A comment from Cindy, a new reader, prompted a realization that Communication Nation has quite a few new readers who have recently discovered this blog.
I have met many of you over the years and found you to be a unique and fascinating community of people. You need to be aware of each other! I did this a while back but I think it's time for an update.
Tell us:
Who are you?
Even if you don't regularly comment on blogs, please consider taking a minute to tell me and the other readers:
1. Who are you? If it's not too personal, what's your name and job title?
2. What industry or field do you work in or most strongly identify with?
3. What do you most want to see happening on this blog?
And/or anything else you want to talk about.
You also might want to check out the last post like this, from March of 2006, here.
And even if you left a note the last time I did this, it would be great to know what you're up to now and what's on your mind.
So please leave a note in the comments section and introduce yourself! We'd love to meet you.
Keep in touch! Sign up to get updates and occasional emails from me.
59 comments:
Brendan Dunphy, Nice, France. Sustainable Innovation and Thought Leadership are my things and communicating complex ideas and concepts at the heart of what I do and why I am glad I came across this blog! All the best, Brendan at http://brendandunphy.blogspot.com/
PS good luck in London, I wish I could join.
Matias Peruyera, Curitiba, Brazil.
I work as an infografist in a local newspaper, and i'm interested in other areas of information design.
My personal weblog: www.matatias.net
Bob Finch here. Bookmarked you in Feedly (New Firefox Plug in). I'm interested in communications theory and practice.
Hi, I'm Sherrod Faulks, from New York-based Soft Illuminations. I deal in agile thinking, which relies heavily on information design. I also do graphic design.
I love reading this blog as it always fills me with inspiration, ideas and fresh perspectives. If it's not asking too much, I'd like to see more frequent posting. Keep up the great work!
Christine Martell Principal
VisualsSpeak, Hillsboro OR USA
I develop visual tools to help individuals and organizations understand their world differently.
Dave, my favorite posts are when you put out a sketch of an idea, invite feedback and then develop it further. I'm interested in the way people conceptualize processes visually, and you are one of best at this. I'm also interested in your perspectives on how we (as visual professionals) can serve individuals and organizations most effectively.
Stephen, in Spain. I paraphrased Einstein and got accused of plagiarism.
Jorge Camoes, Lisbon, Portugal. I'm a business analyst at a global pharmaceutical corporation.
I believe that we need much higher "image literacy" and this can be achieved using common office tools.
I write a blog (http;//charts.jorgecamoes.com), kind of "Mr. Tufte meets Excel" thing.
Gkikas Menelaos. Entrepreneur! Related to the launching of my business Gkikas Studios: Commercial Brands. An IT industry of cognitive innovations and disruptive change modelling. Moving into scenario studios and processing packs of information and language fastly!! Your blog and your idea is fantastic and i actually took advantage of that to come up with my own materials. They're more than promising scenarios and i have discovered that a new era of knowledge shows somewhere in the horizon. What i would like to see?? Some of your own innovative application practices! Take care...!!
Jeremy Varo-Haub. Creative Director/Innovation Manager. I live and work in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, but my heart is always at home in Portland, Oregon.
I'm with Christine--the best stuff for me is always when sketches grow over time here. I'm also really interested in the development process you're using for the new book. How are you bringing it together? Why did you feel compelled to write it?
1. Who are you?
Ryan Coleman
Chief Community Evangelist
VizThink
2. What industry or field do you work in or most strongly identify with?
My main focus right now is helping to build a strong community for visual thinkers around the world through our conferences, workshops, community events & website.
3. What do you most want to see happening on this blog?
More of the same! Like Christine mentioned I love the iterative process the blog embraces. Post, respond, iterate, repeat.
I am Mathew Patterson, community manager for Freshview, the team behind web application Campaign Monitor.
I am always looking for ways to help our customers understand our product better, and to make it easier to use.
I look to this blog for inspiration on different ways of communicating.
I also blog at MathewPatterson.com.
Arturo Guajardo in Austin, Texas.
I'm an educational technology trainer and consultant. I'd like to help other educators learn to integrate more visual thinking into their teaching practices.
Joe LaSerre, Philadelphia Pa.
Entrepreneur and recent college graduate with a marketing major. My areas of interest are food marketing and online communications.
I would like to see posts concerning communication theory focused on blogs, online social networks and text messages.
Hi, Ed Shin from Pittsburgh, PA.
Freelance interactive/infographic designer.
I have an interest in data visualization and enjoy taking on projects with information communication challenges.
Alan, Graphic Designer
Web design, graphic design, marketing, advertising
I'm interested in infographics, communication, layout, typography and information architecture.
Katie, Development Director
I work in the non-profit/trade association world, and I'm interested in learning new ways to communicate complex industry information to our members.
Your blog is a jumping off point for me. I find that I repurpose many of your ideas/sketches for the projects I'm tackling.
Hello. My name is Cindy Cantrell, and I live in St. Louis, Missouri.
I come from the library "industry"- having been both a librarian and a software developer/marketer for library software. In general, most library's agenda is "to get any piece of information for any person"....and to communicate it to them effectively. Also, there is the factor of people seeking information themselves. A classic example is a person searching for information on Mercury. They do an Internet search and what they get is 1M hits about everything from Freddy Mercury to Mercury the planet to the Periodic Table of Elements and so on. The ultimate question is "how can information be organized for people so they can understand the quality and context of what is being presented." Take a look at these two sites and do a search or two: http://visual.onlib.org/aquabrowser/
or http://aqua.queenslibrary.org/
This is where and how my interest in visual communication has come about- and the fact that I, personally, break down issues into visual documents for my own clarification. I have become very interested in Visual thinking and hope to move to a visual communication job.
Lastly, I agree with Christine. I like having visuals posted (from any of us) so there can be discussion.
Alessandra Kalko, São Paulo, Brasil.
Working as Art Editor of Mundo Estranho Magazine/Editora Abril since 2002 and with magazines since 2000.
Interested in sharing experiences and references on communication, visualization and life :-)
http://www.infograthinking.blogspot.com
Uyen - Solutions Architect, Reston VA
Currently in the Government contracting business. I'm thrilled by the pursuit of innovation and the fascinated in the process of discovery. I'm constantly seeking real solutions and approaches especially visual tools to elicit the ideas as part of my tool set.
I often deal with helping people see the big picture, point out the inefficient processes, so I appreciate the practical applications/experiences you post. So more of that!
If you want to borrow a technique from another company, whenever their key staffers are on travel they would post a location for a meetup. Imagine blog-followers coming to a small-town near you!
Just my 2 cents!
Pat Spelling, Oklahoma City, OK... I am a minister and I am interested in local food, sustainable agriculture, and other things...
Sean White, Carlsbad, New Mexico, USA. I'm a consultant on environmental and nuclear waste related matters, with a large, publicly-traded, global engineering company. Have both government and private sector clients, mainly domestic, but hopefully soon to include international as well.
In my work, I'm faced with the challenge of persuasion - be it with clients, company executives, or hostile/activist stakeholders. I develop alot of presentations, as well as documents that attempt to explain complex matters. Nuclear waste-related issues (especially those dealing with licensing of storage and disposal facilities) have some intensive information conveyance and explanation demands.
I enjoy the Communication Nation blog, and I'm very impressed with some of the information I've seen over at the Xplane page. I would like to attend one of Dave Gray's seminars.
I would especially like to see more how-to kinds of things - especially along the lines of the recent posts at XPlane. Also, some real world examples would be interesting.
Best Regards, Sean...
Beatriz, from Spain. I'm a journalist and nowadays work as a computer operator, teacher and blogger. I love communication and I'm interested on the new media.
TJ Hanton - Fairfax, VA.
I'm a web developer for a government contractor.
I honestly don't know what I want to see out of the site ... I did a "moleskine hack" search, found some pics on flickr which had a link here. First time visiting.
My blog: http://tj.hanton.net
Cheri Lemieux Spiegel, Fairfax, Virginia. I'm an English Instructor at the community college level. My research focuses on integrating visual communication into all aspects of composition.
HI there -
I am Stephen Tompkins and I currently work for Nielsen Online as a Digital Marketing Manager. I recently found your blog through your squidoo site on visual thinking.
Ian Collingwood,
London, UK.
I'm the Managing Director of Amberlight Partners Ltd, a people-centred research and design company.
I've been a fan of xplane since the dotcom wars of the late 90s. I'm doing my best to shift our company towards a much richer visual communications ethic. Right now we're too wordy. Don't get me wrong, I love words, but sometimes they're too linear and one-dimensional.
Would love to meet up if you're in London. Get hold of me via our website... www.amber-light.co.uk
1) John Fishback, Principal Presentation Consultant at 154 Consulting.
2) I'm not sure there are enough presentation consultants to consider us an industry, but it is a field and that's where I self identify. To me, presentation consulting is a combination of what speechwriters do and what the most thoughtful graphic designers do - it's structured thought expressed through visual language.
