I like to make the most of my work trips around the country, and evidently my editor at O’Reilly, Colleen Wheeler, likes me to do that as well. So while I was returning from a presentation on The Doodle Revolution, she asked me to interview on Martini Hour with she and her co-host, Deke McClelland, the author of, oh I don’t know, 99 books on the Adobe Creative Suite. Because the show was called “Martini Hour,” it was not in my vocabulary to say no. So we all took our shoes off and proceeded to have a lively conversation about visual thinking, the importance of the doodle, innovation in the workplace using design thinking, and how much I thought the two of them should be in love because they got along so well. Oh, and of course, we also discussed our forthcoming book, GameStorming, which is a playbook for explaining why and how you can get your hands dirty at work using visual thinking to solve business problems. To hear the audio, click: MartiniHour-075-128Kbps. But first, pour yourself a dirty martini.

I was planning to write up a description of Foo Camp 2010 myself, but I decided to be more time-savvy and just use the content from Wikipedia, below. Suffice it to say that it was an honor to be invited and a pleasure to present The Doodle Revolution to such a stellar audience. Some highlights from my experience include (as I mentioned), presenting on the topic above, bonding with author Scott Berkun who, seemingly impossibly, is even more likable in person, meeting June Cohen, Executive Producer of the TED Conference and finally, drinking bourbon with my editor, Colleen Wheeler who – poor thing – was probably relying on bourbon to get her through the last edits of Gamestorming, which comes out in July. Colleen, you are amazing. I will send a non-alcoholic present your way very soon.

FYI, reader, Foo Camp is an annual hacker unconference hosted by publisher O’Reilly Media. O’Reilly describes it as “the wiki of conferences”, where the program is developed by the attendees at the event, using big whiteboard schedule templates that can be rewritten or overwritten by attendees to optimize the schedule. The goal of the event is to reach out to new people who will increase the company’s intelligence about new technologies, and to create opportunities for cross-fertilization between people and technologies that are on the O’Reilly radar. Some have described it as a meta-birds-of-a-feather session, that gets smart people together to discuss technology issues. [Added by Sunni:] During the event, people camp out in actual tents – not something I expected to do in the desert heat of Sebastopol, CA. But for this crowd, it ended up being worth it. Thank you, O’Reilly, for being a publisher that defies tradition and instead focuses on innovation. Nice work.

I was absolutely impressed with the Zappos Insights Bootcamp. It’s a 2-day workshop designed to expose people to their famous culture – the values that drive it and the people and policies that keep it growing. I was so impressed, in fact, that I’ll write another blog post soon showing the video with interviews from some participants. The images above were the four 32-square-foot murals I created for the group while they were in the workshop. Tony Hsieh, the CEO, and Alfred Lin, the CFO, made presentations during the session and I think people were a little bit starstruck. The Zappos guys have officially reached celebrity status, but they remain humble. One principle I took away from the session (among many) was that hubris gets you nowhere, quickly. More to come.

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:

• Seeing the program designed by the Butler Brothers and the video that showed its creation. One of those ‘wow’ moments.
• Establishing a relationship with Shiny Object – a film production company whose work I admire and enjoy.
• Connecting with Philip Berber and his wife Donna of the Glimmer of Hope Foundation.
• Hanging out with a freaky astronaut and a sexy firefighter.
• The fact that we had 10,000+ individuals who watched the livestream (29% of which were in New Zealand!)
• Working with a team of women who were indomitable.
• NOT working during the event itself. I so often graphically record or contribute to the group process in some live, visual way that I just wanted to be present and enjoy the birth of our big ole idea baby. (The graphic architectures above were created by me beforehand and the audience populated them with content over the course of the day.)
• Being thanked on stage for our efforts and feeling how much the crowd really did appreciate it.
• Going to the TEDx Rejects party at Conjunctured afterward. Word up, rejects.
• Slowly absorbing long after the event was over how truly incredible it was. Is it too dramatic to thank God for the TED people? I mean, it’s not just an event they’ve created. It’s a humanitarian movement. And I think that’s worth saying thank you for.

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.

]]> http://sunnibrown.com/2009/08/21/ted-conference-2009/feed/ 2 http://sunnibrown.com/2009/08/05/tony-hsieh-and-the-pursuit-of-happiness/ http://sunnibrown.com/2009/08/05/tony-hsieh-and-the-pursuit-of-happiness/#comments Wed, 05 Aug 2009 16:26:05 +0000 Sunni http://sunnibrown.com/?p=912

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.