Sunday, February 22, 2009
VizThink 09 Opening Reception
VizThink 09 kicked off today with the opening reception in the lobby lounge, along with an Fairmont's Oscar party. By my count about 60 - 70 VizThinkers congregated around the bar under the big screen broadcasting the Oscars. Lots of conversation, mingling and networking going on. A bit noisy and congested for my taste so I hung around the periphery with the Brazilian SOAP team and then cut out to E&O Trading Co. again for Indonesian BBQ beef and Alaskan Winter Ale. Mmmmmm! General session starts at 8:30 tomorrow so it's time for bed. Looking forward to Day 1 of VizThink 09.
VizThink 09 Saturday Pre-Conference Tweet-up and Restaurant Reviews
Karen and I arrived to the conference hotel late Friday night and spent most of Saturday wandering around the neighborhood checking out restaurant options. More on that below.
The Tweet-up was scheduled for 6:00 in the hotel lobby and we arrived around 6:15- 6:30 and didn't see anyone we recognized or any indication of a VizThink Tweet-up. We did recognize Rodolpho and chatted with him for a bit. It wasn't long before Tom showed up and honed in on the Tweet-up crowd. Tom served as our bird-dog and we followed him to a group of 6 - 8 people chatting in a corner.
We introduced ourselves to Tom and Tom introduced us to some others and we chatted with Tom for a bit. I was struck by how much energy Tom still had after two days already spent setting up the conference. Sounds like attendance at this conference will be a bit smaller than last year, but still well over 200 attendees and the line-up of facilitators is very impressive.
Before long the Tweet-up group had expanded to about 20 people, mostly dispersed in small groups of 4 or 5. We found ourselves conversing with Tom again, as well as Mark and his SOAP (VizThink Sponsor) Brazilian compatriots, and Julia, a local VizThink volunteer.
Lots of good conversation about visual thinking, presentations, books, culture, surfing, physics and local restaurants. At some point, Ryan showed up, as well as Dave Gray and Karl Gude - veritable visual thinking celebrities. The get-together was planned to last until 7:30, but it was still going strong at 8:45 when we pulled ourselves away to go find some dinner. All in all it was a great little gathering with some good conversation and networking - and the conference hasn't even officially started yet.
Restaurant Reviews
There's seems to be a pretty diverse variety of eating options within a 3 block radius of the hotel, in addition to the hotel restaurants. On arrival Friday night we opted for Gordon Biersch, a chain brew pub. We're both fans of microbrew beers. Gordon Biersch isn't the greatest, but they do have some pretty decent beers. Food was ok, nothing fancy. Ambience is a bit noisy as you'd expect. The schwarzbier and Marzen were both pretty good.
For breakfast yesterday (more like brunch actually), the hotel Concierge recommended Flames, about three blocks northeast of the hotel, next to San Jose State University. It's apparently a chain restaurant though I had never heard of it. Nice, clean, open atmosphere, good service an enormous selection of breakfast choices. Belgian waffle for me and crab cakes benedict for Karen - both very good. They've got a weekday early special which might be a good breakfast option for VizThinkers if you want a good sit down breakfast outside the hotel at much better prices than the hotel restaurants. Another option is the Bijan Bakery in building adjacent to the hotel (actually in the same building as the hotel's south tower). Lots of pastry options, bagels and coffee. A bit disorganized when I went down for coffee and croissants this morning, but pretty good croissants.
Since we had a big late brunch we weren't hungry until late afternoon and skipped lunch. On our way to Gordon Biersch we had past by E&O Trading Company. At VizThink 08 in San Francisco we had had dinner at the their San Francisco location and both enjoyed it so we popped in for an appetizer and drink before the Tweet-up. E&O's fare would probably be described as Asian Fusion. It's an eclectic blend of southeast asian (Thai, Singapore, Indonesia...) with some Indian influence as well. They also have some good beers on tap. They're seasonal beer right now is Alaska Winter Ale from Alaskan Brewing Co. I didn't have to hear anything else. Anything from Alaskan Brewing Co. is going to be good and the winter ale didn't disappoint. Outstanding beer! Nectar of the gods. For appetizers the sesame beef satay and panir cheese naan bread we're also very tasty.
