VizThink 2008 program guide

2008 North American Conference January 27-29, 2008 San Francisco | Westin Market Street Welcome Dear Visual Thinking Colleague, Welcome to VizThink ’08! VizThink ’08 is all about exposure and experience with a wide variety of visual thinking styles, approaches, and applications. We’ve worked hard to bring together the most diverse set of visual thinking experts ever under one roof. Rather than setting out pre-defined paths, we invite you to design your own tracks. Are you interested in finding out about Information Graphics? Check out all the sessions with the Infographics icon. 3D? There’s a series of sessions on that too. In fact our over 30 breakout sessions each combine visual thinking techniques in a unique way. Are you familiar with graphic facilitation? You might want to consider the session on facilitation with photos. I would encourage you to step even further out of your comfort zone and attend sessions that aren’t directly in your field. The power of diversity is in its ability to generate new ideas, meet new people, and open up new possibilities. VizThink ’08 is the perfect place to do just that. In fact, be sure to take advantage of all of the networking opportunities from the opening reception to the lunches to the dine arounds to the conference wiki. Each is an ideal opportunity to find out what your colleagues are doing and to share your approach. I encourage you to try new things, meet new people, and above all, have fun! Sincerely, Tom Crawford CEO, VizThink Session Types Hands On: Active audience participation in the concepts, ideas, approaches, and styles. A computer may be helpful for some sessions. Discussion: Small and large group networking and discussion with all rooms set up in rounds to encourage discussion throughout the event. Debates: We’ll place opposing views or approaches on the stage to field questions from you to show both shared and differing views. Panels: Teams of experts and practitioners from both similar and opposing viewpoints will field your questions on a variety of topics. Interviews: Part talk show, part audience participation...we’ll get your favorite facilitators up on stage and ask the tough questions Quick Hits: During the general sessions, we’ll provide quick exposure to a bunch of new ideas, technology, research, and approaches. Tours: Getting out of the hotel and conference center to view related visual thinking topics in the neighboring community. Session Content 3D Organization Community Sketching Implementation Visual Language Mapping Comics Presentation Facilitation Video Interactivity Wayfinding Photography Brainstorming Strategy Design Visual Thinking Infographics FAQ What is the appropriate attire for the conference? CASUAL business attire is appropriate for all meetings and for the Welcome Reception. Nice jeans are acceptable in the hotel restaurant and public areas. What will be the primary language for this conference? This conference will be conducted in English. Will the event be photographed? VizThink ‘08 will have a professional photographer on site. Pictures from the event will be posted on the event website. We may also use some of the images that this photographer takes during the conference for publication and promotion of future VizThink events. Attendance at the event is implied agreement to the use of your image for future events. We would also encourage you to bring your cameras to document your experience and the output of the sessions. Will the event be recorded? The general sessions will be video recorded, and portions of some of the breakout sessions will be video recorded as well. Notes in various forms will also be posted to the conference wiki. By attending the event you are providing VizThink permission to use your image in future promotional materials. What is the conference wiki and who is it for? The conference wiki is for everyone. Anyone can view the pages, and attendees have been given access to edit the web pages. Conference attendees can share their written notes, mind maps, graphic recordings, sketching, photographs, and any other information. There is a wiki page for each breakout session and for each general session. What meals are included? The opening reception, continental breakfast both days, lunch both days, and afternoon break both days. What is the dine around on Monday night? We’ve made reservations at a variety of restaurants around San Francisco for Monday night. There are a variety of styles and price points. Starting Monday morning, there will be a sign up list for each restaurant. Sign up a whole group or join a random group. Meet new people. Learn new ideas. We’ll provide copies of the menus and maps. Each person pays for their own meal and transportation (many are within easy walking distance). This is one of the best networking opportunities at the conference. We would encourage everybody to take advantage. Can I use my cellphone? We ask that while you’re at the conference you place your cellphone or other mobile device in silent mode. Some cell phones may work in the conference space, but you may have spotty reception. Should I bring my laptop? None of the sessions will require the use of technology. However, if you want to access the conference wiki, or use a particular visualthinking software, a mobile device may be helpful. There will not be power at the tables in the general session room, so we highly suggest you bring full charged devices for those sessions. Will Internet access be available? We are providing FREE Internet access to all attendees in the convention space. You will be responsible for any Internet access in your hotel room. We ask that you be considerate of other attendees and limit your access to one laptop or mobile device. There will not be power at the tables in the general session room, so we highly suggest you bring fully charged devices for those sessions. Do I need to know how to draw? You do not need to know how to draw. Some sessions will take advantage of sketching, but they will teach you what you need to know as the session moves along. Some sessions will take advantage of technology as well, so having a laptop might be helpful. Do I need to bring drawing supplies? We are providing pens, colored pencils, markers, crayons, post-it notes, and paper of all sorts for all of the sessions. You are welcome to bring your own, but it is not necessary. Will there be a bookstore? Yes! Barnes and Noble will be running the conference bookstore. It will feature books from our facilitators as well as key books from the industry. At A Glance Saturday, January 26 8:00am - 5:00pm 9:00am - 3:00pm Pre-conference Workshop with Karl Gude - Day 1 Saturday Pre-conference Workshop with Dave Gray Location Stanford City Sunday, January 27 9:00am - 4:15pm 9:00am - 3:00pm 3:00pm - 8:30pm 6:30pm - 8:30pm Pre-conference Workshop with Karl Gude - Day 2 Sunday Pre-conference Workshop with Dave Gray Arrivals & Registration Welcome Reception & Vendor Exhibits Location Stanford City Metropolitan Ballroom Lobby Metropolitan Ballroom Monday, January 28 8:00am - 5:00pm 8:00am - 9:00am 9:00am - 10:30am 10:30am - 11:00am 11:00am - 12:30pm 12:30pm - 1:30pm 1:30pm - 3:00pm 3:00pm - 3:30pm 3:30pm - 5:00pm Registration Open Continental Breakfast & Vendor Exhibits Opening General Session Morning Break & Vendor Exhibits Breakout Sessions Lunch & Vendor Exhibits Breakout Sessions Afternoon Snack Break & Vendor Exhibits General Session Location Metropolitan Ballroom Lobby Metropolitan Ballroom Metropolitan Ballroom Metropolitan Ballroom Various Metropolitan Ballroom Various Metropolitan Ballroom Metropolitan Ballroom Tuesday, January 29 8:00am - 5:00pm 8:00am - 9:00am 9:00am - 10:30am 10:30am - 11:00am 11:00am - 12:30pm 12:30pm - 1:30pm 1:30pm - 3:00pm 3:00pm - 3:30pm 3:30pm - 5:00pm Registration Open Continental Breakfast & Vendor Exhibits General Session Morning Break & Vendor Exhibits Breakout Sessions Lunch & Vendor Exhibits Breakout Sessions Afternoon Snack Break & Vendor Exhibits Closing General Session Location Metropolitan Ballroom Lobby Metropolitan Ballroom Metropolitan Ballroom Metropolitan Ballroom Various Metropolitan Ballroom Various Metropolitan Ballroom Metropolitan Ballroom Pre-Conference Events P1 | Standford | Karl Gude 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 I package multiple elements together effectively so that I don’t confuse people out of their minds? 