3) I'm such a new reader that making any suggestions would only expose a healthy amount of ignorance. So far so good, from my seat!
1. Who are you?
Samir Penkar, Minneapolis, US, Program Manager.
2. What industry or field do you work in or most strongly identify with?
I work as a program/ project mamagement professional at Trissential, a consulting firm in the Twin cities. I love Dave's blog and company. Many postings spark ideas for me and I love to apply these to my projects. In fact the first thing I do on projects is to create a visual, that almost always generates lots of discussions.
3. What do you most want to see happening on this blog?
I would like to see more people connect and maybe share their work. If you are around the Twin Cities, I would love to meet with you.
Jonathan Leggs, St. Louis, Missouri
I'm a Network Engineer with a coal mining company.
My interest is learning to "see again", harvest new ideas and to communicate better.
I would love to see a Vizthink community or a Visual thinking seminar held in the local St. Louis area.
Ricardo Gravina, Sao Paulo, Brazil.
I am a sales manager at a Business TV Corp. here in Sao Paulo and an entrepreneur in spare time.
I am really interested in learning more about this "trend". I will be using it in my mkt post-grad thesis. Thanks Dave!
My name is Lance Grow. I work as a Sr. Mgr of User Research at Autodesk, Inc in Lake Oswego, OR. I am passionate believer in the power of visual thinking and have used these techniques several times to succesfully communicate complex data results and problem spaces.
I would really like to see us start working as a community to build a visual language symboloby library. I think all of us could benefit from a shared library of sketches that represent metaphors and concepts each of us have succesfully communicated visually.
Keep up the great work Dave. The blog is a hit!
Lance
1. Who are you?
Manjiri Deshpande
Sr. Interaction Designer,
Design Innovation, Honeywell Technology Solutions, Bangalore
2. What industry or field do you work in or most strongly identify with?
I work with the Security Group in Honeywell, specifically in Video Security designing security management software. I have also worked for New Growth and Emerging Market Design.
3. What do you most want to see happening on this blog?
I have always been a visual thinker and that is why I love to see you evolving your ideas and thoughts into concepts ...visually.
Keep doing this...and more...
(1.) Peter Stoyko, Ottawa, Canada. Title: Researcher, Methodologist, and Information Designer.
I draw infographics to help explain research findings and develop learning methodologies that involve visualization.
It's all good. I also like the short videos on your other site. And I like the case studies and examples from the XPLANE e-newsletter.
1. Who
Alex Osterwalder, author & speaker & big fan of Dave and his work...
2. Industry
Writing a (visual) book on business model innovation - based on an innovative business model...
3. Wants
Facts, stats and references on how visual thinking brings business returns - so we can better advocate it...
and thanks Dave, for all the cool stuff you are posting on your blog!
Darja, Slovenia, teacher
->interested in communication
Hello- I'm AnnieLaurie. I have worked in multiple communications jobs over the years. I current work as Communications Director for a large church on the east coast. I love your blog because it gives me ideas and helps me get out of the box.
Hey my name is Joaquim Marquès Nielsen and I'm from Denmark. I just finished my education and I now have a masters degree in Graphic Design :) I love to stop by this blog every now and then for some great input. Every time there's something new to learn here. Thumbs up David!
Dhanu Kothari, Toronto, Canada
As a consultant and an author of two books on Project Management, I am always looking for tools and ideas for visualizing the principles of sound Project Management. The books are titled: "Rainbows & ratholes: Best Practices for Managing Successful Projects" and "From Ratholes to Rainbows: Managing Project Recovery". I am currently writing my next book on "Project Communication, Networking & Relationships". Thank you for an interesting, informative and insightful blog. I look forward to an exciting exchange of ideas and enhancing the books with new communication tools. Regards, Dhanu Kothari email: Kothari@D2i.Ca www.D2i.Ca
Theresa Zagnoli, Chicago. Communications consultant who works with the legal industry to improve how attorneys "speak" to their audience. My firm also specializes in information design of complex concepts to make them more juror friendly. While working with attorneys is my primary "day job", I really enjoy working with a variety of industries to empower more extraordinary communication in their organization. I recently started blogging about Visual, Verbal and Nonverbal Communication at thereszagnoli.blogspot.com and while trying to get out more often in the blogosphere found your blog. As a new reader, I have enjoy your posts and look forward to more!
Hi I'm Adele Jackson from New Zealand. I'm an illustrator who these days prefers to be invited to contribute to the front end (the conceptual development) of an idea instead of the tail end. I'm interested in communication and increating visual solutions along side people and I was delighted to find your blog today.
