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VizThink Blog

Creating a Global Visual Thinking Community

Pre-Conference Workshop with Karl GudeJanuary 6

We’re very excited to announce that Karl Gude, industry expert and guru, will be conducting a pre-conference workshop entitled “How to Communicate Visually” at VizThink ‘09.  This very special workshop will run on Sunday, February 22, 2009 from 9am - 5pm. 

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:

Visual Knowledge ManagementDecember 29 2008

100s of messages in your inbox, overflowing blog readers, browser tabs filled with websites to explore…that and so much more can lead to information overload.  For over a decade, Jerry Michalski has been using his Brain to not just process that information, but to organize, recall, and find hidden relationships between the disparate pieces of information.  In this 15 minute, 34 second podcast, we discuss using visualization for knowledge management, dealing with massive quantities of information over long periods, and a view of where future technology needs to go in order to manage the rapidly increasing volumes of information.

Hint: Use the Full Screen Button to see this video in greater detail.

You may also download the audio here…

MP3 Audio File

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! 

Happy Holidays - Save Big on VizThink 09 before December 31!December 24 2008

2008 has been a fantastic year, for those of us at VizThink but also for the visual thinking community in general. We just want to take this opportunity to thank you for following the blog, visiting our community and attending our events, workshops and conferences around the world. Our mandate as an organization is to do what we can to grow and support the visual thinking community so, literally, without you we wouldn’t have much to do.

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

[Webinar] Creating Global Change through Visual LanguageDecember 19 2008

Last week we held our fifth VizThink webinar entitled “Creating Global Change with Visual Language, Thinking and Practice” - over 150 fellow VizThinkers joined facilitator Ole Qvist-Sorensen and VizThink CEO Tom Crawford for a discussion of the unprecedented financial, climate and energy situations which the world is facing and how Ole sees an opportunity for visual thinkers to help facilitate real change through visual communication.

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?

Hint: Use the Full Screen Button to see this video in greater detail.

You may also download the audio here…

#HoHoTo - The Toronto Community Gives BackDecember 18 2008

As December approached I had been trying to figure out what to do with the Toronto VizThink Community, my plan at the time was a simple “VizDrinks” idea, basically a mixer at a local bar with whoever wanted to come out. Around the same time a group Montreal announced they were doing a big Christmas party for the technology/startup community and the idea was floated about doing something similar locally in Toronto. A handful of us through our support behind the idea and on December 2nd we met at a downtown bar to come up with a plan.We left with a name, #Hohoto, a date and a cause - Toronto’s Daily Bread Foodbank.

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: