One page of my visual notes from Dan Roam’s excellent workshop in SF – the pilot for The Back of the Napkin. I appreciate that Dan’s putting visual thinking front and center in the business world. It helps me keep MY day job, too. See the rest of the visual notes here.
Producing TEDx Austin felt like birthing some kind of gigantic baby. I think I can speak for the entire team – Nancy Giordano, Jen Spencer, Kelley Burrus, Shannon Mehner, Chris Justice, Mary Baird-Wilcox and Stacy Weitzner – when I say that it would be impossible to capture the experience in one word. There were triumphs, frustrations, elation, teamwork, tough decisions, and absolute overjoy at what we were putting together. And through it all was the undeniable knowledge that Austin, TX needed and deserved a killer TEDx. That our little town is growing up, transforming into a big city with a big heart, a big brain and ideas that are big beyond belief. I have to give thanks to my graphics team, composed of Honoria Starbuck and Austin Kleon, but if I started thanking all of the other heads and hands that were involved, you would probably stop reading this blog post. (We all know that in this day and age, people want pictures.)
Some personal highlights for me:
Onward to TEDx Austin 2011.
On Feb. 3rd, I held another VizThink Austin community meeting for our ever-growing group of visual thinkers and visual learners. The rare and brilliant bird Austin Kleon hosted, taking the group on a comedic and informative journey about visual thinking for writers. A powerful topic considering that few people are aware of the symbiotic relationship between words and pictures. (Don’t let the blinking cursor get you!) Austin has attended virtually every VizThink session since the beginning, so it was high time he hosted one himself. He’s a natural visual communicator as well as a writer and you’ll see how he combines the two in his forthcoming book with Harper Collins, Newspaper Blackout Poems. And, since I know people love free content, you can also see video modules from the session itself. Attendance was impressive considering the dangerous….um…drizzle (Austinites panic when driving in the rain) and it was another excellent evening with our impressive community of minds. So if you’re reading this post and you want to join the VizThink entourage, contact me. I am always open to another inquiring mind.
Jessica Mullen and Kelly Cree of The Popular Podcast – among other exploits – make it a point to interview panelists and performers coming through Austin for SXSW. Since Dave Gray (Founder and Chairman of XPlane) and I were on a panel together, they invited us to join them for a brief and…um..deliberately informal interview. Dave, being the good sport that he is, and I, wanting to see my new hairdo on camera, agreed. This interview doesn’t do what my normal interviews would do: it doesn’t describe visual thinking; it doesn’t talk much about my background; it doesn’t discuss learning or group process. In fact, I’m not sure if it hurts or enhances my reputation. But no matter – it’s a fun one. And I look forward to the next Popular Podcast at SXSW 2010. Minus the references to poo.
The TED Conference in Long Beach happened a few months ago but I’m just now getting around to posting pictures from the event. (I never promised I would blog in any coherent chronological order.) For those of you familiar with the TED Conference, you can imagine how thrilled I was to be asked to form a graphic facilitation team to engage attendees inbetween talks. (And I have to admit that against my will I stalked Regina Spektor and told her how charming her stage fright was. In response she told me she loved Austin. Whoo hoo!) My role at TED was working on The Whiteboard Project for Duarte Design and GE to showcase the Eno smartboard, released to the public at the conference. My previous post provides details on the purpose of the project and links to the content my team produced (it went to the web in real time thanks to an application made by Syrup NYC). Since this event, TED announced that it’s created TEDx, which allows for cities around the world to host their own similar events. So I asked who was hosting TEDxAustin and met the marvelous Nancy Giordano. Nancy informed me that my friend and colleague Jen Spencer was also on the Austin team (sweet!) so of course I asked to be a part of it. Because seriously folks, life is short. Cavort with people you admire.
As the world largely knows by now, there are many great things about Zappos. But what most people don’t realize is the extent to which that quest for greatness permeates their DNA. Some C-level folks talk a good game about customer and employee happiness, but Tony Hsieh (CEO) can credibly say that he’s obsessed with it. When I partnered with Zappos to graphically record their Culture and Key Books class, I couldn’t help but be impressed by the quality of the conversations and the commitment to what I would almost refer to as ‘employee enlightment.’ And Tony is personally studying the science of happiness – a subject that emerges throughout the PowerPoint we’re working on – not only to pursue his own bliss but also to create joy and good experiences for his staff and customers. It’s a rare sight to behold a humble, intelligent and driven CEO who also takes time to create warm fuzzies. Good for him. And in my book, it doesn’t hurt his case for personal greatness when he’s willing to stand in front of my logo so I can take his picture. 
