri um maybe not Yuri um worked in Congressman Mark Tano's office he worked for the modernization committee um Yuri uh actually he he brought um International like um chart day to Congress um did an entire day again Robert Cara who I keep mentioning over and over was there and like his his big idea for floor charts which I'm thankful for that he did it we reprinted like the 50 most popular crazy posters and built an art gallery inside of one of the House Office Buildings and was just and we were just like come hang out guys right and all these staffers were like oh your floor charts and I was like yes this is the purpose you literally tweeted all of these memes because you want me to talk to you right and now like I yeah I know how to contact Congress because I work in DC right but like if you know and I think the the most famous charts for a very long time um and and uh there's a few members that do it like like clockwork we're always the like high school team wins right or like so and so gets Congressional like you know medal or something and and it's like those are wonderful really like local moments right and it's like they get tweeted just as much as they're on the floor but like if you remove the social media aspect of of policy coms all of a sudden it's like did the member have time was the member in session to tell those people hey you're gonna be mentioned right like in this speech um you know and again I'm a broken record it goes back to like I really would like Library of Congress some formalized government body to realize like this is kind of like basically Congressional male right like this is a thing this this is something people would take an interest in and I've had journalists Derek Willis being one of them he's no longer with republ um who who who've asked me multiple times how formal is your archive right could we could we basically like really implement it into basically like an actual database set that is searchable and sortable and findable and I'm like yeah it's C-SPAN screenshots guys like you got 27 staff like bring it right but like if I don't yeah and this is this what I mean by pre-pandemic post-pandemic the pandemic shift right of of congressional going fully like remote for a while but also all of us being glued yeah right indoors like on top of basically becoming a director of you know eight to nine people just burned through free time right all of a sudden right and so it's like I don't get to keep up as much as I would like I can promise you I don't miss anything but at the same time like Twitter decreasing in its ALG like relevance I don't get tweeted nearly as much anymore sure and and so it's like you know and I and look I don't love social media platforms for a whole host of reasons but for my ecosystem it was wonderful again I met my wife because of Twitter right right like I I really can't hate on the platform too much for that aspect right so so so so to wrap up so what is so what is the so what does the future look like for you in floor charts like are we going to get the coffee I always wanted the coffee table book like are we going to get the best of coffee table book like so let's hold on one second uh we so I actually have two coffee table books well should Define them more as picture books because coffee table books have a specific publishing connotation to my friends who work in publishing so give me one second oh do I I mean I even have the Trump one anymore so this is actually a good story so um for those who are C-SPAN Watchers or not cpan has book TV um right one of the most popular things on the planet for for those people um who who are older and love books um and and it means cpan does get a chance to kind of work to publish um their own books right like and you find them in like I think the last one was like a compendium of Q&A interviews and things like that again Nerd Like Me loves these things um and so uh for those who don't know C SP was founded in the brainchild of Brian Lamb um and and please Google him and read all about him because he is truly an American hero um and cpan um when when I was there as said I came to DC explicitly for cpan and they had an Open Door executive policy and so I used to spend hours before work and after work just hanging around the network right and like realizing I wanted to learn from these people um and so after I left cpan I always felt blessed that if I ran into Brian he literally would stand in the street for half an hour with me and answer my crazy questions because he he's a journalist I mean C-SPAN has a radio right like radio it has online has three networks has all of this stuff and this guy was was there for so much of it it's like how much is in your brain right like yeah so uh one day I I was talking to him about books and he was giving me as as best he could the down low on the publishing industry and just how impossibly hard it is to break into regular publishing right and I had friends I know I mentioned I love charts I had other friends who had done the 365 a day calendars right or like you know the coffee table books and they and and he said to me he's like why don't you just self-publish it like why don't you go to one of those basically like online things right and I was like yeah I was like I've got 10 to 12 thousand of these freaking things archived like how in the Daylights am I going to find time so uh I was talking to another friend of mine that everyone who's on Twitter