My friends know that I love the rush of public speaking—It’s even better when I can combine it with my visual summaries. So I was delighted that E Source asked me to give a talk synthesizing the ideas bouncing around the conference. I love creating visual notes all the more when I get to use them as a backdrop for a presentation.

At the conference, representatives of major utilities (mostly electricical, but a few other utilities participated as well) shared insights, successes, and challenges related to focusing on the utility customer experience. Utilities are in an interesting position where they are often operate without direct competitors. But they still have plenty of motivation to focus on the user experience it turns out. Since every household and organization in North America needs to interact with utilities, an improvement in their customer experience has a broad impact.

It was heartening to see the participants in the conference think about the big-picture reasons to value customer experience, as well as to explore case studies of how industries within and outside the utility industry are improving their customer experience.

(Our friendly Zappos tour guide and Customer Experience Magician, Rocco)

From outside the utility industry we heard from FedEx, Sprint, and Zappos. We even got a tour of Zappos, which maintains its office conveniently around the corner from our conference venue. The tour drove home the message the culture is bedrock of customer experience—Zappos is famed for both its creative and supportive culture and its focus on delivering a “Wow” customer experience.

I was wowed by the conference that E Source put together, they clearly care about the experience of their customer, and it showed.

The blocks between Children’s Hospital and Negley on Penn Avenue are crackling with character, invention, and reinvention. Every month I see formerly empty storefronts buzzing with new ventures. This is overlaid with businesses and institutions that have been around for decades. One of the newer entries on Penn Avenue is the Co-working Space, catapultPGH. CatapultPGH is a membership organization that provides shared office space, facilities, and most importantly a sense of community for independent workers. At catapultPGH, we want to foster connectivity not only among ourselves, but also between the people behind the businesses and organizations that make this stretch of Penn Avenue home.

When: Friday, May 4, Noon-1PM

Where: Catapult PGH, 5139 Penn Ave (Just down the block
from People’s Restaurant).

What: People from the Penn Avenue Arts District show ‘n’
tell their awesome projects and obsessions. Jonny Goldstein will visually capture the conversation on a whiteboard.

Who: This month: The Bloomfield Garfield Corp.
Scenable.com, GlutenTox, The Tool Lending Library,
and The Sprout Fund.

(Leah Silverman, Emily Marko, Jonny Goldstein at our first planning meeting for the IFVP 2012 Conference)

(Jonny Goldstein with brainspill on the topic of the upcoming visual thinking for groups conference in Pittsburgh, AKA the 17th Annual IFVP Conference)

The rapid approach of the 2012 International Forum of Visual Practitioners Conference (IFVP) conference in Pittsburgh is sending tingles down my neurons. The power-triangle of Leah Silverman Leah Silverman, Emily Marko, and myself are the Pittsburgh core of the planning team, with help from far flung members of the tribe of graphic facilitators, graphic scribes that comprises the IFVP. I will be sharing emcee duties with the fabulous Heather Willemsof Imagethink.

(Promotional video for the IFVP 2012 Conference. Video by Envizualize.

At it’s heart, the conference is for people who use visual thinking to enhance understanding and support action. There is a growing realization that words and numbers are inadequate for understanding and analyzing complex challenges. We are hard wired to process pictorial information, and harnessing that wiring gives teams tremendous advantages.

Some conference highlights:

Speakers:

(Sketchnotes sample by Mike Rohde)
Mike Rohde, will give a talk about how he catalyzed a global community of sketchnoters and his upcoming book on sketchnoting.

MK Haley, from the Carnegie Mellon University Entertainment Technology Center will discuss collaboration and how different generations approach it.

Christian Schunn, a University of Pittsburgh Cognitive Psychologist, will share current research on how using shared visual displays helps, and occasionally hinders, design and engineering teams.

Babs Carryer, a node in Pittsburgh’s biotech and pharma startup ecosystem will convene a panel on the intersection of visual practice and business.

Nahum Gershon, Principal Scientist at MITRE and expert on data visualization, storytelling, and technology mediated interaction will lead a closing dialog.

—————

Pre-conference workshops:

(Photo from IFVP 2011 graphic recording workshop)

Graphic Recording 101 with Rachel Smith and Lisa Arora and 201 with Alphachimp. These workshops will be a full day immersion in the art and craft of visual listening—-turning conversation into large scale visual notes. The 101 course is geared to beginners, and the 201 course is geared to experienced visual listeners.

—————

In-Conference Mini-Workshops (these might change a little in title and topic, but this is more or less what we have so far. We will have another couple of mini-workshops in addition to these).

-Sketchnoting and hand drawn type with Mike Rohde

(Interior of the Toonseum)

(Graphic scribing detail by Lloyd Dangle)

-Cartooning with Lloyd Dangle (at the Toonseum)

(Detail of Jim Nuttle work)

-Advanced Cartooning with Jim Nuttle (at the Toonseum)

-Sketch Video Creation

(Digital visual notes by Rachel Smith)

-Graphic Recording on the iPad with Rachel Smith

(Detail from a Bigger Picture hands on visual activity)

-Graphic facilitation approaches and practices knowledge swap Ole Qvist-Sørensen.

-”Doctor’s Hours” with a variety of successful visual practitioners to personally address your business questions

-Distilling your visual practice’s unique value proposition, facilitated by MAYA Design

(Visual by Eileen Clegg)

-Timeline murals using Prezi, with Eileen Clegg

-”Getting Pens into Peoples’ Hands”, a session on how to get word and number crunchers over the hump of picking up a pen and drawing, with John Ward.

—————

Panels:

1) Visual Practice and Design Thinking

2) Visual Practice and Business

—————–

Open Space:

We are creating a time slot for self organized sessions where people can create impromptu discussions about topics of mutual interest.

—————

Book Presentations:

Conference particpants will have the opportunity to hear lightning presentations from authors who are part of the conference.
—————–

Offsite at the Warhol Museum:

We’ll take a walk across the Allegheny River for Dinner and a private tour of the Warhol Museum.
———————-
And more awesome stuff that we can’t quite announce yet.
———————-
Sponsorship:
We have some amazing sponsors stepping up already. We’re thrilled to have Prezi as a top level Platinum sponsor. Look forward to sharing experiences, tips, and tricks in one-on-one time with Prezi evangelist, Zane Groshelle. We’re also thrilled to introduce you to Wizard Wall, a cling film that creates a portable whiteboard. Special thanks as well to The Grove for Silver sponsorship and Crowley & Co. for Bronze sponsorship.If you want to get involved in the conference on a sponsorship level, we would love to talk with you. And did you know that Sponsorship starts at the $100 level and gets you recognition online and at the conference while giving you the satisfaction of supporting the community? Sounds worth it to me, but that’s just my biased take on it:)
——————————————————–
IFVP2012 on Twitter
IFVP2012 Facebook Page
Conference info and registration

Graphic recording is a technique for turning transforming conversation into large scale visual notes composed of pictures, text, and diagrams as the conversation happens.

I had the pleasure of giving 45 Carnegie Mellon University undergraduate design majors a taste of graphic recording with a mini-workshop I led yesterday. I call it “hands-on visual listening” because the listener is using their hands and eyes (along with their brains!) to process, synthesize and make visible the ideas they are capturing.

The whole set of photos and videos are here.

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.

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.

Very excited that a piece I worked on with AllClearID has gone live. The video explains how thieves steal the identity of children in order to commit fraud. In fact, children are ideal targets of Identity theft, since they start out as blank slates that thieves can fill in with false information to take out huge fraudulent loans.

The Today show just did a piece on the problem, even tracking down and confronting alleged identity thieves. Compelling stuff!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy