If you’re new to the community and dont yet know the history of VizThink, be sure to swing by last year’s post which tells the story of VizThink.

Some of the highlights of the past year:

• 2 Conferences, one on each site of the Atlantic:
  VizThink Europe and VizThink 2009 in San Jose, Ca

• Community events now happening in 12 cities around the world
  Austin, Amsterdam, Boston, Chicago, London, Madrid, Manchester/Leeds, Milwaukee, New York, Philadelphia, Salt lake City and Toronto
• The introduction of VizThinkU
  Our online series of educational workshops.

Thank you all for being part of our community and I know those of us here at VizThink are looking forward to another exciting year. As I mentioned in the post yesterday, we’d love to hear your vision for vizThink over the coming years - please be sure to share it, whether as a comment, image or even a tweet!

- Ryan

As I’ve mentioned a few times since VizThink09 in San Jose, we’ve been taking a good hard look at VizThink and how to sustain the community over the long haul. Already some of our initial ideas have been put into action with the first couple of VizThinkU courses  (”Visual Note-taking 101” & the upcoming “Drawing Out Your Ideas” with Nancy Margulies) as well as some changes to the VizThink website, which have all been well received.

The past few months though, as many of you can probably appreciate, have really been much more about helping VizThink survive than anything else in order to reposition ourselves and rethink what the future holds. As we enter the summer and things seem to have at least settled down a bit in the economy (far from fixed but things are certainly calming down) it’s time for us to turn our focus from “how do we survive?” to “how do we thrive?”

This is where you come in - VizThink is nothing without it’s community and you all play an important role in shaping how this movement will grow over the coming years - so I’d like to pose the question:

“What is your vision for VizThink?”

When you think of this community one year, 3 years 10 years down the road, what do you envision? What would continue to make VizThink a valuable community to you?

Draw it out, tweet it, blog it and even add it to the forum thread here. You can also privately email me your thoughts at community@vizthink.com. If you post it somewhere out there in the web tag it “#vizthink, #vision” and link back to this post (or email me a link to it) so we can be sure to find it!

We’re starting to frame out our plans for the next few years over the next couple of weeks and I’d love to integrate your ideas and feedback. Together I think we can continue to build on the great thing we’ve all got going here and I hope you’ll share your vision with me.

Thanks!

Ryan

—

Ryan Coleman
Chief Community Evangelist
VizThink

DUE TO AN INJURY, THIS SESSION HAS BEEN POSTPONED TO JULY 17, 2009 @ Noon EDT

A quick reminder that next Tuesday, June 16th is the next VizThinkU webinar, “Drawing out your ideas: Techniques for visual thinking, note-taking and presentations” with master visual facilitator, Nancy Margulies - While recordings will be made available, this is one session you really want to try and catch live online. The session will start at 2:00pm EST (18:00 GMT) and last for about 3 hours.

Also, tomorrow is the last day to take advantage of our special offer. If you register for Nancy’s workshop before Midnight PST on June 9th you’ll receive a discount code for $50 off the recordings of our first VizThinkU workshop, “Visual Note-taking 101”. A great session unto itself, it is also an excellent starting point to help get prepared for next week’s workshop with Nancy.

You can find all of the course details on the VizThink site but don’t wait, register today!

Hope to see you on the 16th!

- Ryan

—
Ryan Coleman
Chief Community Evangelist
VizThink

Last week we had our inaugural VizThinkU course, Visual Note-taking 101, which from all accounts was a rousing success - so today I’m very pleased to announce the next VizThinkU course “Drawing out your ideas: Techniques for visual thinking, note-taking and presentations“ with Nancy Margulies, a master visual facilitator.

The workshop will take place online on June 16^th, 2009 at 2pm EST (GMT 18:00) and will last approximately 3 hours. Additional details about this session are below.

Drawing out your ideas: Techniques for visual thinking, note-taking and presentations
With Nancy Margulies

June 16th, 2009 | 2pm EST (GMT 18:00) | 3 Hours | Online | $195/person

Watch as Nancy Margulies, a master visual facilitator, demonstrates the process of using words and images to convey ideas during this three hour online workshop. Using example projects from participants, Nancy will create visual images that conveys all the ideas and relationships among them while teaching you tools and techniques that can be taken back to apply to your own work.

Nancy has taught thousands of people to develop skills that enable them to record their ideas using images as well as short phrases. This skill will enable you to “think on paper” to gain a deeper understanding of complex systems.

With the skills Nancy will teach, you can map a given activity and then look at the consequences, unintended consequences, resources needed, and other factors so that you have the “big picture” and a truly systemic view. Or you can use visual recording to convey an idea you want to present to others, with images that make your presentation more engaging.

