I am delighted that I will be taking visual notes at the 2010 140 Characters Conference, as I did last year. Only this year, on the first day, I will be creating the notes on an iPad that award winning digital agency R/GA is sponsoring me with.
Since the conference is about the business and social implications of the emerging real-time web, I thought it was appropriate to use the "nowest" device, the iPad, to capture the ideas and energy of the event.
If you are attending, be sure to say hi, and if not, I hope my viznotes will help you glean some of the knowledge and energy that will be coursing through the 2 day event.
Dave Martorana was kind enough to let me play around with the SketchBook Pro App on his shiny new iPad.
This was all done with my fingers. While it was fun, it is highly limited.
Limitations:
1) Not pressure sensitive—that means you have no control of your line weight in real time. This is caused by the iPad, not the software. The iPad interface is does not allow for pressure sensing.
2) Not precise–Hey, I was drawing with my fingers, so I had to let go of precision.
3) 7.99 cents. A little steep compared to other apps.
Awesomeness:
1) It’s fun to fingerpaint/fingerdraw, once you let go of the fact it’ll be a little loose. There’s a visceral connection to the drawing when one uses fingers in the making.
2) Great to be able to zoom in, zoom out, and rotate the image with finger gestures
3) Nice to have layers
4) Easy to email yourself the image once you are done
I am not going to run out and by an iPad quite yet. I would rather have a tablet that allows for pressure sensitivity. Still, super fun, and it’s a lovely device. I would probably opt for a simpler and less expensive drawing app if I had an iPad. I think all the features of SketchBook Pro are overkill given the limitations of the iPad interface.
I created these illustrations for a video that promotes Philadelphia as the perfect testbed for the google high speed fiber initiative. The video will go live on Friday, but I thought I’d get them up ahead of time. To find out more about the public-private partnership in Philly to promote the City of Firsts as a site for this project, please visit gigabitphilly.com And if you have ideas for how Philly could use an ultra high bandwidth data network that connects individuals, industry, and government, please submit your ideas here.
You can also show your support by coming to the press conference with Philadelphia Mayor tomorrow (Thursday, March 25) at 2:30 at City Hall on the 2nd floor.
A high speed data network in Philly has the potential to accelerate our medical, film production, university, technology, financial services, and community sectors by letting people share massive amounts of data rapidly—that means rich interactivity, problem solving, and communication.
Gigabit Philly Videos GigabitPhilly Site GigabitPhilly Facebook Fanpage Follow GigabitPhilly on Twitter
Can you imagine Gigabit Philly?
—Jonny Goldstein
Lots of stimulating conversation and new connections at the world’s first TrendCamp. TrendCamp arose out of a session at BarCamp Philly on emerging web trends led by Mark Magliocco. People enjoyed it so much that people banded together to do a mini unconference about the future. Thus TrendCamp, which took place last night in space donated by a law office in Center City.
The attendees: An eclectic bunch of technologists, educators, business people, marketers, publishers, media makers and many more.
Sessions:
I attended two sessions: “Augmented Reality” and “Retro Future Trends” and I led a session called “Visualizing the Future.”
Augmented Reality: This session was thought provoking. One possible application of AR—to augment the often challenging reality of having to assemble something—For example an AR layer could show you where to insert your screw driver and start tightening a screw. The thing that stuck with me the most were the implications for marketing to people and the related implications for privacy. AR provides yet another way for us to engage with marketing and yet another way to track that engagement. When you realize that by it’s very nature AR is location based, that gets into whole new realms of privacy and digital interaction away from our desktops.
Retro Future Trends: Mark Magliocco talked about past predictions of the future—what panned out and what did not. He showed a bit of a great clip produced for 1964 World’s Fair about a utopian, clean, stylish, future. What do our fantasies about the future show about our hopes, dreams, and values?
Visualizing the Future:
Sharing a vision of the future
Many visions of the future, arranged chronologically, from now to 100 years forward.
I led this mini-workshop where I gave a quick drawing tutorial and then had everyone draw a scene from the future. Then we shared our drawings with each other and arranged them along a timeline from the near future to 100 years from now. Among the predictions—
1) Bio tinkering for fashion (e.g. Mom? Why can’t I grow a tail? All the other kids are doing it!)
2) Faster travel—-suborbital flight that got people around the world in a couple of hours
3) Augmented reality—-a drawing of a person walking around with a bunch of floating logos in front of her
4) Custom real time pharmaceutical fabrication and delivery—picture a patient in a hospital whose medicines are being created in real time, customized to her genome and current needs, delivered in just the right dose as needed.
5) Rich real time distance interaction
I was very proud of the participants who dove into drawing their ideas even though most were not professional artists or designers. They got their ideas across clearly, which is what the session was all about.
Afterparty: Had some unusually deep conversations with people at the afterparty. Especially enjoyed chatting with people I had just met at TrendCamp, Laurence Tom, Manny Rechani, and Paul J. Mathison.