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 two days can be applied to solve any number of visualization challenges. Visual Thinking Workshop P2 | City | Dave Gray • 9:00am - 3:00pm Attendees go through the process of designing a presentation. Working hands-on in small groups, you will collaboratively design and deliver a presentation on a topic of importance to you. 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, and act, and you will get the business results that you want. This one-day workshop will be repeated on both Saturday and Sunday given you two options to select from during registration. P1 | Standford | Karl Gude *See Above (P1) for Workshop Description Visual Thinking Workshop P3 | City | Dave Gray • 9:00am - 3:00pm *See Above (P2) for Workshop Description Registration Open • 3:00pm - 8:30pm Conference registration, located on the 2nd floor of the Westin San Francisco Market Street, will be open during all main hours of the conference. Stop by the registration desk first thing to pick up your badge. It includes your free drink tickets for the opening reception. You can also visit the desk throughout the conference for information, directions, assistance, and lost & found. Opening Reception • 6:30pm - 8:30pm Our gala opening reception, held in the Metropolitan Ballroom across from conference registration, will be a great time to network with your visual thinking colleagues in the setting of a visual thinking and visual arts gallery. Heavy hors devours will be served along with a variety of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages. Your two free drink tickets will be supplied with your badge at registration. During the reception, you’ll see works from students of the Art Institute of California – San Francisco as well as from some of our facilitators and sponsors. Representatives from each of our sponsors will also be present at their booths situated throughout the room. Sunday, January 27 How to Communicate Visually Using Infographics • 9:00am - 4:15pm Saturday, January 26 How to Communicate Visually Using Infographics • 8:00am - 5:00pm Drawing Basics with Dave Gray Many of us know how to draw, we’ve just forgotten how. Dave Gray will give us a quick refresher on how to draw beyond the stick figure and how to begin to communicate information. No previous drawing experience is necessary. An Interview with Bob Horn By Nancy Duarte and Cliff Atkinson Bob is the author of Visual Language: Global Communication for the 21st Century. The landmark book, out of print until recently, has been republished and will be available for sale at the conference. He will be doing a book signing immediately after this general session. In addition, Bob is also the inventor of Information Mapping’s Methodology and founder of the Company which is the leader in authoring structured content. He is a visiting scholar at Stanford University and has taught at Harvard and Columbia universities. He is also author of the Mapping Great Debates series Can Computers Think? and of Mapping Hypertext. He is the director of the project to apply visual thinking to public policy issues, working on climate change and energy strategy, nuclear waste disposal, foreign policy, as well as other “wicked” problems on the local and state level. During this session, Nancy Duarte and Cliff Atkinson will interview Bob about visual thinking, visual language, and the future of global communication. It’s sure to be an exciting session with a legend in our field. Monday, January 28 • Morning General Session • 9:00am - 10:30am Monday Morning General Session Visual Language: Global Communication for the 21st Century 101 | Franciscan I | Robert Horn | wiki.vizthink.com/08n504 Monday, January 28 • Morning Breakout Sessions • 11:00am - 12:30pm Bob Horn’s ground-breaking book Visual Language asserts that the tightly integrated use of words and visual elements has produced a new global language. Vocabularies from diverse fields such as diagramming, cartooning, animation, quantitative charts and graphs, and info-graphics, among many others, are converging to form a single language. Visual Language provides an initial exploration of the syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of the foundational language for deep visual thinking. Bob will introduce the linguistics of visual language and discuss his current work with complex organizational issues. Among the newest tools that help us address these public policy and organizational issues is the field of visual analytics which integrates the insights of strategic analysis with highly visual knowledge maps and comprehensive information-murals. His talk will conclude with a description of the new possibilities that visual language provides for global understanding. The Back of the Napkin: Solving Business Problems (and Selling your Solutions) with Pictures 102 | Franciscan II | Dan Roam | wiki.vizthink.com/08n532 On the way home from this conference, you strike up a conversation with the person next to you. She asks, “What brings you to San Francisco?” You say, “A conference on visual thinking.” She smiles and says, “Interesting — what’s that all about?” Quick: what do you say? Better, what do you DRAW? Let’s face it: even for those of us who consider ourselves visual, describing concepts--whether we’re talking to a stranger in a bar, a CEO, or a the lowest project manager in the food chain--is hard, even visually. In this session, Dan Roam demonstrates how anyone--regardless of artistic talent or training--can create simple pictures *anywhere, anytime* to describe a complex concept, discover a new idea, solve a fuzzy problem, and sell a breakthrough concept. We’ll discuss the 4 steps of effective visual thinking, 5 questions that kick our mind’s eye into high gear, 6 ways we see... and the 6 ways we can show. Drawing the Big Picture: Strategy Alignment and Deployment Using Visualization 103 | Commonwealth | Jim Haudan | wiki.vizthink.com/08n528 Trying to understand strategy--let alone deploy it--without a big picture is like trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle without the box top. You wouldn’t think of going on a road trip without a map, but business leaders send their people every day with no real sense of the territory they’re navigating! In this session, Jim Haudan will present some fascinating insights on the role of visualization in business, including the importance of a common visual language, thinking in metaphors, and by drawing people into the drama of their business. He will share the deeper reasons behind visualization in business--how “thinking big” gives people a sense of belonging, shows them that what they do undoubtedly makes a difference to their organization, and allows them to focus on the major forces that drive business rather than the everyday tactics that often occupy most of our work life. This session will be valuable to anyone who has a role in communicating strategy and creating deeper engagement of employees. Screw Requirements: Shaping Customer Experience Strategies 104 | Cornell | Henning Fischer, Sarah Nelson, Brandon Schauer | wiki.vizthink.com/08n506 Stop creating bullet-point product requirements! Instead, visualize your strategy by starting with the only thing that matters in the lives of your customers — the experience they have with your product or service. Bullet-point presentations just can’t reveal the subtleties that create a great experience. But by visualizing the experience you can make your strategies tangible to your business, your partners, and other stakeholders. In this interactive work session we’ll cover the tools and techniques we use to communicate experience designs and strategies. Participants will have the opportunity to try some techniques themselves and learn how to facilitate these activities with their own teams. 105 | Stanford | Cliff Atkinson | wiki.vizthink.com/08n501 If you think PowerPoint has nothing to do with visual thinking, it’s time to take a second look at how you can transform this common software into a powerful visual story telling tool. Inspired by screenwriting and storyboarding techniques along with the latest research on multimedia learning, Cliff Atkinson will show you how to use PowerPoint to visually brainstorm, prototype, design and deliver information effectively. Using examples from the legal, business and educational presentations, Cliff will leave you with a new outlook and toolkit to teach an old PowerPoint dog new tricks. BizViz: A Framework for Applying Visual Thinking in Business 106 | City | Tom Wujec | wiki.vizthink.com/08n530 Writing on the Walls 107 | Concordia | Christine Valenza | wiki.vizthink.com/08n502 “Writing on the Walls” is the use of large-scale graphics – created in real time to inspire group participation, clarify concepts, and spark innovation. The result is a mural with strategically arranged words and images that can be digitized to retain the group memory. Invoking images in the minds of others is the most powerful way to communicate, yet the potential is untapped in most organizations. As the workforce becomes increasingly global, visual, and icon-driven, “writing on the walls” is a core competency for workforce leaders, information designers, and developers of new ideas. No artistic skill is necessary to master the use of simply drawn imagery for focusing attention and inspiring action – it just takes a shift in thinking and a few simple images. Behind the simplicity is an ancient story of how shape, symbol, and metaphor enables us to feel as well as think about concepts. Visual Storytelling 108 | Olympic | Karl Gude | wiki.vizthink.com/08n520 In this session you will try some simple drawing techniques and learn how to use them to sketch out a narrative. Need to visualize that new restructuring plan? Need to show a step-by-step process? Karl Gude will give you a behind-the-scenes look at how he worked at Newsweek, using drawings, maps, charts, and other visualizing tools will lead you through your own exercise in visual storytelling. Karl has helped readers understand complex news stories by visualizing them, from how the Pope, Reagan and John Lennon were shot to how the planes hit the World Trade Center. But the stories he covered were not always so dramatic. He also explained such topics as how drugs work in the body, what executives did wrong at Enron and how flowers can be planted in a garden to bloom throughout the day. Come to this session to learn how to apply these same proven techniques to your business problem. Monday, January 28 BizViz is a framework of visual thinking, communication and collaboration techniques intended to help teams make ideas visible, tangible and persistent—and their work more fun and effective. Based on a diverse range of visual processes derived from product design, entertainment, architecture, and others, BizViz synthesizes the fundamental activities of business and design into a simple, powerful and easy to apply collaboration system. This interactive workshop will illustrate the core principles and essential visual patterns that teams can apply to their projects: making sense of current reality, envisioning possibilities, clarifying destinations and the means to reach them, approaches to coordinate work in the context of changing environments, visual approaches for more effective meetings and presentations, and the value and values of visual thinking. Workshop participants will not only learn about these approaches in theory but will have opportunities to apply them to a set of real-world problems in both physical and digital representations. • Morning Breakout Sessions • 11:00am - 12:30pm Teach an Old PowerPoint Dog New Tricks... Exploring the Presentation Ecosystem 201 | Franciscan I | Nancy Duarte | wiki.vizthink.com/08n507 Everyone who develops or delivers presentations is by default a visual thinker. If you went to school for business communications, effective visual story telling is not part of the curriculum. What we know was learned on the job. In this session you will learn that there are specific phases in the presentation development process that when visual thinking is incorporated, it will exponentially increase the value to the audience and power of the visual story. Learn audience insights, turn words into pictures and approach your next presentation with a new perspective, tools and mind-set. Monday, January 28 • Afternoon Breakout Sessions • 1:30pm - 3:00pm Visual Language: What “Comics” Can Tell Us About the Mind 202 | Franciscan II | Neil Cohn | wiki.vizthink.com/08n503 In the past decades, comics, graphic novels, and Japanese manga have been growing in the public eye as legitimate forms of “art” and “literature.” This talk will reach beyond these social considerations to propose a far more basic and powerful idea: that sequential images literally become a visual language (VL). In addition to analyzing the structure of VL, illustrating the inherent qualities it shares with verbal, written, and sign languages, this talk will put cultural issues into perspective, explain the cognitive function of VL, and demonstrate how the process of drawing and interpreting images is an innate part of human nature. This presentation will not only intrigue anyone who has ever picked up a comic, but will dispel commonly-held illusions and blaze new trails by offering a novel perspective on language, graphic communication, and human expression. VizMaps: An Alternate Approach to Describing Where 203 | Commonwealth | Bruce Daniel | wiki.vizthink.com/08n513 No text, no numbers, no labels, no scale, no measuring, no surveying. How can a map use only visuals to describe precise location? A quick review of maps old and new reveals different