Nancy is the author of several books on drawing and visual recording. She can teach you to draw with greater skill and will give you a set of symbols you can use for everyday visual mapping. If you believe you can’t draw, prepare to be delightfully surprised.

Planning is another process that is greatly enhanced by visual recording. As a student of Nancy’s you will have access to templates that you can use as the basis of “planning maps” - planning for everything from a meeting, to a large scale event or even planning your future.

Sign up early and submit the ideas you would like to see visually mapped by Nancy. First come, first served!

Register now!

BONUS: Get the most out of this session by starting with visual Note-taking 101
This workshop is a logical continuation of the Visual Note-taking 101 session from last week - while it’s not a prerequisite, it will certainly help you maximize your experience with Nancy.

Missed it? Not a problem! To help you catch up we’re offering a special discount on Visual Note-taking 101 for the next couple of weeks. Everyone who registers for the workshop before June 9^th 2009 will receive a discount code that gives them $50 off the cost of access to the recordings from Visual Note-taking 101. It doesn’t get any easier than that!

Take advantage of this time-limited offer:

Just a quick update on the ever growing list of cities around the world running regular VizThink community events. This month we’re got one new city, Milwaukee & VizThink Philadelphia is having their second meetup.

VizThink Milwaukee 1 | May 20, 2009 @ 6:00pm

This is the kickoff meetup of VizThink Milwaukee! Come down to Bucketworks at 1340 North 6th Street, just north of Downtown Milwaukee and meet others interested in using visual thinking.

You need not be a great artist to attend, only an interest in using and improving your visual thinking skills is needed.

You may wish to bring paper or notebook and pens/pencils.

See the event page for full details and to register (It’s free!)

VizThink Philadelphia 2 | May 27, 2009 @6:30pm

“Get Framed at the Storyboard-O-Rama”

VizThinker Julia Pellicciaro will do a quick storyboarding demo, and then we’ll make our own storyboards 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.

See the event page for full details and to register (It’s also free!)

VizThink NYC Coming Next Month!

As of this writing there are plans afoot to have VizThink New York City’s first meetup in the middle of June. If you’d be interested in attending drop me an email at community@vizthink.com and I’ll make sure to connect you with Steve, the organizer.

Watch VizThink.com for event updates.

Just a reminder - community events are happening in over 12 cities around the world and we’ll be announcing a steady stream of VizThinkU online courses in the near future - to stay up-to-date on the latest events be sure to check out the events sidebar on the VizThink home page. All events are posted there as they’re announced.

Photo Credits: jr conlin | johnbrian | kyle simourd

Just a reminder that next Tuesday, May 12th @ 11am EST, we’ll be running the first VizThinkU course, Visual-notetaking 101. Check out our blog post announcing the webinar for information & bios for Austin Kleon, Sunni Brown & Mike Rohde - the three visual-note-making masters who will be leading the course.

Tuition is just $99 for this THREE hour course and best of all registration also gets you access to a recording of the entire session so you can refer back to it later!

A few people have also asked for some additional details on what will be covered during the course so here you go:

Section 1 - Austin Kleon will present “But I can’t draw!”

• Addressing your fears of the pen, and rediscovering the ancient, universal childhood pleasure of putting pictures and words on paper
• Exploring drawing not as fine art, but as a communication tool
• Establishing a drawing alphabet and learning some basic cartooning techniques
• Doing fun activities such as “How to draw a stick figure” and “How to draw a face”
• Building our very own icon library for note-taking

Section 2 - Sunni Brown will present “Learning Active Listening”

• What is “active listening” and how is it different than “regular” listening?
• A graphic recorder’s approach to active listening – how to listen effectively to multiple sources, fast talkers and ramblers
• What to listen for and what to filter out
• How to “cache” what you’re hearing so you can capture it on paper

Section 3 - Mike Rohde will present “Sketchnoting Techniques”

• The importance of focus and engagement in capturing the presentation you’re sketchnoting
• Learning to become a filter of ideas rather than a word-by-word stenographer of every last detail
• Techniques for getting into the flow, to help you capturebetter sketchnotes
• Getting personal with your sketchnotes — letting your personality shine through
• How to use recorded podcasts and videos for sketchnoting practice (with a demo of sketchnoting a podcast live)

Materials Needed: paper and pen/pencil

Register Today!

When you register for a VizThink webinar, you will have access to the live session, as well as a recording which will be made available to you after the webinar is over, as well as any course materials provided by
the instructors. You will also have the satisfaction of knowing that your money will go to support the VizThink staff and community.

Where: Online

When: Tuesday May 12, 2009 @ 11:00 EDT (15:00 GMT)

Duration: 3 Hours

Tuition: $99

Work examples from this session’s Facilitators:

While there will be announced times for our webinars, our entire course library will remian available online and be available. Of course the benefit of joining live is the opprtunity to participate in the Q&A sessions but if for some reason you can’t make a session, don’t sweat it - it’ll be there for you whenever you’re ready. Be sure to check back often as we’ll be adding new courses or programs as they’re confirmed and ready for registration.You’ll find all the details in our new VizThinkU section on the website.

So without further delay, I’m pleased to announce our first VizThinkU course “Visual Note-taking 101″:

Tuesday, May 12, 2009 | 11:00am EDT (15:00 GMT) | 3 Hours

Course Description
Ever since Leonardo put pen to paper, visual note-taking has been a route to improve the quality of your thinking, make information more memorable, and make your ideas easier to share with others. Learn practical techniques and “tricks of the trade” from modern visual note-taking masters Mike Rohde, Sunni Brown and Austin Kleon. In this three-hour course you will learn how to use visual note-taking to improve your listening skills and take better, more memorable notes. The focus of this class will be on how to write, sketch, and diagram ideas live, in real time, as you hear them. Many of the techniques you will learn will also help to improve your skills in drawing your ideas at the flip chart or whiteboard.

Course Faculty

	Austin Kleon Austin Kleon is a writer who draws. A collection of his Newspaper Blackout Poems is forthcoming from HarperCollins in February 2010. He’s drawn cartoons for clients such as Austin City Limits and South by Southwest. He works a day job designing websites, and lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife Meghan. You can see his work online at www.austinkleon.com.
	Sunni Brown Sunni Brown, M.P.A., is Owner of BrightSpot Info Design, a company specializing in visual thinking to support organizational and group success. BrightSpot operates on the principle that “information overload” is best managed by using visual language and the thoughtful design of information. Coupling text and presentation materials with graphics and visual architectures significantly enhances meaning, comprehension and memory. Sunni was trained in graphic facilitation at The Grove Consultants International, a San Francisco based company that pioneered the use of visuals in meetings and group processes. Sunni is currently an Associate of The Grove and an Associate of Momentum Leadership, a change management consultancy. She is also co-Founder of VizThink Austin, currently the largest visual thinking community in the United States. She holds Bachelor’s degrees in Journalism and Linguistics and a Master’s in Public Affairs from the Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs. She lives in Austin, TX.
	Mike Rohde Mike Rohde is a designer and art director with a passion for simple, effective and usable design solutions. He has over 20 years experience as a professional designer, working in print design, logo and identity design, application icon design, web and user interface design. Mike has been hired by conference organizers such as SXSW Interactive, An Event Apart and SEED, to capture live, real-time sketchnotes of events using only a gel pen and Moleskine sketchbook. He lives and works in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and is a member of the 9rules network, founder of the Palm Tipsheet e-newsletter and founding member of the Milwaukee tech community group Web414. Mike’s work can be found at rohdesign.com and on Flickr .

Register Today

When you register for a VizThink webinar, you will have access to the live session, as well as a recording which will be made available to you after the webinar is over, as well as any course materials provided by
the instructors. You will also have the satisfaction of knowing that your money will go to support the VizThink staff and community.

Where: Online

When: Tuesday May 12, 2009 @ 11:00 EDT (15:00 GMT)

Duration: 3 Hours

Tuition: $99

Work examples from this session’s Facilitators:

Guiding principles for VizThink

Originally uploaded by dgray_xplane

Some of you may have noticed that I have been knocking on a lot of doors lately, asking people to participate in the future of VizThink in one way or another.

One of the questions I have heard pretty frequently is “What are Vizthink’s guiding principles?” and “What is the vision/mission for VizThink?”

To try to answer these questions we have created a draft document with the help of some of our members. I have posted the current draft on the VizThink forums, here.

There is no charge to participate in the forums, although you must register to post.

Thanks in advance for your feedback — and please, share your thoughts!

VizThink Boston 1 - April 9, 2009

Please join us for the inaugural meeting of VizThink Boston - bringing together all those interested in exploring visual thinking in its many forms and purposes. At this first meeting we’ll be looking at the diversity of interests in the room; so please bring an example of visual thinking to share - an example of your work, a favorite image, a inspiring piece of visual thought, etc. - and come prepared to tell us a something about yourself, your interest in visual thinking, and what you hope VizThink Boston might provide for the visual thinking community.

Details and registration can be found here.

