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 for VizThink Philly 2

Topic: Get Framed….at the Storyboard-O-Rama

VizThinker Julia Pellicciaro will do a quick storyboarding demo, and then we’ll make our own and share them with each other.

Storyboards are poweful tools for planning and pitching projects. They are can also stand alone as potent communication devices.

Afterwards if you care for drinks and pierogies, hungry and thirsty VizThinkers will stroll over to Sugar Mom’s.

When: 6:30-8PM, Weds, May 27

Where: Philly Independence Branch Library (In the meeting room)

18 S. 7th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106
(7th Street between Market & Chestnut)
Closest “El” stop: 8th street

RSVP here for VizThink Philly 2

Todays notes come from an online workshop from VizthinkU on visual notetaking, featuring Austin Kleon, Mike Rohde, and Sunni Brown.

Dave Gray moderated.

Bonus: I learned how to batch scan a stack of papers. Nice!

Here is the full set of notes on flickr.

My notes from Day 5. Whew, I’m 5% through this project. So far, I really love doing this. I am getting a bunch of insights doing this every day. The images are sticking in my mind and cross connecting with each other.

Some quick text background on the notes above, going from the upper right, clockwise. I did these notes in a different way than I usually do. First I drew the central image. So far that’s pretty standard. Then I drew the ovals. That is not the usual method for me. My normal practice is to draw the central image and then add key words or images. No ovals. I like the way this one turned out though. I may do it again.

1) VizThink
-I noted a meeting that I am going to have with Julia Pellicciaro about what activity to do at the next VizThink Philly event.
-Noted that I needed to reserve a conference room for tomorrow’s Visual-Notetaking 101 webinar.

2) Productivity
-Note to myself to buy an old-school paper calendar where I can track my time. This idea came courtesy Austin Kleon, who got the idea from Jessica Abel. The basic idea is that one needs to develop a sense of how long it takes to do stuff, in order to accurately value one’s time. I like the low tech, yet portable idea of using a paper calendar, rather than a digital one.

3) Gusick
-Want to send him a link to this project

4)Ignite NYC
-I still need to develop my concept for a talk at Ignite NYC and send it over to Tikva Moriwati.

5) 100 Days
Yes, I need to post my images from today and yesterday to Flickr and blog them. Also want to come up with some good tags for these posts and pics.

6) R&D career envizualization
I have often done visual facilitation with friends who were in career transition. I want to think about this a bit more seriously, as it seems like a solid business idea, and is something I very much enjoy doing. To dig a little deeper, I am going through Richard Bolles classic career development tome, What Color is Your Parachute (note to Mr. Bolls, great book,not so great website!).

As advertised, these notes are for real, not some prettied up approximation. These were done on a napkin grabbed from a cafe near Washington Square Park in New York City, as part of the 100 Days Envizualized project.

I was up in New York to check out the Interactive Telecommunications Program(ITP) Spring Show. ITP is the grad program I went to that bills itself as a “Center for the recently possible.”

(photo: Mark de Vinck, Creative Commons Non-Commercial/Attribution license)

The image in the upper right of the napkin is my rendition of an amazing project I saw at the show, in which the creator stands on top of a moss covered mound with tree bark wrapped around her legs. As she sways back and forth, her movement is sensed and processed through a computer, which then generates creaking sounds. Spectators can walk around on the mossy mound as well, triggering equally cool sounds.

Back to the viznotes. Moving clockwise, is a doodle commemorating Mothers day. Mom and I had a nice (but too brief) chat. If you have ever wondered what my mom is like, you can check out her writings.

Next we come to a little doodle of my Brooklynite friend Kim. She accompanied me to the show. Always great to see you, Kim.

Last, you can see a little pie chart. This was inspired by a chat with fellow ITP alum, Dave Gusick. We were discussing collaborating on a project he has in the works. More on that if it actually comes to fruition. But in the course of the conversation, Dave mentioned how valuable he finds my visualizions. He said that if I could turn them into polished visuals, then that could be a very good business proposition. If I were to go that route, I think I’d want to partner with someone to do the polished versions. It was great to meet Dave face to face, as we had been communicating by phone and web until now.