VizThink takes off!

VizThink, also known as Visual Thinking School, has been taking off lately. What started as a series of posts on my blog, and an informal get-together at XPLANE, has now blossomed into a series of regular events in Toronto, St. Louis, Portland and Madrid, as well as an international conference that will be kicking off this January.

To support this activity we've got several community sites going:

A Facebook group, started by Ryan Coleman in Toronto, where you can see and contact all the people who consider themselves members of the community.

An email discussion group, where you can ask questions (For example, how to start your own Visual Thinking School), share best practices and ideas.

A group blog where you can post the results of your VizThink sessions and see what others are doing.

A Flickr group where you can post and view photos of VizThink sessions around the world.

Perhaps most exciting is the first international VizThink event which will be happening this coming January in San Francisco. I'll be doing a workshop there and there's a stellar list of presenters. I am proud to be associated with them and I hope you can join us.

It's not going to be your traditional "speakers on a podium" event. There will be plenty of hands-on workshops and opportunities for open dialogue with the speakers and other attendees.

XPLANE is a sponsor of the event and as such we can offer you a special discount of $100 off the early registration fee. Click here to register and use the code PCX01 (that's P-C-X-Zero-One).

I'd love to see people joining the email discussion group, as I think it may be one of the best ways to get a dialogue going in the community.

Join us!

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Dave in the heart of Helsinki

Spain in the heart of Helsinki, originally uploaded by dgray_xplane.

Anyone reading this blog from Helsinki? I am here for a couple days. If you want to connect, leave a comment, send me a text message at +34-670-783-657, or email me [dave dot gray at gmail dot com] with your contact info.

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Announcing VizThink 08

VizThink 08 lineup, originally uploaded by dgray_xplane.

I'm pleased to announce that I will be facilitating at VizThink 08, a new event that's kicking off this coming January in San Francisco.

Here's some information from the VizThink home page:

"Who are visual thinkers? Visual thinkers are people who use graphic design, images, pictures, video, animations, sketches, and other forms of visual art for communications and learning.

VizThink will bring together several hundred participants from the best of the best in our industry with participation by trainers, marketers, presenters, executives, planners, strategists, and managers, just to name a few.

While each approach may be different, the attendees all share the same philosophy in the power of visualization for learning and communication. We believe that by bringing these diverse groups together, we'll create a community that can take the industry to a new level and invite you to take part."

Here's a list of the speakers that have confirmed so far. I'm excited that I will be facilitating workshops and dialogue with them. Click the links for more information.

1. Christine Martells, 2. Neil Cohn, 3. Nancy Duarte, 4. David Sibbet, 5. Nigel Holmes, 6. Eileen Clegg, 7. Robert Horn, 8. Stephen Few, 9. Dave Gray, 10. Karl Gude, 11. Scott McCloud, 12. Dan Rose

I'm also helping to organize the conference, so if you have ideas for speakers or sessions, please let me know in the comments section.

I'll be posting more about VizThink in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!

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How to make beautiful charts in Microsoft Excel

Chris Gemignani of Juice Analytics shows how to recreate a New York Times chart using Microsoft Excel.

Take a look.

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Visual thinking exercises at Overlap

Find more videos like this on Overlap 07

This summer I led some visual thinking exercises at Overlap 07, a small gathering of design/business thinkers. The video above will give you a bit of a feeling for how visual thinking can make meetings and events more collaborative, conversational and engaging, and how visual thinking can spark creativity and insight.

Here are some of my photos from the event.

Please share your thoughts and comments here.

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50 Designers x 6 Questions | Developer's Toolbox

50 Designers x 6 Questions | Developer's Toolbox: "Some months ago we’ve selected 50 prominent designers and design companies, contacted them and asked to answer five design-related questions, sharing their knowledge and experience with fellows developers. 35 designers have responded then. For each of 5 questions we’ve received 5 precise answers. The result was 175 professional suggestions, tips and ideas from some of the renowned web-developers all around the world."

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Dave Gray Q&A

Matt Alland recently interviewed me for HostNews.

Read the interview.

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Visual dictionary

Visual dictionary:

" ...with concise and rigorous texts, bilingual, the Visual Dictionary will become a academic resource. [It's] different from an encyclopedia or from traditional online dictionaries, thesauri and glossaries, because the images replace the words."

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Neil Cohn on visual language

Neil Cohn of Tufts University takes a deep dive into visual language.

Highlight, from the Q&A session after the talk:

"Art is used in very specific cultural contexts... Language? We use language for everything. Language is used in all sorts of different contexts. Why not use visual language in all sorts of different contexts?"

His talk is 45 minutes so check this out when you have time. In the meantime, Neil's website and blog are worth a look.

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XPLANE republishes Visual Language by Bob Horn

I am proud to announce that XPLANE will be republishing Robert Horn's landmark book, Visual Language: Global Communication for the 21st Century, which has been out of print for several years.

Robert Lucas, in a review on Amazon says:

"People seem to either love Bob Horn's book "Visual Language" or they hate it. Look at the reviews here on Amazon! The key questions is: Why such a polarizing? To me it means that Horn has written a paradigm-busting, pathfinding, boundary-crossing, far-out book -- one that removes our blinders from a phenomenon that is happening all around us, namely a new international, auxiliary language that is emerging. No wonder it arouses controversy."

You can read more of the Amazon reviews here.

Here's an interview where Bob talks about the ideas his book, and a pdf file where Bob practices what he preaches -- using visual language to explain visual language -- to Cliff Atkinson, author of Beyond Bullet Points.

Bob is a personal friend and the book is a groundbreaking one. Not only does it explain visual language, it employs visual language on every page. It's a true classic and I am glad we are now able to make it available once again.

Buy it here.

If you are familiar with the book I would love to hear your thoughts on it here.

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New technology for smart image resizing

Adobe just hired the co-inventor of this image-resizing technology.

It's fascinating to watch, and it also has interesting implications for content creators.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts.

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Infomania: Why we can’t afford to ignore it any longer

Infomania: Why we can’t afford to ignore it any longer: "The combination of e–mail overload and interruptions is widely recognized as a major disrupter of knowledge worker productivity and quality of life, yet few organizations take serious action against it. This paper makes the case that this action should be a high priority, by analyzing the severe impact of the problem in both qualitative and quantitative terms. We attempt to provide sufficient supporting data from the scientific literature and from corporate surveys to enable change agents to make the case and convince their organizations to authorize such action."

Read the paper.

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The City Wall - Helsinki

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Generalist and specialist approaches

Generalist and specialist approaches, originally uploaded by dgray_xplane.

This is an update to a previous diagram, based on numerous comments and feedback.

More conversation here, here, here and here.

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The mind map as a concise visual summary

Click the image for a high-resolution version.

Author, artist and educator John Clapp posted this beautiful mind map on his website. It's a summary of Vision + Art: The Biology of Seeing.

What is especially interesting is that the map represents roughly 60% of the book's content -- on a single page!

See more on John's website.

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