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.

The event will focus on the intersection of art, entertainment, and technology in Pittsburgh. Here’s the official blurb:

Creative Clash! The Future of Creativity, Technology and a New Innovation Community in Pittsburgh
Thursday, January 26, 2012

5:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Location: The Carnegie Museum of Art, 4400 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh 15213-4080
Pittsburgh is a city rich with creativity and innovation. Now, how do we take our success to the next level? Heralding the Council’s new Creative Technology Network, and presented in partnership with the Carnegie Museum of Art, Creative Clash! will explore Pittsburgh’s history and future as a key innovator at the intersection of art and technology. Today, industries including design, gaming, filmmaking, advertising, education, fine-art, production, robotics, digital media – and much more – are coalescing to make Pittsburgh home to a thriving creative technology community. Join us, and join the conversation, as we examine what it takes to sustain and grow this exciting community!

Creative Clash! will show you some of the great things that are happening around our city right now, and will open discussions as to what more we can do to elevate this community to the next level of success. Event moderator Lynn Zelevansky, Director of the Carnegie Museum of Art, will ask the big questions to a diverse panel of industry leaders, including:

MK Haley, Associate Executive Producer at Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center, and Manager of Internal Communications, Disney Research Labs

Gregg Behr, Executive Director of the Grable Foundation, and founder of Pittsburgh Kids &Creativity

Carl Kurlander, Executive Producer of Steeltown Entertainment, and film/television screenwriter and producer

Tim Fletcher, Business Development Manager, Daedalus, and US Government Liaison Officer, Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA)

Rob Deaner,Partner at Market Street Sound,and Vice President of the Pittsburgh Advertising Federation.

Plus, special presentations by Schell Games, Animal Studios, MAYA Design, 4 Moms, Firehouse Creative and BodyMedia!

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.

See the complete set of graphic recordings I did at Art and Code: DIY Sensing and Visualization here.

The conference, orchestrated by Golan Levin, explored the fascinating world of do it yourself 3D sensing and visualization with artists, hackers, and designers from all over the world. The Microsoft Kinect recently changed this field drastically by providing powerful, low cost 3D sensing to a mass market.

Chase No Face / BELL from zach lieberman on Vimeo.

Here is an example of what a group of artists did with a Kinect to make a music video. From the description: “Visuals by Zach Lieberman, Francisco Zamorano, Andy Wallace, and Michelle Calabro. (note: no post-production effects were used in this video. everything on the face is happening in real-time, via hacked Kinect, laptop and LED projector. It’s built using FaceTracker code from Jason Saragih)”

Thanks to Golan Levin, and Drue Miller for having me at the event, and Microsoft for making the conference possible.

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.

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.