VizThink Philadelphia 1 - April 22, 2009

This first meetup will do a 1-hour creative activity, a visual mind-spill, where you will gush images onto paper and share them with your neighbors. Led by Jonny Goldstein. No experience necessary: You just need to be interested in visual communication and learning.

Details and registration can be found here. The organizers of this event are also looking for a venue for it - if you know of some sapace that can handle 20-25 people please drop me a line at community@vizthink.com and I’ll connect you with Jonny.

VizThink Netherlands 3 - May 7, 2009

We are excited that the T-Xchange laboratory wants to be the venue for this session. It is a great place where experiments with futuristic visual interactions can be held and therefore we chose the following theme:

the Future of Visual Thinking

Our high level program will be (under development- until further notice):

• Welcome (around 12.00)
• About the future - a story about…
• PITCH your session - a short 2 minute pitch to interest you in one of the experiments
• Parallel sessions:
  - Non linear presentations (Eric Kramer, TriMM)
  - Tools for Thinkers, the future of the Industry (Malik de Kok, Denkwerkplaats)
  - To be confirmed: Kinesthetic Modeling as a method of Visual Thinking in 3D (Nick Payne, Armour Plated Camel)
  - [Your session?]
• Presentations/results of the day
• Drink ‘n’ Talk - VIZZY-BAR

For more details check out their blog and you can register here

Welcome Dave Gray
It’s not like Dave really needs a “welcome” to the community in general, as he was an integral part of the creation of VizThink and has been an active participant since day one - but it’s worth highlighting a change in his day to day interactions with VizThink.

With the changes we announced a few weeks ago we essentially went from a three man team, to one made up of two guys working half time to keep things going. Dave recognized our challenge and is fortunate enough to be in a position where he can contribute some of his time to helping further VizThink in a more official capacity - so he stepped up and volunteered to help us out wherever he can.

As a result expect to see contributions from Dave pop-up from time to time here on the blog, or on the website. He’ll also be helping us with implementing and realizing some of the ideas listed below.

If anyone else out there is interested in helping out please feel free to drop me a line at community@vizthink.com with your ideas & interests and lets see what we can get started!

With that said, lets talk about some of the things we’re working on:

VizThink University
The biggest of these changes is the introduction of VizThink University (a.k.a. VizThinkU). Starting in April we’re going to begin offering regular, online-based “courses.” Most of these will be approximately half a day long and feature sessions with 2-3 visual thinking professionals in the industry. Each course will be based on a central theme. Watch for schedule announcements and further details over the next week or so.

If you’ve got something you’d like to share with the community, and would be interested in being one of our facilitators then be sure to drop me an email at community@vizthink.com with an outline of what you’d be interested in teaching.

Website Revamp
With the help of a couple of members of our community we’re currently in the process of revamping & redesigning the VizThink website from top to bottom. We’re revisiting the navigation structure as well as adding some new features. Expect to see the new structure and design emerge over the next couple of weeks.

New Membership Structure
We’ve also stepped back and revisited our membership structure.  As part of the launch of the new website we’ll be releasing the details. The good news is we’ll still have the free  membership and the basic paid membership will actually be getting cheaper. On top of that we’ll be introducing a few new levels (with various benefits) that you may want to consider going forward.

For our existing paid members, watch your inbox, we’ll be emailing around additional information about your membership shortly before the official roll-out.

VizThink Board of Advisors
We’re very sensitive to ensuring that VizThink continues to provide the content, events and opportunities that our community wants or needs. As part of achieving this goal, we decided to form a VizThink Board of Advisors. This process actually began at VizThink 2009 where we began to reach out to some of the industry leading visual practitioners who have been supportive of VizThink since the beginning. We’re still ironing out some of the details but we’ll announce the founding members of this board as soon as we’ve got everything arranged.

Local Communities
Last but not least we’ve got the local communities which are still humming along and growing. Many people have asked how to get a community going in their area , if you’re interested be sure to check out our Organizer Resources pages on the VizThink wiki and if it sounds like something you’re up to drop me an email at community@vizthink.com and we’ll arrange a time to chat and get you setup!

Thanks again for being a member of our community - I look forward to hearing your feedback as we go through the next few months of changes.

Ryan

—
Ryan Coleman
Chief Community Evangelist

Over the past week there have been plenty of conversations between the team, our investors and trusted advisers on how to keep VizThink moving forward in this tough economic time. As with any organization the toughest decisions always come down to people, and in this case all of us on the team have made sacrifices to help keep VizThink going, which Tom Crawford laid out in an email which has just been sent to the community:

A Message from Tom

Twenty months ago we started VizThink with a mission to bring the visual thinking community together to promote the ideas, concepts and principles to the world at large. In that time, we’ve seen huge success gathering thousands of people in person and online for conferences, workshops, webinars, and regional meetings all over the world. The growth and passion of the community has truly been overwhelming.