At the tweet-up we got some recommendations from Julia, who lives in the area. Her recommendations; La Victoria for Mexican, Il Fornaio or Original Joe's for Italian and Hanuman for Thai. The Thai food options on Maui are a bit disappointing so good Thai food was high on our list of dining on this trip. Hanuman is a pretty small little family place located between E&O and Gordon Biersch, within a block or two from the hotel. The dining room is on the second level, nothing fancy, very quiet, very good service. I can't seem to every expand my Thai horizon past phad thai so I ordered up a big spicy plate of chicken phad thai and Karen got a bowl of tom ka with shrimp. Tom ka soup was excellent, some of the best in Karen's opinion and the phad thai was the best I've had since the little neighborhood thai restaurant in Seattle where we lived several years ago. If I order it again though I'll go for the medium spicy level, rather than spicy.
So, high recommendations from both of us so far for E&O Trading Company and Hanuman. Highly likely that we'll be back to both of these two during our VizThink stay. And we still need to try at least one of the italian restaurants and La Victoria.
It's a cool, cloudy, rainy day in San Jose today so we'll likely spend our day inside on some visual thinking projects before the reception this evening. Should be an interesting reception this evening. In addition to hundreds of visual thinkers, the hotel is hosting an Oscar awards party in the lounge and the timing of the two will partially overlap. So, if you're torn between watching the Oscars and coming to the reception, you can do both at the same time. We'll be there tonight, sporting our visual thinking t-shirts. See you there.
The Tweet-up was scheduled for 6:00 in the hotel lobby and we arrived around 6:15- 6:30 and didn't see anyone we recognized or any indication of a VizThink Tweet-up. We did recognize Rodolpho and chatted with him for a bit. It wasn't long before Tom showed up and honed in on the Tweet-up crowd. Tom served as our bird-dog and we followed him to a group of 6 - 8 people chatting in a corner.
We introduced ourselves to Tom and Tom introduced us to some others and we chatted with Tom for a bit. I was struck by how much energy Tom still had after two days already spent setting up the conference. Sounds like attendance at this conference will be a bit smaller than last year, but still well over 200 attendees and the line-up of facilitators is very impressive.
Before long the Tweet-up group had expanded to about 20 people, mostly dispersed in small groups of 4 or 5. We found ourselves conversing with Tom again, as well as Mark and his SOAP (VizThink Sponsor) Brazilian compatriots, and Julia, a local VizThink volunteer.
Lots of good conversation about visual thinking, presentations, books, culture, surfing, physics and local restaurants. At some point, Ryan showed up, as well as Dave Gray and Karl Gude - veritable visual thinking celebrities. The get-together was planned to last until 7:30, but it was still going strong at 8:45 when we pulled ourselves away to go find some dinner. All in all it was a great little gathering with some good conversation and networking - and the conference hasn't even officially started yet.
Restaurant Reviews
There's seems to be a pretty diverse variety of eating options within a 3 block radius of the hotel, in addition to the hotel restaurants. On arrival Friday night we opted for Gordon Biersch, a chain brew pub. We're both fans of microbrew beers. Gordon Biersch isn't the greatest, but they do have some pretty decent beers. Food was ok, nothing fancy. Ambience is a bit noisy as you'd expect. The schwarzbier and Marzen were both pretty good.
For breakfast yesterday (more like brunch actually), the hotel Concierge recommended Flames, about three blocks northeast of the hotel, next to San Jose State University. It's apparently a chain restaurant though I had never heard of it. Nice, clean, open atmosphere, good service an enormous selection of breakfast choices. Belgian waffle for me and crab cakes benedict for Karen - both very good. They've got a weekday early special which might be a good breakfast option for VizThinkers if you want a good sit down breakfast outside the hotel at much better prices than the hotel restaurants. Another option is the Bijan Bakery in building adjacent to the hotel (actually in the same building as the hotel's south tower). Lots of pastry options, bagels and coffee. A bit disorganized when I went down for coffee and croissants this morning, but pretty good croissants.
Since we had a big late brunch we weren't hungry until late afternoon and skipped lunch. On our way to Gordon Biersch we had past by E&O Trading Company. At VizThink 08 in San Francisco we had had dinner at the their San Francisco location and both enjoyed it so we popped in for an appetizer and drink before the Tweet-up. E&O's fare would probably be described as Asian Fusion. It's an eclectic blend of southeast asian (Thai, Singapore, Indonesia...) with some Indian influence as well. They also have some good beers on tap. They're seasonal beer right now is Alaska Winter Ale from Alaskan Brewing Co. I didn't have to hear anything else. Anything from Alaskan Brewing Co. is going to be good and the winter ale didn't disappoint. Outstanding beer! Nectar of the gods. For appetizers the sesame beef satay and panir cheese naan bread we're also very tasty.