Thanks very much to the organizers (Tyler Baber, Mark Magliocco and Mike Jewsbury, and Gloria Bell) volunteers, sponsors, and participants for helping make this event a success! There were many sessions I wish I could have gotten to, which is the hallmark of a good happening.
RSVP HERE
In the upcoming VizThink, we will look at some processes and visual tools to make group collaboration more productive.
Justin Witman and Fraser Marshall will lead a mini-workshop on visualizing individual character and group profiles, which can then be used to find collective group purpose.
When a group has a shared sense of purpose, collaboration becomes much more productive.
The duo are in the last semester of University of the Arts'innovative Masters of Industrial Design program. At UArts, Justin and Fraser are focusing on "The science and design of sustainable collaborations, founded on basic principles of human behaviors that govern learning, motivation and purpose." They call this focus, humantic design.
When: 6:30-8PM Weds, March 10
Where: Where: Room 116 SHDH (downstairs) Steinberg-Dietrich Hall 3620 Locust Walk University of Pennsylvania Between Spruce and Locust Walk along what would be 37th street. Note: Locust walk is a pedestrian only area on UPenn campus.
RSVP HERE
Richard Saul Wurman delighted me when he spoke at the SenseMaker Dialogs last Tuesday in New York City. I remember picking up his book, Information Anxiety, for the first time in the early 90′s, a terrified and confident young man, and loving every little bit of it, the provocative micromanifestos, the frequent sidebars, the anecdotes, the impatience with the dreck that gets in the way of understanding. Turns out he speaks the same way he writes–stories, sidebars, provocation, improvisation. Any good improviser knows that you’ve got to know structure to be good. And nobody loves exploring and applying structure like Wurman.
Below are a few details from illustrated notes I created as he spoke.
At one point Wurman railed at one of the audience members to stop taking notes. “Listen,” he cajoled, and then launched into an anecdote about how he managed to take way beyond a normal course load as an undergraduate by forcing himself not to take notes—just to listen and open himself to understanding. Of course, I didn’t take his advice! But I get what he’s saying . Take a breath. Put down the pen. Listen. I am actually doing this more often lately. Sometimes notetaking gets in between me and understanding.
I loved his fable of a person sitting by a fire, progressing to groups of people around fires, connected by paths, evolving to what today is a city interlaced with roads. Poetic.
If it’s hard it may be interesting. Comfort is the enemy, simultaneous terror and confidence are your friends. He poked some fun at a guidebook publisher, who makes a lot of money but doesn’t push the envelope of what guide book could be.
You could hear his delight in playing with information, approaching it in different ways, going deeper and deeper, like peeling layers in a neverending onion.
Wurman ended up by emphasizing the power of asking a good question. And maybe that is the beginning of the end of information anxiety. When you have a good question, you can start the hunt for the right information, connected in a way that makes sense, to create understanding.
Thanks to Humantfic and The School of Design Strategies for hosting the event. I will post my thoughts about Gary K Van Patter talk which comprised the second half of the event in a few days.
Had a fantastic experience at the PhillyChi Design Slam. Here are a few photos and short video clips.
Here is how the slam was described before the event:
Contestants will participate in a fast-paced race to create the best design solution to a "made-up" real-world problem. Awards will be given to the victors
"During the meeting, participants will be teamed and introduced to a full-fledged hypothetical project, including appropriate client-side deliverables. They'll then have an opportunity to interview key players on the client's team. The session will conclude with proposal presentations from each of the groups to the "clients" and the assembled audience.
Then the "clients" team will choose a winner. Members of the winning team will receive a plethora of praise from your peers and an award.
My Experience:
Was put on a team with several other folks, only one of whom I already knew–Ruth Kalinka. The hypothetical project was to create a new strategy for a general retailer "Archer Inc." who competed with Target at the high end and Wal-Mart at the low end. They wanted to build a bunch of new locations that would have higher profit margins than their existing stores. They also wanted to make inroads into two distinct market segments, "Eco-Fashionista" Moms and "Sportscenter" men. They also wanted to lower their costs while going in a greener direction.
After hearing the brief, we had 45 minutes to come up with a presentation. We had no trouble coming up with ideas, but filtering them and synthesizing them was more of challenge. That did not stop us from trying though! We had very diverse group–from mechanical engineer, to information architects, to visual designers, to a graphic facilitator. I pulled out all the stops giving a musical intro when it was our turn to present. We took turns presenting different pieces of our proposal, but unfortunately ran out of time before everything was presented.
Todd Warfel and Kelani Nichole's group gave what I felt like was the most coherent and businesslike sounding proposal, and indeed their team won. I was told over beers later that our group came a close 2nd.
The main thing is it was fun, challenging, and a great way to stretch and meet new people.
Special Bonus: One of the stakeholders in the fictitious company played the part of founding family member, Jake, who had completely different ideas from the company's management team. He went from group to group throwing wrenches in everyone's ideas. I loved this detail.
Thanks to PhillyChi for producing the event and Messagefirst for hosting it and all the participants and specators. Great stuff.