approaches that rely only on form and display to communicate. We’ll draw quick maps from our houses to our favorite restaurants. Hands on with your table-mates, we’ll pick starting points and destinations (preferably in the real world) and work together to describe those places in relation to each other using only non-glyphic visuals. Together we’ll look at the results and see how the maps we come in contact with everyday might be improved upon. Encapsulated Stories: Visual Artifacts to Build Connections 204 | Cornell | Roshi Givechi | wiki.vizthink.com/08n534 You’ve just been invited to design the Next Big Thing. Your process might involve these steps: looking at patterns and behaviors among people who will buy or experience the Big Thing, documenting and synthesizing observations to isolate insights and inspiration, prototyping concepts, testing ideas, implementing, and ultimately storytelling to strengthen communications about The Big Thing. Visual thinking is a given (after all, you’re “designing” But what are “the visuals” and how exactly do they tell relevant stories along the way? .) How do the artifacts serve to envision new possibilities, reveal the optimal design direction, refine and build the big idea, and create emotional connections to users? How does visual thinking and storytelling weave through the entire journey to build momentum, clarity and emotional resonance? In this session, Roshi Givechi will lead us through a design case study in order to engage directly with emerging directions in visual thinking to support design or any creative endeavor. Influencing Strategy by Design 205 | Stanford | Luke Wroblewski | wiki.vizthink.com/08n515 Diagramming Fitness 206 | City | Nigel Holmes | wiki.vizthink.com/08n522 Many of us sit in front of the computer for hours, and it’s doing us no good. To help ourselves, we might look at some of the hundreds of books about exercise and fitness, but they are mostly unsatisfying. In this session we’ll do some simple stretching exercises (come prepared to lie down on the floor!), and then together we’ll see if we can come up with a useful, simple and clear way to diagram the exercises. What Makes Visuals Speak? 207 | Concordia | Christine Martell | wiki.vizthink.com/08n517 Panoramic Visualization: A Mind Gym for Group Intelligence 208 | Olympic | David Sibbet | wiki.vizthink.com/08n505 David Sibbet, pioneering graphic facilitator, will demonstrate the full power of large scale, real-time, graphic visualization as a power tool for leadership teams doing strategy, project teams charged with innovation, and groups who want to bulk up their systems thinking capability. After demonstrating, he will take us under the hood of his technique and share secrets about the powerful visual grammar and tools he has developed over 30 years of application worldwide. This interactive journey will be augmented by examples from the fully built-out sim in Second Life that is a living 4D representation of The Grove’s visual world. Bridging virtual and real-time space is a current passion of his, so buckle up for a warp-speed jump into 21st Century visual literacy. Monday, January 28 In this session we’ll explore the elements that make visuals speak. We’ll start the conversation with photographs, exploring not only the story, but also the visual language elements that reveal less conscious aspects of what we are saying. By using a set of tested photographs, we will quickly delve into an in-depth conversation of how to utilize visual elements to their fullest. You can expect to come away from this experience with a greater understanding of how to effectively use visuals to uncover strategic vision for individuals, groups and organizations. This session will be experiential and fun. No drawing required! • Afternoon Breakout Sessions • 1:30pm - 3:00pm How can we put visual thinking to work in the corporate boardroom where text-heavy mission statements and spreadsheets continue to reign supreme? Through case studies and interactive examples, this session will outline how the tenants of visual thinking (pattern recognition, storytelling, visual communication, and empathy) can be effectively employed to synthesize and communicate clear, actionable strategies. We’ll discuss how to use this visual thinking toolkit to kick-start key discussions that ultimately impact business direction by illuminating important business decision-drivers like market or user research, product analytics, financials, and product ecosystems. Join us as we discuss how to maximize a visual thinker’s ability to help their organization make better decisions. Monday Afternoon General Session Artrain Introduction Each year, VizThink will be supporting philanthropic organizations with similar missions to our own. This year, we’re privileged to be able to support two great organizations. The first of which is Artrain USA. Artrain USA is America’s Hometown Art Museum. A non-profit organization based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Artrain USA has been a leader and pioneer in taking art and cultural programming to communities throughout the nation. With five rail cars housing a fine arts exhibition, artist studio, gift shop and staff administrative space, Artrain USA brings exceptional educational opportunities and community activities made possible by the generosity of the nation’s railroads. Since its inception in 1971, more than 2.9 million people in 725 communities across the country have visited Artrain USA. We’ll hear from Deb Polich and Brian Tolle about how the visual thinking community can help such a worthy cause. Monday, January 28 • Afternoon General Session • 3:30pm - 5:00pm Visual Communications Problem Solving Often, it’s not about the tools we use, but the process we go through to come up with visual thinking solutions. This segment is designed to show just that, and we’ve got three great people to help us with that including Jamie Nast, Christine Martell, and David Sibbet. We’re going to put these three leaders on the spot by bringing them up on stage and presenting them with a real world communications problem. They’ll have never seen it before and have no time to prepare. Their job will be to come up with a visual thinking solution, and we’ll get to watch how they approach it and what they come up with. However, they won’t be in it alone. Each of the tables in the audience will work on the problem too. This segment promises to be a fascinating look into the similarities and differences between visual thinking approaches. Ethics in Visual Thinking It’s not enough to learn what visual thinking is about or even how to do it. Visualization is a powerful technique. Every choice we make can have an influence on people’s perceptions about the topic we’re conveying. What we choose to include, what we choose to exclude, and how we choose to represent it all can cause wild swings in people’s opinions. With great power also comes great responsibility. During this segment Donna Kienzler will lead our panel of experts including Karl Gude, Nigel Holmes, Bryan Christie, and John Grimwade. Each will draw from their own experiences as well as examples from across the industry to demonstrate the ethical dilemmas we face every day. VizThink is really all about the community. Our dine arounds, a unique feature of VizThink, are designed to provide another opportunity for networking