probably knows tamy Gordon uh at Tammy um Tammy uh Tammy and I met each other because she used to be the digital lead amongst other things at ARP and and they were famous for this this campaign called disrupt aging um because AARP you think of older people and they and they were like no Grammy and Emmy Awards let's just let's disrupt The Narrative right so they had tweeted one day about like you know basically like how many rappers can you guess are like you know part of the ARP like age range or something like that and she was in a meeting and I tweeted back at her how many of those rappers have appeared and wrapped on C-Span um and she we got coffee later and she was like I was literally in a meeting it's like how is this kid one uping me right on my own campaign in it like in a meeting about a campaign um and Tammy is wonderful we've been friends for a while and Tammy had a friend who specialized very explicitly in helping people run successful crowdfunding campaigns um things like Kickstarter during its like real hate original Heyday moment and I reached out to her and I was like if I wanted to Kickstart her a coffee table book is it possible and she was like oh we can absolutely do this right and so when did it up happening um was this little crazy thing right that's like 28 to 30 pages that's just the a toz guide to floor charts and it's literally an alphabetical children's style book that's not nearly written well enough um that's just like you know it's like a is for alcohol because members like to use alcohol on the floor right B is for big charts and budget charts really really silly things and I went on to Kickstarter and I ended up raising I think somewhere around $10,000 and printing like hundreds of copies and uh there was a trump Edition because I met some stretch goal and was psychotic enough to do a second one of these right um and it was one of those moments where like I've given away a ton somebody recommended I give one to every Congressional office and I was like you got money um like it cost a little bit to print um but it was it was one of those moments where like again like because of Twitter and and I will say this because of social media within 24 hours I had maxed the campaign already because but but hilariously enough none of it was journalists none of it was the following I had primarily built right right because journalists don't buy a whole lot of books about nerdy things because they don't make a lot of money and they have other things to do and Congressional staff don't really need to buy these things because they work in it but it was one where I was like there's an audience right and like I was I was launched it very particularly around Christmas so everybody wanted a stocking stuffer right but like yeah it was like I have long wanted to do another one of these but at the same time and you and I talked about this early like and I and and this was the struggle is like this is this is for those who are nerds a mile deep inch wide sort of issue yeah right like and and there are people interested in that but how you then turn that into a product yeah right like is is the diff right and so for me floor charts will always continue I'm very sad that basically like for a long time uh the the running goal was to have like four or 500 cued posts on the back so if I had a bad week it was still running and I ran out of those like three years ago right and so now it's like Excel spreadsheets right links and just trying to keep up as best I can because it's it is impossible for one person to be the exhaustive full-time catalog right and like was for about three years um and then I was like nope no more so like the like to you know you and I work in policy Communications right like at the end of the day like this is as robust a project as the interest in right basically this feature is and I never lobbied a member to be like can you get someone like the library to handle this right like or how's creative Services don't you have the digital files for all of this can we just like attach it to something thing um but like it it will go on and I will continue to be the nerd that says this should be solvable right like you know because you know when I think about and I'm I'm a cpan nerd again for a moment cpan runs something called student Camp right like these competitions for students to to submit videos based upon a question where you can earn money and come to DC and all of that and the requirements are they use cpan footage right and I'm like if you had the Congressional Record tied to the video tied poliy like and it makes the communicating about policy better but it's work because as you know because you've seen the Congressional Record it's a whole lot of text yeah yeah that's right that's right no time no time codes no no visual cues it's like okay and so because it's funny because in order to like if if you go to floor charts.com most of what you'll see is like if you want to see the Congressional Record for that moment or that day it's linked there and everybody always says to me well can't you just like only do that speech in the Congressional Record and I was like if the Congressional Record was digital first yeah I could do a whole lot of things for you guys yeah I don't have the time to do that anymore right like and so it's an awesome project I'm so glad to be talking to you about this stuff right but like you because like I I still continue to believe the