There were many great photographs that came out of the Overlap Conference in Monterey, CA, but none as delightful as this. A subtle but hilarious accident, this is the back of Christian Crumlish’s balding (and brilliant) head right next to the question, “Can we replace this?” The display was about solving the world’s coffee-cup litter problem with a device called the Betacup, but I snapped the photo and suddenly the question about replacing something took on a whole new meaning.
The Overlap Conference is a peer-to-peer event that takes place once a year. It requires an invitation (with the intention of keeping it small) so that unstructured, informal learning and sharing can take hold. Dave Gray hosted this year and the theme was ‘Practice. Prototype. Play.’ You can see via the Flickr stream what kind of play occurred. Because I so often work visually with groups, my biggest take away was around building relationships (I can’t bring myself to use the word ‘networking’) with great minds like Jay Cross, Fred Lakin, Chris Messina, Brynn Evans, MJ Broadbent, Peter Merholz, Debera Johnson, the aforementioned Christian, and on and on. It was a warm and inspiring group of people in a cold and foggy landscape.
An update on the BrightSpot front: After a series of grueling interviews (look, it’s hard to be brilliant all the time), I was hired as a freelance consultant and designer with XPlane – the leading visual thinking company in the U.S – and flown out to St. Louis for a 2-day training. XPlane was one of the companies that pioneered the visualization of information and I’ve been a long-time fan of their work. So the only way to “xpress” my response to this development is to say: !!!!!!!! And, for now, that’s all I can say about that. But click on the image to see the Flickr stream of the training and check out XPlane’s website for details on how they work and the type of excellence they produce: www.xplane.com.
The HOW Design Conference was in Austin this year and, while I failed to attend and therefore learned zero new design tricks, what I did get to do is spend time with Nancy Duarte. I have the pleasure of being a researcher on her forthcoming book, so I used that as leverage to force her to hang out with me!
If you’re unfamiliar with Nancy and her company, Duarte Design, all I can say is: are you also unfamiliar with Picasso? Nancy is the Picasso of PowerPoint. She produced Al Gore’s globally-famous presentation featured in an An Inconvenient Truth, and she’s got a client list that leaves no doubt about her level of talent and commitment. Perhaps most importantly, Nancy is a genuine, beautiful woman and an inspiration to other information designers who hope to mirror her greatness in our own work. (No pressure, lady.)
In my other efforts at stalking, I recently attended a webinar on Visual Storytelling with Duarte Design. The gems below are guidelines for effective presentations and they are timeless.
5 Unbreakable Slide Rules
1. TELL THE TRUTH.
If your data indicates that earnings for Q2 have plummeted, don’t stretch out your time horizon until the line barely dips. Just show it as it matters for your company.
2. GET TO THE POINT.
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah the house is on fire blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Get it?
3. PICK THE RIGHT TOOL.
Why use a graph to show the number of children dying from water-borne diseases? To increase the likelihood that your audience will MOVE, show them a child in need.
4. HIGHLIGHT WHAT’S IMPORTANT.
Audiences have the attention span of, well, normal people. Don’t make them decipher what you’re saying – that’s just unpleasant. Show them the point you want them to walk away with by using color, contrast, and by eliminating chart junk.
5. KEEP IT SIMPLE.
Slides are not documents – they’re not intended to be read. Before you start to write a paragraph for each of your five bullet points, ask yourself: What is the message? Distill your content and then present THAT.
If you’re interested in keeping people awake during your PowerPoint or Keynote presentations, I highly recommend Duarte’s webinars. I know we’re all fascinating in our own minds, but that doesn’t always translate. Audiences are composed of human beings who need to be told stories. We can do ourselves a favor by sharpening our ability to tell them. Thanks for the tips, Nancy.
Originally when I planned to write this post, I was going to discuss my graphic recording presentation at the VizThink Conference in San Jose, CA. But as I was going through my photographs I realized it was much more exciting to discuss Jessica Hagy, who I had the pleasure to meet, befriend, and eventually coax to stay at my house during SXSW 2009. If you’re unfamiliar with Hagy’s work, please leave my site and go straight to www.thisisindexed.com. You’ll find a treasure trove of humorous gems from the mind of a 3rd-generation copywriter and visual thinker. She’s quick, she’s quirky and together we made up a new word: “Scrotch.” (Don’t knock it – it has too many applications.) I did, in fact, give a presentation that went over well with the VizThink participants, but I can talk about me another time. Hagy is one of those people you meet and you say, “Thank you, World, for the opportunity to meet lights in the people tunnel.”
If you’d like to see photos from my graphic recording presentation at the conference, you can click on the picture above or visit this Flickr page.