Like many other businesses, we are not immune from the economy, and have had to make some very difficult decisions in the last 6 weeks. However, we want the movement—and yes, it’s a movement—to continue for decades to come. In order to ensure that can happen we’re making a few temporary structural changes in order to reduce costs and focus on the core mission. Effective immediately, I will be stepping into a new role as VizThink Fellow. In this role, I will be available for consulting, training, and workshops on a variety of visual thinking and learning topics. If you or your organization are interested, please feel free to contact me through the VizThink team at community@vizthink.com. I will be happy to put together something just for you.

In addition, Chris & Ryan will be moving into half time roles. We’ll still be continuing the social network, workshops, webinars, podcasts, and regional communities. In fact, they will receive new emphasis without the specter of a large conference looming around each corner. In the coming weeks, you’ll hear more details about these changes and many new exciting opportunities to get involved.

I would like to thank the investors, and particularly Rodolfo Carpintier from Digital Assets Deployment in Madrid, for their ongoing belief and support in this community. I have had a great team in Ryan Coleman & Chris Pascucci. I would like to thank Ryan for his seemingly unlimited list of great ideas, even keel, and constant sounding board, and Chris for his untiring dedication to make even the wildest idea happen with a keen sense of getting the immediate details just right while keeping an eye on the long-term goals. Both have stepped up over and over to make amazing things happen. They are great to work with and will continue to be focused on growing the community well into the future.

Most importantly, I would like to thank each of you not just for your involvement so far, but for your ongoing involvement in making this a vibrant, sustainable community. VizThink is about bringing together people just like you and letting the world know there is a better way to brainstorm, organize, and communicate information. We can’t do that without you, and need your support now, more than ever.

How can you get involved? Sign up for the online community. Participate in the forums. Register for a workshop or webinar. Attend or start a VizThink meeting in your city. Spread the word to your friends, colleagues, and customers. The more people are involved the better it gets for everybody. I look forward to seeing each of you. For questions or more details on anything in this e-mail, feel free to contact us at info@vizthink.com or 503-467-7770.

Sincerely,

–tom

So What’s Next for VizThink?
That’s a great question - as Tom mentioned in his message above you’ll be hearing a lot more in the coming weeks. In the background Chris & I, along with input from the community and our advisers will be taking a look at VizThink from top to bottom and coming up with a model that will sustain the community through this difficult patch.

We’ll be soliciting feedback from the community along the way but if you’ve got a burning idea, are willing to lend some of your time, or want to get a local community going please feel to drop me an email at community@vizthink.com.

Chris and I will miss working with Tom on a day-to-day basis - Tom’s visible presence in our podcasts, at our conferences and other events is just the tip of the iceberg to the work he’s done behind the scenes to help build and grow our community and we all owe him a great debt of gratitude for getting this thing off the ground.

So in short, we’re still here, a little smaller and with a little less time to get things done, but the important this is, VizThink is still alive and kicking. As Tom said, there’s a movement at work here and we all want to do everything we can to keep the momentum going. Thanks for joining us on this journey, and for your support going forward.

- Ryan

In addition, for the first time ever, we’re opening up the reception to the local visual thinking community, even if they’re not attending the conference.  No advanced registration is necessary and the cost is free!  Just head to the VizThink registration desk when you arrive and fill out your name tag. 

As we learned in a recent podcast with Tony Karrer, to get the most out of a conference takes work and preparation.  So, to help, we’ve got two ways for you to explore the content and prepare before you get to San Jose.  First, the final conference guide is now available in PDF for you to download. 

You’ll also get a physical copy when you check in at registration.  However, there’s only so much that can be put in an print guide.  So, we also have the conference wiki as a second and even more useful resource.  Each session has it’s own page, often with longer more detailed session descriptions and even examples.  It’s an invaluable resource for planning your conference experience.  Here are just some of the great sessions on the schedule:

Visual Storytelling with Karl Gude
How Do Patterns Structure Visual Thinking with Colin Ware
Eleven Years with One Visualization: Lessons from Jerry’s Brain with Jerry Michalski
Way of the Whiteboard: 3 Unwritten Rules of Persuading with Pictures with Dan Roam
Tools for Visual Storytelling with Nancy Duarte
Facilitating Online with Graphics with David Sibbet
LEGO® Serious Play™ - Think, Create and Innovate with Jacquie Lloyd Smith