average reader listener viewer is more interested in policy than DC believes they are right and like you know my my plug at the end of the day is the only plug I really have because I love Flor CH I love your I love your work and you know this um we kicked a podcast at our street this year that was called red tape because we are a center right prol limited Effective Government right it needs to be very effective but it doesn't need to be as monolithic with just bureaucratic red tape and the entire point of the podcast was we sat down and and and we we were rapping and it was like why can't I have solar panels on my house if I want right like why is someone trying to take away Tik Tok from me like why are EVS only just now here right and it was this dialogue where it was like break everything down to like basically if you had to just talk about it every day to somebody like on on in an Uber on a train yeah and it was like no we found that the audien is really just wanted to know in simple terms right like about why government why not government why reg why not reg and and as I think we all know because I'm being repetitive you know this when you talk Ono one with people right like it's a much more realistic engaging dialogue than just hey that part's bad that law is evil this person's terrible like and I because I always say like I'm interested in government I'm not interested in politicians right like like they are interesting people I read their books I watch their speeches but they are functions of government right like and and for me like the the word of the day for anybody who ever knows me is always PE for precedent right like you watch what government does because when it sets prec it has ramifications right and so for something like floor charts like like it's got to sound crazy but like they will try to meme one up each other constantly right like Mike Lee bringing out Star Wars Tonton photos or you know Aquaman on a seahorse right like Sean Cason going deep on like you know RS like they try to outdo each other right like and it's actually funny because there was and then I will I will we will wrap this up there was one moment and it was a very funny moment it was after the 2020 elections as when everybody remembers Congress really started having vigorous debate about how do we prevent another one six but also like how do you ensure that if you have another pandemic for with with an election in the middle you enable accurate right robust secure reliable elections yeah and um John Corin uh got up with a chart that was like 94% say 2020 elections were like the easiest Andor safest and he was using it to make a point and then another Democratic member of the Senate came over took the chart away from him and was like yeah I want to point out that this number is Big right like that if if this is your point can we pass a law that makes this the point right and I and and it was the first time I'd ever seen that actually pass hands right and I was like this is hilarious this very funny moment for those who were interested in policy like where' the number come from how do I get touch with the member office how do I take this moment and make it more real in in like a Solutions mindset like that at the end of the day is the purpose of things like charts and props in Congress right it's not just viral moments like they want you to pay attention right right um and again and and I'm a broken record like you pay for this yeah this is ours like whether it's $10 $50 or $100 you're paying for it and and they often don't want to remind you of that yeah right but you know just like you pay for government so watch these band so to speak speak right like you know you pay for pay for government read the CVO Reports look at the props and tell them what you think but kind of be respectful about it yeah right um but yeah no John like again I I recommend for DC and you're not going to update it to because you have a life anybody who hasn't who hasn't picked up Elevate the debate to to really understand policy and Communications in the intersection this is why John and I know each other this was the original conversation right like right and and and then I would say to folks who are listening if you want to help bill sounds like you could use some help so if you want to help collect organize catalog how many how many how many images do you have do you do you have a 12 12,000 on the back end at this point 12,000 on the back end so if you want to help organize 12,000 images into some sort of usable database I'm sure that would be great uh Bill thanks so much for coming on the show it's great to see you great uh I look forward to just watching more in floor charts have a great weekend go bills right that's right that's right all right thanks buddy it's good to see you no problem talk to you later bye and thanks everyone for tuning in to this week's episode of the show I hope you enjoyed that conversation I hope you'll check out ideas on stage and check out some of their resources and materials and of course on the policy visite I have an entire section dedicated to presentations uh under the better presentations tab on the show on the on the website you can check out different resources downloads PowerPoint templates worksheets all the stuff that you'll need to improve how you present your information your data and your analysis so until next time this has been the policy Vis podcast thanks so much for listening