Where: AVA Lounge, 5972 Baum Blvd. Map
When:7PM
Tickets: $5 at the door

I am looking forward to giving a picture talk at Pecha Kucha Pittsburgh 10, Student/Faculty edition. This episode of Pecha Kucha is for students and faculty of any university. Undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty from multiple universities pulse their intellectual energies throughout the Pittsburgh metro region: Carnegie Mellon University, University of Pittsburgh, Duquesne, Point Park, Robert Morris, Washington and Jefferson, Chatham, Carlow University, are just a few of the Pittsburgh area colleges. Even though I teach at a university in Philadelphia, they graciously slid me into the lineup.

If you haven’t been to a Pecha Kucha event, the format is simple: speakers give brief talks accompanied by 20 slides, timed at 20 seconds per slide. It’s a kind of speed reading of the world of ideas and experience, interwoven with imbibing tasty beverages and informal chitchat. I will be speaking about the unique perception of power one develops as a global nomad. I gave this talk at TEDxPittsburgh a couple of months ago. If you can’t make it to Pecha Kucha, you can see my talk the video above.

It was a pleasure and honor to be invited to speak at TEDx LeadershipPittsburgh a few weeks ago. The conference theme was “Power” in all it’s permutations. This video shows my talk “A Nomads View of Power.”

You can see videos of all the excellent talks here, assembled by the good folks at Leadership Pittsburgh.

I am thrilled that the International Forum of Visual Practitioners 2012 conference will be happening in my current hometown, Pittsburgh, the City of Bridges. Pittsburgh holds the world record for number of bridges, edging out Venice by four bridges. I think this is very appropriate to the IFVP conference, as we help our clients connect to their best vision and to visual plans to execute their goals to achieve their vision. The conference themes are art, techology, and business. We want to help visual practitioners build bridges to new skills, ideas, and relationships to help them increase their impact and success. And we want to help people from the business, government, and nonprofit sectors learn more about how visual practice can help them.

I created the video above to help spread the word about IFVP 2012. Pittsburgh is an amazing city to hold this conference. It is within a days drive or a short flight from 50% of the population of North America. It is gorgeous—surrounded by wooded hills and renewed by three major rivers. Pittsburgh successfully bridged an industrial past to a knowledge industry present. Pittsburgh pivoted from steel to education, technology, healthcare, banking, and robotics, capitalizing on its 7 universities, including Carnegie Mellon University which has the top ranked computer science program in the USA, and the University of Pittsburgh, with its spin-off UPMC medical system, which has grown to an international health care provider (need an organ transplant in Sicily? UPMC manages that.)

Plus Pittsburgh has a core of dedicated visual practitioners who are excited about hosting what is going to be an amazing event. Look forward to seeing you in late July 2012 in Pittsburgh. Stay tuned for final dates in the next couple of weeks. And when you come, be sure to have a few of these Pierogies, a Pittsburgh specialty.

Envizualize is going intercontinental next week. I will give the wrap up presentation at the Technia PLM forum in Stockholm after capturing the conversations with large scale visual notes.

Here is the welcome statement from Technia CEO, Jonas Gejer:

Technia Innovation Forum is about how PLM software solutions can help your company, regardless of industry, to become much more efficient in your product development. Topics of discussion will include but aren’t limited to the following:

How can PLM solutions help your company better manage product structures and components? How can “better management” help you cut costs and shorten time to market? Can PLM ensure and enforce that you are in compliance with regulatory demands? Could it possibly help you manage your certifications? How can PLM help you shorten the process for component reuse, make a few design updates, locate a supplier, and meet your target product launch date with the desired margin? All these questions and many more will be addressed on September 21st, 2011 in Stockholm. Industry experts and PLM gurus will share with you their hands-on experience how PLM can revolutionize the way you bring products to market.

I’m looking forward to meeting the participants and learning from the great folks at the Technia PLM Forum!

Had a blast being part of Pecha Kucha Night Pittsburgh, Vol 8. I enjoyed everybody’s talks, and was honored to test out a new slideshow talk of my own on the packed-in audience.

Unfortunately I did not hand my camera off to someone to get a pic of myself rocking the mic. Anybody got a pic for me? If so, please send it to jonny(at)envizualize.com and I’ll add it to the set of images from that night.

Thanks to Assemble for hosting us and AIA and AIGA Pittsburgh for producing the event.

If you missed this one, come check me out this coming week, July 7, at 7:30 where I will be doing live illustration of peoples rants and raves about their neighborhoods, also at Assemble, 5125 Penn Ave in Pittsburgh.

These are the visual notes I created during the Power of 32 Steering Committee Leadership Meeting that took place 6-22-2011.

View gallery of the visual notes here.

***Note: This is a snapshot of the conversation at this point in the Power of 32 process–not a definitive to do list.***

The Power of 32 is an unprecedented regional initiative to think and act in the interest of the 32 county region which comprises of parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, and Maryland. It contains urban areas such as Pittsburgh, Wheeling and Youngstown, as well as many small towns and rural areas. The 3 year effort has catalyzed over 150 community conversations in all 32 counties and over 15,000 sticky notes of ideas.

Community input created coalesced into 6 categories: economy, education, environment, people/community, governing, transportation and infrastructure.

It is clear that it is in the interest of this governmentally balkanized region to think of itself as a region. This is especially important because the none areas of the 4 states in the region are at the political center of their own states. There is strength in numbers, and it makes sense for the region to flex its regional muscles and tap into it’s enormous brainpower across jurisdictional boundaries of states, counties, and municipalities.

The findings of the project will be rolled out in force with a live special on WQED on November 3, 2011.

Ultimately, the Power of 32 is a citizen initiative, and needs citizen involvement to keep moving forward. To learn more and get involved, Visit the Power of 32 website here.

As a recent transplant to the region, this was an incredible meeting to be part of. I came out of it for even more appreciation for the region and its people than I had coming into the meeting.

Visual Notes by Jonny Goldstein, envizualize.com.

(Benefits of using pictures to plan projects)

Complete photoset from last night here)

It was my pleasure to give a mini-workshop for the Pittsburgh Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication last night. We focused on using pencil on paper drawing and diagraming techniques to plan projects. Each participant picked a project they were working on. Projects ranged from remodeling a Victorian house to creating documentation for a complex technical process.

The photo above shows benefits the participants found in using this approach.

A few resources:

Books:
Back of the Napkin
One of my favorites This may go into a little more detail than people want, but I actually loved how thorough it was. .

Gamestorming. This book is about using a game framework to get serious work done, and it has a great section on visual thinking, which is key to most of the the activities in the book.

The Mind Map Book. Full of useful methods for applying mind mapping to problem solving and communication. Bonus: lovely pictures! Warning: “relentlessly upbeat.”

Links to my work:

Professional site envizualize.com
Blog
jonny goldstein flickr stream
Twitter

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Related Organization

IFVP. The International Forum of Visual Practitioners. There are several of us in the Pittsburgh area. We may start having local meetings. The annual conference is fantastic. This year it’s in Hawaii!
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I am available to do more in depth workshops on using visual techniques to enhance communication and problem solving, so please feel free to get in touch if your organization is interested in learning how I can help people build this critical capacity.