WIth over 30 great sessions to choose from, you may wonder how you’re going to choose.  Well, this year, by popular demand, we’ve added tracks.  While you don’t have to follow the tracks, you may find it helpful to go with a theme.  Alternately, you may want to pick one session from each track to get a diverse experience visual thinking.  Our 6 tracks this year are:

Visual Language - Discovering the components of visual language
Storytelling - Using images to tell stories
Changing the World - Applying visual thinking to improve ourselves and the world around us
Visualizing Data & Our World - Using visualization to represent data, objects, and locations
Business Strategy - Using visualization to represent business concepts, ideas, and plans
Visual Thinking - Surveying a variety of visual thinking techniques, approaches, and applications

Creating tracks is hard.  Each session could easily be placed in more than one track.  Most sessions, for instance, have a storytelling component.  In addition, most sessions are talking in some way about visual language.  These tracks are not meant as rules or limitations, but as guidelines to assist in your planning and decision making process.

There’s still time to sign up and take advantage of this great opportunity to network and learn from your colleagues and industry experts.  Be sure to register now so you’ll be sure to reserve your space and not miss this exciting conference. 

How databases and the graphical user interface (GUI) lead to information visualization
Analyzing data visually
Interacting with data visually
Analyzing data visually
Using dashboards to visually display data
Sharing and collaborating on data through a visual dashboard
The power (and equal danger) of visualization

Jock will bring his years of expereince to what promises to be a very exciting session at VizThink ‘09.  In addition, Tableau will have a booth where you can try out the product first hand to see how you can visualize, analyze, and collaborate with your data more effectively.

For more information on this and all of the other great sessions and sponsors at VizThink ‘09, be sure to check out our conference wiki.  The draft schedule is up, so you can begin to plan your conference experience.  We have just 19 days left until the event in San Jose.  Be sure to register now so you’ll be sure to reserve your space and not miss this exciting conference. 

I recently had the privilege to spend some time with industry veteran and guru Bob Horn in his San Francisco office.  Filled to the top with years of books, reading, research, and writing, he has amassed a myriad of experience in visual thinking.  Not only has he research and written about the theories of visual thinking, he has also put them into practice with local and national governments, global organizations, and non-profits of all shapes and sizes.  His preference is to focus on the “wicked” problems such as climate change and apply visual thinking techniques to help change the world.  During our time together, we recorded a 28-minute podcast where we cover a variety of topics such as:

• Murals
• Systems Thinking
• Argument maps
• Use of a mess to communicate a message
• Visual Thinking is about both the Visual and the Thinking

At VizThink ‘09, we’ll talk with Bob in more detail on the main stage about working with messy, wicked problems of public policy and how various intermediate kinds of visualization can facilitate the process of early brainstorming, deep analysis, detailed planning, creating drafts for early feedback, and looping back through the analysis and design process as gaps show up.  In addition, Bob will have a 90-minute breakout session on the core of visual language as a tool for global communication.  Check out this link for a brief summary of his book, Visual Language: Global Communication for the 21st Century.

Be sure to join us for this exciting set of sessions and to learn first hand with an industry veteran and guru.  For more information on this and all of the other great sessions at VizThink ‘09, be sure to check out our conference wiki.  The draft schedule is up, so you can begin to plan your conference experience.  We have just 20 days left until the event in San Jose.  Be sure to register now so you’ll be sure to reserve your space and not miss this exciting conference. 

During this one-day workshop you will go through the process of designing a presentation. Working hands-on in in small groups, you will collaboratively design and deliver a presentation on a topic of importance to you.

Through this process you will learn how to clarify goals, discover relevant information, and design and deliver better presentations, so that people will pay more attention, remember your ideas, act on them, and get you the business results you want.

Dave’s workshops have consistently been one of the favorites that we’ve put on and generally sell out quickly so be sure to register today and get your spot reserved. If you’ve already registered but want to add this workshop just use the link provided in your confirmation email to access your registration, where you’ll be able to add it.

Bonus: Register today and add this pre-conference to your VizThink 2009 experience for FREE.*

We know everyone is tightening their belts right now and we want to do what we can to help at least a few people get a little more out of VizThink 2009 - so here’s the deal… Just be one of the first 5 people to register as a regular attendee for VizThink 2009 & add the Dave Gray workshop to your registration. Then, when prompted for a discount code just enter SIGNMEUP and the cost of the workshop (a $400 value!) will be removed from your total.*

Don’t delay! Dave’s workshops often sell out and this will be a very hot ticket & this offer ends at midnight EST on Monday January 26, 2009. Register now.