and meeting other members of the community. We’ve done all the work for you. We’ve researched the local restaurants. Some in walking distance, some a short cab ride away. Some inexpensive, some a little less so, but all within typical per diems. There’s even a wide variety of cuisines as well. We’ve made the reservations with only 8 to 16 people at each restaurant to encourage the conversation and allow more in depth conversations. You’ll be provided with addresses, phone numbers, directions, and maps. The sign up lists will be available all day Monday near conference registration. You can sign up as an individual or bring a few friends. You’ll be responsible for coordinating your own transportation and payment. We can’t wait to see the pictures and hear the stories. Tuesday Morning General Session The Art Institute The second philanthropic organization we’re supporting this year is the Art Institute of California – San Francisco. This organization is a leader in career-oriented education in the fields of Design, Media Arts, and Fashion. Their goal is to help students cultivate and refine the talent and skills that are essential in today’s marketplace and that will provide a foundation for the future. We’ll hear from Laurie Torelli, Academic Director for Game Art & Design and Visual & Game Programming, about the great work their students are doing. Lee and Sachi LeFever Sometimes static images aren’t enough. Lee and Sachi LeFever have been doing great work making the complex simple in their video series, …In Plain English. We’ll take a look at a couple of their videos and interview them about their approach and what they’ve learned so far. Later in the day, we’ll also take a look at some of the videos that were created during their very hands-on breakout session. Tom Wujec Digital visualization tools are evolving at a blistering pace and are touching almost every industry, from architecture and product design, through financial management and energy exploration, to science and art. Tom Wujec will present a broad survey of the state of the art of digital visualization tools and reflect on their impact on enhancing understanding, engaging emotional connection and improving decision-making - ultimately, the goals of effective visualization. Be prepared to be dazzled by the convergence and evolution of visual communication and evolving digital technologies. Tuesday, January 29 • Morning General Session • 9:00am - 10:30am Dine Arounds • 6:00pm Dine Arounds Visual Thinking in Practice 301 | Franciscan I | Dave Gray | wiki.vizthink.com/08n526 This session will cover how to turn your ideas into images, engage groups, and communicate more clearly, to get the understanding and results that you want. What’s the difference between theory and practice? In theory they’re the same. In practice they’re different. We’ll look at some proven, practical tools and techniques for turning complex or potentially confusing information into clear, concise, concrete visual images. And we won’t just talk about them -- we’ll practice them too. Using simple tools like paper and sticky notes, you’ll have a chance to practice visualizing your ideas and explaining them to others. Tuesday, January 29 • Morning Breakout Sessions • 11:00am - 12:30pm Mapping a Great 2008 302 | Franciscan II | Jamie Nast & Susi Watson | wiki.vizthink.com/08n531 How do you create on-the-fly maps that chart out your business thoughts, creative processes, and personal thoughts? How do you visualize your way to success and efficiency in the workplace and at home? How do big companies and individuals use these techniques to drive success? How can your 2008 be great? Join Jamie Nast to discover how to learn more and access your hidden brain power. With the assistance of Susi Watson, you will develop your personal business mapping skills by tapping into the associative nature of the brain, and the entire group will participate in building an appealing collaborative map. Business and personal mapping examples from major corporations will be shared to assist you in identifying and implementing mapping strategies into your work and life. The final exercise will utilize your new mapping skills to visualize a brilliant 2008! Join us in this fun-filled, open discussion to see what unfolds. Top 10 Lessons for Introducing Visual Thinking To Your Organization 303 | Commonwealth | Michele Floriani | wiki.vizthink.com/08n518 From aligning internal stakeholders to helping commercialize a product or service, the capability of visually expressing an idea in a simple and easy-to-understand way is a powerful one to have inside the walls of any organization. Often, internal creative teams are best positioned to extend their value and introduce a visual thinking service to their organizations. However, internal teams need to consider how they will prepare for, position, and deliver the service in order to make it meaningful and efficient for the business. In this session, Michele Floriani will apply lessons learned on implementing and managing a visual thinking service in your organization. The audience members can contribute high level information about their organization to self identify with potential service models to take back to their business stakeholders. We will look at different visual examples of visual thinking corporate work and cover the important factors for ensuring scalability and maximum impact of a visual thinking service. Solving Explanation Problems with Simple Online Videos 304 | Cornell | Lee and Sashi LeFever | wiki..vizthink.com/08n512 Is it difficult for potential customers to “get” the value of your product or service? If so, you have an explanation problem. By understanding explanation problems and how to solve them, you will find new ways to get the right message to the right people. In less than six months, Common Craft went from being video newbies to working full time on custom video productions for organizations of all types, including Google. Two elements to their success: they use a simple paper-and-whiteboard format that helps to boil complex ideas down to a simple message, and they utilize social media sites like their blog, YouTube, Digg, and Facebook to extend their product to the masses. This session will be a mix of discussion and a hands-on workshop where attendees will learn about the Common Craft story, process and style and then get a start on their own productions. You’ll enjoy this session if you’re interested in simplicity, explanation, social media, viral marketing, innovative business models, online video and video production. Beyond Photorealism: Using 3-D Information Graphics 305 | Stanford | Bryan Christie | wiki.vizthink.com/08n529 The potential of 3-D visualization is vast. Once the seductive thrill of producing photoreal images is put aside, 3-D becomes an incredible tool for creating explanatory visuals that haven’t been seen before for generating a hyperreality. Using the principles of photography, sculpture, painting and illustration, 3-D combines the strengths of many disciplines into one medium; the breadth and scope of tone and feeling are almost limitless. Concepts and data, from medical to architectural to astronomical, can be presented in an informative and breathtaking way. Communicating Product Concepts with Comics 306 | City | Kevin Cheng | wiki.vizthink.com/08n525 Using Interaction Design to Visualize