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RSVP for VizThink Philly 3 with Steve Cherches and Dean Meyers

Jonny — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:20:20 +0000

The upcoming of VizThink Philadelphia will feature activities led by New York City based visual thinking professionals Steve Cherches and Dean Meyers. Steve and Dean are also founding members of VizThink NYC.

Here’s what they’ll be doing:

Steve Cherches: Exploring Visual Thinking With….Visual Thinking!

Steve will lead an activity where we use drawing and found images to think about what visual thinking is and why it matters.

Dean Meyers: Visual Problem Solving: 5 Diagrams in 15 Minutes

Solving problems from “what should I eat for breakfast?” to deciding what to do in business can be broken down using diagrams to visualize the problem from different perspectives. This activity is an exercise using 5 different ways to look at a problem through diagrams that are simple to create yet can be very powerful in the answers they can provide.

After we’ll head over to Sugar Mom’s for pierogies and beverages.

When: 6:30-8PM, Monday, July 13
Where: 18 S. 7th Street (Independence Branch Library)
Philadelphia, PA 19106
(7th Street between Market & Chestnut)

Thanks as always to Julia Pellicciaro and Bianca Cevoli for helping make this event rock.

RSVP for VizThink Philly 3

Hugh McCloud Wonders How People Can Get Unblocked. Austin Kleon Makes Teabag Comics.

Jonny — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:04:04 +0000

Hugh McCloud wonders how people can get unblocked. His conclusion: In the end, you’ve got to do it yourself.

clipped from www.gapingvoid.com

With their jobs, with their relationships, with their marketing, with their own passions and creativity…

People get “blocked”.

Meanwhile, Austin Kleon demonstrates one of the ways he keeps creatively loose. He creates drawings out of teabag stains. For more on this, check his original post.

clipped from www.austinkleon.com

P.S. I’m using ClipMarks to embed the above snippets. It’s a fun little tool.

Going to talk shop with Heather Willems

Jonny — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 20:58:56 +0000

I met half of the Image Think duo at VizThink NYC last month. Heather Willems is a talented graphic recorder. See her at work with her partner Nora in this video. We’re going to meet up in New York this Friday to trade creative and business ideas.

clipped from www.imagethink.net

Slimming down on Twitter

Jonny — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:59:56 +0000

(Visual Notes of Jeremy Epstein’s talk at the 140 Characters Conference)

A few months ago, I started a new Twitter account for my business. The business is very focused on visual communication, so the people I followed were from that field. I really enjoyed that twitter stream, so much more focused than the 1100+ people I followed in my personal account.

Life went on as usual, until I saw Jeremy Epstein talk about his approach to Twitter at the 140 Characters conference. I have a ton of respect for Jeremy. He’s smart, he’s business savvy, and he delivers great value for his clients.

The gist of what he said was that it’s not so important how many people follow you. You really don’t have any direct control over that. It’s more important who YOU follow, and how many people. It makes sense to follow people that you want to learn from. And it makes sense not to follow too many people, or you won’t be able to really absorb what they have to say. He said that he tries to keep the number to 140 people or less. There’s more to his approach than this, but you can read his thoughts to get a fuller view. He caught some flack for this approach, but it made sense to me.

His talk, combined with my earlier revelation I had with my business twitter account spurred me to revisit who I follow and to see where it made sense to trim that list.

A few days ago I followed over 1100 people. As I write this, I am following 444 people. And I’m still trimming. I’ve noticed my twitter stream has become more relevant to my interests.

Now, get this straight, if I unfollowed you, it does not mean that I like don’t like you or don’t think you are awesome. It’s just that I don’t need to get updates from you several times a day. Feel free to unfollow me if I’m not contributing to your twitter stream in a way that makes sense for you. I won’t mind. And if you want to get in touch, you can always email me, or give me a call. Love to hear from you.

I know this can be a little emotional. A few months ago, my friend Bre Pettis decided to slim down and he stopped following me and I bitched and moaned until he refollowed me. Sorry Bre! Now I get where you were coming from. So take a deep breath. I still like you. I follow people who don’t follow me back, and vice versa. Not a big deal. But it took me awhile to get to this point.

Do whatever works for you. I follow people like Laura Fitton who follow tens of thousands of people. Laura is great. Good people. And I follow people like Scott McCloud who follow 71 people (4000+ follow him).

That’s it. What’s your approach to following people on Twitter?

Visual Notes From the 140 Characters Conference—Overwhelming Response From Big Media, Blogs, and Social Web

Jonny — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 22:33:12 +0000

(Notes of Tim O’Reilly’spresentation)

Last week, Jeff Pulver put on the 140 Characters Conference, AKA “The Davos of Twitter.” Great speakers, lively format, timely topic.

Jeff is an innovator–he’s always looking for new ways to add value to events. That means he’s open to new ideas. I was happy to be embodying one of those new ideas–the idea that visual notes add impact to a conference. Here are the notes.

So what was the impact of having a visual notes artist at the event? Many attendees told me that it gave them a whole different way to engage with the content of the speakers’ talks. Tim O’Reilly made a point of tracking me down and sharing my notes of his talk with his 600,000+ Twitter followers. So the in person reaction was very positive. How about the media reaction? I spent some time tracking down media mentions of the visual notes and this is a sample of what I found.

Reactions to the notes:

Big Media:

The Industry Standard-Venture capitalist Fred Wilson used my notes to clarify a point he made at the conference about the growing importance of passed links the web.

Die Welt Kompakt
A German paper with circulation of 200,000 used one of my drawings to illustrate an in depth article about the conference. Download the PDF of the article here (in German).

Blogs:

The Twitter Steam:
There were over 100 tweets referencing the notes, including from heavy hitters like Tim O’Reilly, Fred Wilson, Laura Fitton, and Jeff Pulver. These are a few of my favorites, collaged together.

Flickr Stats:
Over 12,000 views of the notes so far, and this only includes what people viewed on Flickr. When people upload photos of the notes to their own sites, views of those images are not recorded in my Flickr stats.

Wrapup

Based on the reactions I got, visual notes provide the following benefits:

–Buzz. Visual notes are “talkable” they give people something to talk about during and after the conference. That adds up to word of mouth marketing for the next time you do your event.
–Reach. Posting the notes on the web on a social photo sharing site, like Flickr makes the visual notes available to a global audience.
–A fresh perspective. Several attendees of the conference told me that the visual notes gave them a whole other way to engage with the information provided by the speakers.
–Lasting impact. Images tend to stick in peoples’ minds. A vivid combination of images and key ideas.

This was an amazing conference, and I am delighted that so many people let me know that the visual notes I created added value to their conference experience. Thanks for having me Jeff.

If you would like to talk to me about creating custom visual notes of your conference or event, drop me line or pick up the phone and give me a call. Lets talk.

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Let’s party at Philly Pecha-Kucha 2. Special Snake-o-Phobia Edition.

Jonny — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:16:08 +0000

Catch me give a presentation on my fear of snakes, with my own original hand drawn illustrations. Lots of other splendid Philadelphians talking about neat stuff too.

Details:

It’s Saturday, June 13.

7:30 p.m., at Studio 34: Yoga | Healing | Arts
(4522 Baltimore Avenue in West Philly, right on SEPTA’s Route 34 trolley line). $5 suggested donation.

Join the cast of 140 Characters

Jonny — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 21:44:34 +0000

(large image: click here)

I am delighted to be the official Visual Notes Artist at the upcoming 140 Characters Conference in NYC. The conference will explore the disruptive nature of twitter on fields as diverse as sports, publishing, music, and business.

Jeff Pulver is the producer of the conference which is billed as “The Davos of Twitter.”

The folks featured on this image are just a few of the confirmed attendees.
@anamariecox
@zappos
@wyclef (!!!!!)
@adventuregirl
@timoreilly
@troy_murphy

If you are interested in exploring the new age of connectivity ushered in by twitter, come join the cast of characters this june.

You can learn more and register at the 140 Characters site.
_____________
This image is installment 30 of 100 Days Envizualized, a project where I upload my visual notes that I create on 100 consecutive days. To check out the other notes, go here

I will be making an eBook available of all 100 days worth of notes, with annotation, once the 100 days are over.

Keep it visual.

–Jonny Goldstein

Upcoming Jonny Appearances: Refresh Philly (June 1, Visual Notetaking) and Pecha Kucha Philly (June 13, Snake-o-Phobia)

Jonny — Thu, 28 May 2009 22:57:46 +0000

If you would like to learn about visual notetaking or feel like being entertained by a presentation I’m giving about my fear of snakes, June is the month for you.

June 1: Refresh Philly Hands-On.

I will be leading a mini-workshop on visual notetaking in Philly at the Comcast Center as part of the Refresh Philly Hands-On night. You must RSVP to attend.

June 13:

All kinds of fantastic artists, thinkers, writers, and such will be giving presentations at Philly Pecha Kucha Night. I am honored to be among them. I will be giving a presentation about my fear of snakes accompanied by projections of my original hand-drawn illustrations.

Details: 7:30 p.m., at Studio 34: Yoga | Healing | Arts
(4522 Baltimore Avenue in West Philly, right on SEPTA’s Route 34 trolley line). $5 suggested donation.

Look forward to seeing you at one or both of these fantabulous events.

RSVP for VizThink Philly 2: Get Framed at the Storyboard-O-Rama

Jonny — Fri, 15 May 2009 15:54:18 +0000

RSVP here for VizThink Philly 2

Topic: Get Framed….at the Storyboard-O-Rama

VizThinker Julia Pellicciaro will do a quick storyboarding demo, and then we’ll make our own and share them with each other.

Storyboards are poweful tools for planning and pitching projects. They are can also stand alone as potent communication devices.

Afterwards if you care for drinks and pierogies, hungry and thirsty VizThinkers will stroll over to Sugar Mom’s.

When: 6:30-8PM, Weds, May 27

Where: Philly Independence Branch Library (In the meeting room)

18 S. 7th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106
(7th Street between Market & Chestnut)
Closest “El” stop: 8th street

RSVP here for VizThink Philly 2

100 Days Envizualized: This is Day 1

Jonny — Thu, 07 May 2009 16:00:12 +0000

If you have ever spent much time with me, you will have observed me sketching out my thoughts when I am planning or managing a project. I decided it would be a fun experiment to post those drawings for a 100 days. Today is day 1. If you want to follow the project, I will be posting annotated drawings over at the Envizualize Blog as the project unfolds.