If you have any questions you can email me at community (at) vizthink.com - I look forward to seeing you in San Jose!

- Ryan

—
* New Registrations only at Regular Attendee rate. Cannot be combined with any other discount code. Offer not valid on Non-Profit, Academic or other discounted rates.

We have a great slate of facilitators and content lined up for VizThink ‘09.  We’ve brought back some of your favorites like Nancy Duarte, Karl Gude, and Dan Roam with all new content.  We’ve got industry leaders and gurus like Dave Gray, Bob Horn, and Lance Dublin back again to share their expertise.  Plus, all new amazing facilitators such as Sunni Brown, Eileen Clegg, Brian Friedlander, Jessica Hagy, Jerry Michalski, and Colin Ware.  In total, we have over 40 people who volunteered their time and their expertise to make this the most amazing visual thinking conference ever.  Here are just some of the topics you can expect to see in San Jose:

3D Visualization
Assistive Technology Using Visualization
Visualization and Autism
Strategy Visualization
Graphic Recording
Geospatial Mapping
Avatars
Mind Mapping
Visual Facilitation Online
Information Design
Visual Storytelling
Data Visualization

and much, much more…

For more details on the sessions and the schedule, check out our conference wiki.  It’s updated almost daily with new content.  We have 41 days left until the event in San Jose.  Be sure to register now so you’ll be sure to reserve your space and not miss this exciting conference. 

How to prepare for a conference before you get there
How to network with other people (even when you’re shy)
How to design your own conference experience

Additional Resources:

Tony’s Original Blog Post titled Be an Insanely Great Professional Conference Attendee
Conference Survival Guide for the Web Worker

Begin your planning for VizThink ‘09 now by checking out our wiki, new session content is being added daily.  In addition, members can take advantage of our social network all year round.  Free access for conference attendees lasts for 3 months after the event.  Be sure to register now to be able to take advantage of all of the resources as you prepare for the conference. 

During this workshop, participants will learn what information can be better understood visually? And what is the best way to display that information: in narrative or diagrammatic form? map based? charts and graphs? How can a visual package multiple elements together effectively?

Karl Gude, the former Graphics Director at Newsweek magazine and The Associated Press who is now an instructor at Michigan State University’s School of Journalism, will help you answer these questions and many more. His energy-filled hands-on workshop will explore ways to maximize efforts at visualizing data and other content. Come prepared to design, sketch and draw, (especially if it’s not something you’re comfortable with!) By exploring news graphics, the lessons learned during this informal and fun day can be applied to solve any number of visualization challenges.

Check out these previous videos with Karl:

What Five Things Would you Tell a Journalist to Look for to Assist in Illustrating a Story?
Drawing Lessons

Seats are very limited, and have sold out repeatedly in the past so be sure to register now to reserve your space. 

Do you want to learn how to manage your information and knowledge more effectively?  Be sure to attend VizThink ‘09 where you can join Jerry in a very exciting breakout session.  Be sure to register now! 

Next Stop: San Jose
As the year ends all of us here at VizThink are turning our focus to VizThink 2009 in San Jose at the end of February. It’s shaping up to be an awesome event with a really solid roster of facilitators and, admittedly, a really neat mix of attendees registered so far. If you haven’t yet check out our facilitators list.

Save Big on VizThink 2009
Between Christmas and the unsettled economy we know this is a tough year for people to make decisions on and commitments for travel and conferences so in the spirit of the holiday season we wanted to make it a little easier for at least a few people to get out to VizThink 2009 - So, from now until December 31st:

Enter HOLIDAY during the registration process and we’ll take $300 off the regular attendee rate for VizThink 2009! This code is valid for the first 5 people only, so it’s first come first served and is valid for new registrations only.

If you miss out on the code above use the code NEWYEAR and we’ll take $100 off the regular attendee rate. This code has no limit so everyone gets a break between now and December 31, 2008!

Thank you again for a fantastic year - have a safe and happy holidays and we’ll see you in San Jose in the new year!

During this webinar, we discuss questions such as:

• What is the role of the visual thinking community?
• Imagine if the visual community were the catalyst. What could be our greatest contribution to this moment in time?
• We need a new language – what does it look like?
• We need new skills – what are they and how are they trained?
• We need new solutions – what do they look like and how are they created?
• How might we step up and offer our approaches, skills and tools to assist leading thinkers, politicians, business people and scientist in sensing deeper, communicating with more clarity and acting faster?