Complex Information: How to Tell Stories and Solve Problems 307 | Concordia | Doug LeMoine, Dana Smith, Nick Myers | wiki.vizthink.com/08n523 Immersive Visualization: Enhancing Intuition via the First-Person Interface 308 | Olympic | Tony O’Driscoll & Brent Schlenker | wiki.vizthink.com/08n533 This session explores how 3D virtual world technology enhances collective inquiry and intuition by enabling peer-to-peer avatar-mediated interaction and collaboration around visually (and virtually) rendered data-sets or artifacts. The group will tour various places in Second Life where we will explore how virtualization meets visualization and immersion to create a new experience such as what it feels like to be enveloped in a VanGogh painting or a white blood cell flowing through the bloodstream. Find out what it looks like to hike the S&P 500 data for the past 6 months or interact with a building prototype to make sense of it. The session will end with an “Imaging the possibilities” of augmented virtual reality. Cartoon Art Museum Tour (pre-registration required) 309 | Registration | Docent | wiki.vizthink.com/08n514 We have arranged for a very special, docent-led tour of San Francisco’s Cartoon Art Museum. The tour will cover a historical view of the impact of cartoons on visual thinking. The facilitated tour will last about 45 minutes with additional time for browsing on your own through out the very interesting exhibit. Check in by the conference registration desk 15 minutes prior to the start time. Tuesday, January 29 At Cooper, we’re often confronted with the task of clarifying complex sets of information. We’re not experts in any of the domains we work in – portfolio management, risk analysis, supply chain management – so in order to present the information, we start with understanding the people who will use the systems. With their needs and motivations in mind, we craft stories that describe an ideal usage experience. In this session, you’ll get a sense of how we use visualizations and imagery at Cooper to tell stories of people accomplishing their goals. You’ll also get a chance to do it yourself by tackling a design problem involving a complex set of information, and communicate your solution by telling a story. • Morning Breakout Sessions Do you have difficulty communicating concepts for products and features? Are you looking for a new way to rally your team around a shared vision for your product? As projects become more complex, it becomes crucial to provide stakeholders with approachable and easy to digest concepts. Many teams try to use requirements documents to define concepts. However, these documents often yield unsatisfactory results. They suffer from being ignored after their creation and interpreted differently by everyone. Unlike other medium, comics have a visceral appeal and strong communication properties. Kevin will share how to use comics to get teams on the same page, even if you think you can’t draw. Attendees will be shown how to use previously generated facial expressions, photos, or avatars, and tracing to create comics. Kevin will also cover 5 inherent properties which can help people use comics to their full potential when communicating a vision. • 11:00am - 12:30pm A Medium in Transition 401 | Franciscan I | Scott McCloud | wiki.vizthink.com/08n509 American comics are changing fast. Bolstered by the literary ambitions of the “graphic novel” movement, a flood of international influences and the growing importance of new technologies, the comics landscape shifts regularly in surprising and increasingly unpredictable directions. Author and comics artist Scott McCloud puts all these trends into perspective in a fast-moving visual presentation. Visual Ethics 402 | Franciscan II | Donna Kienzler | wiki.vizthink.com/08n527 Ethics, self-interest, and bottom lines have always been an uneasy mix. Visuals add yet another major ingredient to that brew. Because visuals have such an impact and because they are remembered longer than text, ethical decisions behind their construction should be carefully considered. This session will look first at some of the problem points for constructing ethical visuals and second at structures that help guide ethical decision making. Then we will discuss various scenarios: Were the decisions ethical or unethical? Is this a black and white case for you? How deep a shade of gray do you tolerate? We may even get into shades of red (blood money), yellow (cowardice), green (ecointerests), or brown (mudslinging). Tuesday, January 29 • Afternoon Breakout Sessions • 1:30pm - 3:00pm Optimizing Visual Thinking within an Overall Organizational Change 403 | Commonwealth | Lance Dublin | wiki.vizthink.com/08n521 Organizational change at its essence is about changing individual and organizational attitudes and behaviors. And, visual thinking can be a key enabler in the overall change process. In this session we will explore how to incorporate visual thinking into the proven I-3 Change Implementation Model. This model uses a combination of cognitive and behavioral approaches, with ongoing reinforcement, to embed the change into the organizational culture. By addressing the requirements for information-awareness, involvement-engagement, and integration-commitment the possibilities for long-term success of any organizational change can be greatly enhanced. Building Visual Thinking Communities 404 | Cornell | Ryan Coleman | wiki.vizthink.com/08n510 There are more visual thinkers out there then most realize - the challenge is very few actually have a job title or role that speaks to their inner visual thinker. In this session we’ll discuss how to bring the VizThink spirit home with you and introduce it internally to your business or out to your broader community and help identify and foster a visual thinking community. Using his experiences from building and running the Toronto series of regional VizThink events, Ryan Coleman will share his insights on building a community of visual thinkers. Through a blend of presentation and interactive discussion we’ll cover format suggestions, what’s worked (& what hasn’t), as well as organization and promotion tools. We’ll also work to define what it is participants are looking for from a VizThink community and connect attendees with other VizThinkers from their region or neighboring areas in hopes of kick-starting a few new regional VizThink communities. Mapping the Possibilities 405 | Stanford I | John Grimwade | wiki.vizthink.com/08n516 How do we help people navigate complex spaces? What is the process that produces a clear and concise wayfinding graphic? John Grimwade explains how to provide users with graphics that really help them find their way around. Design, editing, hierarchy, order and color are the tools. A museum, a city, or a region: The secrets of the successful directional map are revealed in this session. Visual Modeling as Part of the Organizational Culture 406 | City | Dan Rose | wiki.vizthink.com/08n511 You don’t have to be an artist to tap into the power of the right side of the brain. We will discuss how “everyday people” use the power of visual modeling and graphic facilitation to accelerate and improve their work products. We will discuss our 5 principles of successful collaborative work and explore a case study of the principles in action. Working in a Digital Visual Environment: The Desktop Rethought 407 | Concordia | Harlan Hugh | wiki.vizthink.com/08n508 IBM Enterprise Architecture in the 3D Internet 408 | Olympic | Michael Martine | wiki.vizthink.com/08n519 Museum of Modern Art (pre-registration required) 409 | Registration | Docent | wiki.vizthink.com/08n524 We have arranged for a very special, docent-led tour of San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art. The tour will focus on the various visual thinking approaches as designed in the fine arts. The facilitated tour will last about 60 minutes. Check in by the conference registration desk 15 minutes prior to the start time. Tuesday, January 29 The IBM CIO Enterprise Architecture team has turned the EA into a living lab to enable architects and business leaders to experience business processes as they flow through the landscape using 3D Internet virtual world technology. The ability to “fly” through the architecture as an order (and other key processes) enables one to visualize/experience the areas for greatest simplification opportunities and gain a better understanding by comparing before and after architectures. The immersive 3D Internet virtual world helps the explorer of the architecture collaborate with their fellow explorers who are experiencing the same process and data flows at the same time. Furthermore, a comprehensive understanding between business processes, data, applications and the underlying infrastructure is gained much faster and more thoroughly than charts might convey. • Afternoon Breakout Sessions The desktop revolutionized computing by eliminating the need to type commands, but by today’s standards, it hardly scratches the surface of the potential for a truly visual interface. The electronic version of a paper-based hierarchical filing system has served well as a nice introduction to computing for the TV generation, but forces organizing information into folders that needlessly separate content. We need to create a digital environment based on the most powerful information processor in existence, the human mind. Associative computing has no limits. Any piece of information can be linked to anything else, triggering all relevant information. This presentation will show how to use visualization not only to transform your desktop, but to transform thinking for everything you do and all the information you work with. Join Harlan Hugh and explore the application of visualization to mapping the complex associative networks that form the basis of the way we think and work. • 1:30pm - 3:00pm Tuesday Afternoon General Session Lee and Sachi LeFever GS4 | Metropolitan | We’ll bring Lee and Sachi LeFever back up on stage to take a look at some of the videos that you created during their breakout session. Tuesday, January 29 • Afternoon General Session • 3:30pm - 5:00pm Scott McCloud We’re really excited to have Scott McCloud, a comics legend at the event. Scott has been writing and drawing comics since 1984. His book Understanding Comics was a New York Times Notable book for 1994, and is available in 16 languages. McCloud has lectured on comics and digital media at Harvard University, MIT, Pixar, Microsoft and The Smithsonian Institution. McCloud’s online comics can be found on his website at scottmccloud.com. His latest book, Making Comics, for which he just finished a 50-state-and-severalCanadian-province tour is in stores now, including the conference bookstore. MINDJET + TECHSMITH = A powerful pair to bring clarity to your work Capture, organize and share your visual thinking with ease! Whether you’re performing research, planning your next project or simply organizing your thoughts, Mindjet® MindManager® Pro 7 and TechSmith’s visual software enhances your work. SOFTWARE FOR THE WAY TEAMS WANT TO WORK SCREEN CAPTURE AND RECORDING TOOLS FOR PEOPLE LIKE YOU VISIT US AT BOOTH #14 WWW.MINDJET.COM (415) 229-4200 VISIT US AT BOOTH #22 WWW.TECHSMITH.COM (517) 381-2300 When you visit our booths, be sure to enter a contest to win copies of MindManager Pro 7, SnagIt & Camtasia Studio software! Premier Sponsors From state-of-the-art CAD design and drafting to the industry’s most progressive digital prototyping, Autodesk delivers a comprehensive suite of solutions to help you create, improve, and refine your designs. Since 1982, Autodesk has ushered in state-of-the-art 2D and 3D technologies that let customers visualize, simulate, and analyze the real-world performance of their ideas early in the design process. This gives our customers the flexibility to optimize and improve designs before actually executing them. Autodesk customers not only see, but experience, their designs before they are real, empowering them to save time and money, improve quality, and foster innovation. BOSSdev plans to launch Spinscape™, a collaboration tool that introduces a completely new way of gathering and managing information. This tool provides a compelling solution to the problem of finding, visualizing, organizing, and sharing information by enabling individuals to collaborate and navigate over the web. With an easy-to-use interface, users have the ability to auto-discover information from multiple digital sources, create meaningful relationships between nodes of information, and then securely share and collaborate over those nodes with selected users. BOSSdev is a software development and creative solutions provider that specializes in best-in-class web design, advergaming, flash development, custom applications and other tailored technology solutions. Philanthropic Partners The Art Institute of California — San Francisco is a leader in career-oriented education in the fields of Design, Media Arts, and Fashion. Our goal is to help students cultivate and refine the talent and skills that are essential in today’s marketplace and that will provide a foundation for the future. Artrain USA is America’s Hometown Art Museum. A nonprofit organization based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Artrain USA has been a leader and pioneer in taking art and cultural programming to communities throughout the nation. With five rail cars housing a fine arts exhibition, artist studio, gift shop and staff administrative space, Artrain USA brings exceptional educational opportunities and community activities made possible by the generosity of the nation’s railroads. Since its inception in 1971, more than 2.9 million people in 725 communities across the country have visited Artrain USA. Degrees Offered: Associate of Science: Fashion Design, Fashion Marketing, Graphic Design and Web Design & Interactive Media Bachelor of Fine Arts: Fashion Design Bachelor of Science: Advertising, Fashion Marketing & Management, Game Art & Design, Graphic Design, Web Design & Interactive Media, Interior Design, Media Arts & Animation, Simulation & Virtual Environments, and Visual & Game Programming Master of Fine Arts: Computer Animation Sponsors TheBrain Technologies provides visualization software that helps people see, find and understand information faster. TheBrain’s award winning visual user interface, enables people to link to together networks of information in the same manner they naturally think. Pieces of information in TheBrain are represented as Thoughts. Like your mind, clicking on a Thought triggers all related information so new ideas and connections are instantly discovered. TheBrain’s Enterprise Knowledge Platform, BrainEKP, helps