I also create fine art, and one of the latest threads I'm exploring is to think like a cartographer - in order to develop a process for my painting and drawing exploration that may help me to describe Terra Incognita - the places and areas we choose not to communicate with each other (the hidden or unknown). Your Q-tools are inspiring Dave - I use similar questions to unlock imagery for myself when I paint.
hi, my name is diana ceausu, i'm from bucharest and i am a strategic planner for mccann erickson romania.
your blog feels like a continuos incentive to challenge perspectives, and helps a great deal in improving my presentations.
http://www.esibplayer.blogspot.com/
Imanzah Nurhidayat, Jakarta, Indonesia. I am business analyst. your visual thinking is so grippy.
christina russell, from kingston jamaica. right now im a student of communication at trinity university in san antonio, tx. im interested in all things media related, especially communication theory.
great content! i have bookmarked your blog on my blog and it is definitely something i check regularly.
i really enjoyed the post on the obama campaign, so much so that i wrote on it. i'd love to see more posts about anything topical.
http://christinamrussell.blogspot.com/
keep up the excellent blogging.
I love this blog. I worked in newspapers for many years, and my experience with creating infographics has come into play, I've found, in all aspects of graphic design. It's all communication, and the better your understanding of how ideas or information is perceived, processed and understood, the better you can communicate, whether it's an info graphic, a poster, a package design or a website.
Keep up the great work, and I'll keep coming back for your terrific innovations and explorations.
me: Anna Kalata, MS degree candidate in Technical Communication and Information Design at Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago.
interests: visual communication
Found this blog over the summer, just catching up with the posts and evaluating whether or not I will continue to follow it. :)
Tom of www.recordmycalls.com. We read your blog all the time, looking for new ways of enhancing verbal communications. Much like we create, store, send, delete the written word with docs and emails, we feel one should be able to do the same with verbal communications. Too many important conversations get lost once you hang up the phone or leave the room.
Linus Lim, based in Asia. Working as a fund manager. Our business is investing as well as communicating our investment strategy to clients. Always on the lookout for new ways of looking at things (quite literally)
Hi!
Laurie Bartels, computer teacher & coordinator of tech training, currently (and for the past 12 years) at an independent school just north of NYC.
Interested in presentations, visual thinking, and what we can learn from current brain research, particularly as I see them all entwined with teaching.
Have attended a workshop that you gave for CAIS, plus a recent VizThink webinar, and both times came away inspired. Have just started reading your blog (there's so much to catch up with!) so no particular requests (yet) except wishing I could take a year's sabbatical to attend yours, and Garr Reynolds' and Nancy Duarte's numerous workshops!
Hi Laurie! Thanks for visiting.
Me too! I'm Britta Gustafson, UCSB Literature student and Delicious community manager intern. I care about knowledge organization as a social process, books as technology, visual ways of communication information, and other nice things like that. I read as much as I can related to them. More and more. That's all I want.
Simon King
Director Service Support Strategy BMC Software
I use design in business ideas, presentations and in recommendations for application enhancements
I think that we can improve our communication effectiveness ten fold with appropriate use of simple graphical tools
I am only 16, honestly. I have ADHD. But I'm going to be a psychologist when I grow up, and am extremely interested in body language, and the subconcious. I believe that communication is a dance. I googled that phrase, and found this website. Go figure.
That's wonderful Josh! I hope you found something that was useful or interesting to you.
What was the exact phrase that you Googled, do you remember?
Hi!!
I know it´s been so long of the post :p but i didn´t want to pass the opportunity of introduce myself.
I´m Vianey Islas Bastida from Mexico City a graphic designer who works in a design studio, interested in the visual thinking and its application in the visual journalism and information design.
I get here jumping from blog to blog, Alberto Cairo, Xocas, Infografistas, Xplane.
What i would like to see? infographics,visual journalism, layout, information architecture!
Hope someday you could be in Mexico for conferences or workshops!!
thanks for all the information you are posting!!!!!!!!
Hola Vianey y bienvenidos!
Thank you for your comments!
Dave
Mustafa Kamal , Bangalore, India. CEO of a 120 people manufacturing company. Always tried to express ideas, strategy etc. on one page. My effectiveness has gone up several times since I started learning visual thinking. Your VizThink Sessions appear extremely interesting. Do you have a video podcast?
Hello Mustafa, check out http://vizthink.com for many interesting video webinars.
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