Web Links from ole:

Networks:

• www.kaospilot.dk
• www.the-hub.net
• www.pioneersofchange.net
• www.artofhosting.org
• www.theworldcafe.org
• www.openspaceworld.com
• www.ifvp.org

Climate Change efforts (leading up to Kyoto II)

• www.cop15.dk
• www.survivalacademy.org
• www.worldchanging.com

Great inspiration

• www.commoncraft.com
• www.thevalueweb.com
• www.freerangestudios.com
• www.thestoryofstuff.com

The next 13 days were a blur as the event came together and this past Monday night we found ourselves at the Mod Club in downtown Toronto, with a sell out crowd of over 600 people from the technology, marketing and visual thinking communities here in Toronto, and at the end of the night handing the Toronto Daily Bread Food Bank a check for $25,000.

I put together the following video/slide deck as a brief history of the event:

The outpouring of support from the community was overwhelming, as you can see from the video above we had over 60 organizations sponsor us either with cash contributions, in-kind services or raffle prizes so we could raise a little extra money at the event as well.

I want to personally thank two of our VizThink sponsors, and community members, Betsy Weber & the team at TechSmith and Michael Deutch & the team from Mindjet. Techsmith added a few licenses each of Camtasia and Snagit to the mix for us to give away and Mindjet gave us a couple of copies of Mindmanager for Windows 8 (Over $3000 in prizes alone from these two companies!) - all three are fantastic apps that I use daily and I know many people were hoping their ticket got drawn for them.

All in all it was a wild night, from interactive video walls displaying tweets tagged with hohoto to DJ requests via Twitter and the insanely popular p#hohoto booth setup and run by Rannie Turinigan & Canon (pics here). We even had a recorded messages from a handful of 2.0 “Celebrities” including Biz Stone, co-founder of twitter - heck, even the mayor of Toronto, David Miller recorded a greeting for the crowd.

All in 13 days. It was truly something special to be a part of and I was glad I got to include the VizThink community as part of it too. I also want to thank my co-conspirators without whom this wouldn’t have happened:

Leila Boujnane - CEO, Idée Inc.
Alexa Clark - Managing Partner, Plethora Press
Duarte Da Silva - Senior Manager, Communitylend.com
April Dunford - Director, Incubation Marketing, Nortel
Peter Flaschner - Founder, The Blog Studio
Rob Hyndman - Founder, Hyndman | Law & Mesh Conference
Sheri Moore - Partner, Creative Director, MCC Planners Inc.
Michael O’Connor Clarke - Vice President, Thornley Fallis Communications Inc.
Michael Penney - El Presidente, Afterlight Films
Michele Perras - Manager, Mobile Experience Innovation Centre
Corey Reid - Chief Cat Herder, FreshBooks
Ryan Taylor - Goldsmith, Adventurer, The Fair Trade Jewellery Co.
Rannie Turingan - Photographer, photojunkie.ca
Elena Yunusov - Founder, communicable.ca

Embedded below is a slideshow from the #Hohoto Flickr Pool. If you want to see more of the fun at #Hohoto you can also check out Flickr YouTube Facebook or Twitter

What makes a visual thinker?

While the excise is fun, the results are insightful.  In this almost 25 minute video, we discuss the direct answer to the question, plus how the process works.

What do you think makes a visual thinker?  What does the visual thinking industry look like to you?  Leave your comments below or join the discussion in the membership section of our website.  In the members only section, you can also watch an additional bonus video where Christine and I talk about the composition of photos and how small (and large) design choices can make dramatic differences in the outcomes of discussions. 

Do you want to try this process in person?  Be sure to attend VizThink ‘09 where you can join Christine in a very exciting breakout session.  Be sure to register now! 

Well that snuck up fast - just a quick reminder that today is the LAST day for the early registration discount for VizThink 2009 which runs February 22-25, 2009 in San Jose, CA. It’s shaping up to be a great event - as you’ve probably seen in the past weeks we’ve been announcing more and more facilitators and there’s still more to come in the next few weeks.

In looking through not just the facilitator list, but also the caliber of people already registered to attend, I’m seriously excited for this event - I can guarantee you’ll be kicking yourself if you miss it. So don’t! Swing by and register before midnight tonight to save $100 off the regular attendee fee!

While you’re at it be sure to reserve your room at the conference hotel. After doing a couple of these conferences now I can honestly tell you there’s no better place to stay than right where the event is happening, and most of the attendees are staying.

There will be a lot of interesting people at VizThink 2009, which means a lot of interesting conversations that tend to go well into the night - you’ll be glad you’ve only got to get to the elevator when you finally decide to call it a night. (and you get to sleep in that little bit longer in the morning too!)

And book early - the hotel sold out completely at VizThink Europe in Berlin!

See you in San Jose!