business worldwide see and share information more effectively, improve customer service, innovate their products, discover mission critical information and streamline operations. Since 1999, creative professionals and businesses alike have enjoyed a relationship with Create More, Inc, an Apple Specialist in San Francisco, CA. In addition to the graphic, audio and video arts, Create More, Inc. supports the conceptual process as well. First started as a “out of the box” marketing consulting firm, Create More, Inc. evolved with their clientele. It’s these roots in the creative community that help bridge the gap between the thought process and utilizing technology to fruition of that thought. We created Empressr so that people would have an online tool to create visual stories anywhere, without having to be highly creative or technically capable. It’s a dynamic visual storytelling device for the everyday person. Empressr main feature is the all-inclusive media library, where users upload and manage different media type assets, with search, filter and keyword support to locate files quickly. Users can easily drag and drop the assets to the stage from one location. Users can specify the size of the document created, so it can fit a wide screen monitor, or the content area in a blog—we think that’s pretty cool. “The Grove” is more than a name. It’s a metaphor for our pioneering work in visual planning and organization change, which we’ve been seeding worldwide for more than 30 years. We believe people—and organizations—are more vital when working creatively with one another, as is common in nature. This core belief is the soil from which all our products, consulting and design processes grow. Organic in their design and delivery, our tools and services are intended for adaptation, whether you need help leading an organizational process, communicating a critical message to your organization, or becoming an adept team leader. Kinetic Energies provides The Nomad™ Series of rolling dryerase panels, wall-mounted panels, and portable panels that allow for the creation of a space that supports work as individuals, teams, or large groups. High-performance collaboration requires an environment that supports and facilitates, a space that is flexible and adapts to the work at hand, and an environment that doesn’t impose a work process that inhibits creativity. Kinetic Energies creates economical high quality panels, allowing for the conversion of an ordinary room into a high-performance workplace. Mikons.com is a hub of user-generated icons and symbols for visual symbolic communication and connection. Users can create, store, sell, search, and download mikons to websites and purchase goods. A Mikon is a symbol about you, like a personal logo. It represents your personal interests, passions, and experiences. Mikons, like ancient petroglyphs and modern logos, are a gateway to communication, connection, personal branding, and identity. Mikons.com is the world’s first on-line vector graphic uploading and editing applications. It will soon be the intersection of the four fastest growing segments of the internet – social networking, user-generated content, widget plug-ins, and mobile. Sponsors Continued Produce unique, information rich, vivid solutions for enhanced creative thinking and compelling presentations. Mindjet makes software that helps people visualize and use information. Its leading product, MindManager software, enables individuals and teams to work smarter, think creatively, and save time every day. There are over 970,000 licenses of MindManager software used globally by 85 of the Fortune 100 companies and more than 50 percent of Global 2000 organizations. Mindjet is headquartered in San Francisco with offices throughout the world and is backed by the leading international venture capital firms Investor Growth Capital, Inc. and 3i. Smooth curves and colorful pictures create powerful images for your brain to remember. Shape your branches for Mind Maps that reflect your own distinct style. Our unique Suggesterator suggests new directions for your thoughts, generating additional ideas and prompting exploration of more options. The information stored in your mind map is compact and meaningful, allowing you to see the important issues, organize your thoughts, and solve problems quickly and effortlessly. Present your ideas to others using the NovaMind Presenter. NovaMind makes Mind Mapping intuitive & fun. Tableau Software, a privately held company in Seattle WA, builds software that delivers fast analytics and visualization to everyday businesspeople. Our mission is simple: help people see and understand data. Tableau’s easy-to-install products integrate data exploration and visualization to make analytics fast, easy and fun. They include Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server and the no-charge Tableau Reader. We understand the needs of businesspeople, non-technical and technical alike, when it comes to retrieving and analyzing large volumes of data. As a result, Tableau has already attracted over 10,000 licensed users in companies from one-person businesses to the world’s largest organizations. TechSmith offers software tools for visual thinking and communication. We’ll help you capture anything on your screen and share it with others as image or video. SnagIt—capture an image of your latest visualization, illustrate with callouts or captions if desired, and share in an email, blog post, or document. Send images straight to PowerPoint. Save print-ready screenshots. Camtasia Studio—record your screen, audio, even webcam. Produce crystal-clear tutorials or demonstrations. Capture interactive visualizations (e.g., Many Eyes). Jing Project (Mac/PC)—instantly capture and share a screenshot or brief screen recording. Visual thinkers use Jing to talk in images. And it’s FREE! XPLANE’S approach focuses on visual thinking as a way to understand, synthesize, and communicate information. Wacom’s family of pen tablets and interactive pen displays provide a harmonious connection between man and computer, proving a natural and intuitive interface. Its Cintiq line of interactive pen displays’ offer pen-on-screen comfort, control and productivity through Wacom’s patented cordless, battery-free, pressure sensitive pen technology, and color accurate LCD. Particularly for those who make a living in the visual domain - design, art, photography or animation - Wacom has a Cintiq to match virtually any workflow or budget. XPLANE’s consulting teams discover new insights and design change communications that deliver better business results. Well known for its work with the world’s leading companies, XPLANE serves over 35 of the FORTUNE 500 and completes projects for clients around the world. XPLANE teams combine various disciplines like journalism, technology, management consulting, illustration, information architecture, and communication design to drive change in new ways. Conference Center Maps Westin San Francisco Market Street 50 Third Street San Francisco, California, 94103 Hotel Phone: 415-974-6400 HARVARD CORNELL M W CITY STAIRS PRE-FUNCTION LOBBY STANFORD COMMONWEALTH PRE-FUNCTION LOBBY 926 NW 13th Avenue, Suite 220 Portland, Oregon, 97209 Phone: 503-467-7770 Email: info@vizthink.com Web: www.vizthink.com Blog: www.vizthink.com/blog Wiki: wiki.vizthink.com I FRANCISCAN II THIRD FLOOR