At the tweet-up we got some recommendations from Julia, who lives in the area. Her recommendations; La Victoria for Mexican, Il Fornaio or Original Joe's for Italian and Hanuman for Thai. The Thai food options on Maui are a bit disappointing so good Thai food was high on our list of dining on this trip. Hanuman is a pretty small little family place located between E&O and Gordon Biersch, within a block or two from the hotel. The dining room is on the second level, nothing fancy, very quiet, very good service. I can't seem to every expand my Thai horizon past phad thai so I ordered up a big spicy plate of chicken phad thai and Karen got a bowl of tom ka with shrimp. Tom ka soup was excellent, some of the best in Karen's opinion and the phad thai was the best I've had since the little neighborhood thai restaurant in Seattle where we lived several years ago. If I order it again though I'll go for the medium spicy level, rather than spicy.
So, high recommendations from both of us so far for E&O Trading Company and Hanuman. Highly likely that we'll be back to both of these two during our VizThink stay. And we still need to try at least one of the italian restaurants and La Victoria.
It's a cool, cloudy, rainy day in San Jose today so we'll likely spend our day inside on some visual thinking projects before the reception this evening. Should be an interesting reception this evening. In addition to hundreds of visual thinkers, the hotel is hosting an Oscar awards party in the lounge and the timing of the two will partially overlap. So, if you're torn between watching the Oscars and coming to the reception, you can do both at the same time. We'll be there tonight, sporting our visual thinking t-shirts. See you there.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
VizWear
Tony Karrer's comment in my last blog post about doing a T-shirt for the upcoming VizThink conference was a great idea. Tony's suggestion was to do a T-shirt with my mind map from the previous post that shows what my visual thinking interests are. Great idea, but I thought, why not come up with a T-shirt design that other people might be interested in wearing as well. I've previously sold some T-shirts online through CafePress for another website/blog that I run. So, I figured, why not come up with a Visual Thinking T-Shirt? So, here's the first "VizWear" (that I'm aware of).
And here's a look at the design on a T-shirt from the CafePress store.
My wife (who will also be attending VizThink) and I collaborated on the design (she also did the VizWear logo at the top of this post) and finished it this weekend and I opened up the Cafe Press Visual Thinking Store and ordered one for myself and one for her. We both plan to wear our "VizWear" at the opening reception on Sunday night and Monday so we'll be easy to spot. This little project is primarily intended as a networking tool for us to distinguish ourselves at the conference. Both of us are natural introverts so schmoozing and socializing don't come naturally to us. So, we hope the T-shirt idea will help us mingle and meet people a little better. But, if you like the design enough to sport one yourself, they're on sale now in the Cafe Press Visual Thinking Store.We've also got another design in the works that will go on T-shirts as well some other items like mugs possibly, so you'll have more opportunities to show off your inner visual thinker with pride. Coming to VizThink in San Jose later this month? Be sure to look for us sporting our VizWear and introduce yourself.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Mind map of VizThink 09 Interests
It's hard to believe that it's been almost a year since the first VizThink conference. VizThink '08 renewed my interest in visual communication, but I came home from it a bit overwhelmed by all the types and disciplines within visual thinking. I spent the first several months after the conference trying to identify and categorize everything that fell within the visual thinking domain. Hence the obsession in this blog with categorizing and coming up with a taxonomy of visual thinking. While I never came up with a nice, neat visual that captured the whole field of visual thinking, I at least got comfortable with most of the terms, artifacts and disciplines such that I no longer feel overwhelmed by the scope of it all.
Since there's so many interesting areas in visual thinking that will be represented at VizThink 09, it seems to me that the best approach going into this year's conference is to select a few key themes, disciplines or interests and focus on those. This idea was reinforced by the recent podcast with Tony Karrer on the VizThink blog. His key point, to get the most out of the VizThink 09 conference, you need to do some prep work, figure out what you want to get out of the conference, brainstorm 5 - 10 key questions you want to get answers for that you can use to select sessions and while networking.
So, taking that advice to heart, I took a little time to brainstorm what areas of visual thinking I'm currently most interested in and created a mind map of that. The result is below. I hope to flesh this out a bit more as the conference draws nearer, but if you're attending VizThink '09 and you share any of the interests on this mind map, let's hook up and chat.
Since there's so many interesting areas in visual thinking that will be represented at VizThink 09, it seems to me that the best approach going into this year's conference is to select a few key themes, disciplines or interests and focus on those. This idea was reinforced by the recent podcast with Tony Karrer on the VizThink blog. His key point, to get the most out of the VizThink 09 conference, you need to do some prep work, figure out what you want to get out of the conference, brainstorm 5 - 10 key questions you want to get answers for that you can use to select sessions and while networking.
So, taking that advice to heart, I took a little time to brainstorm what areas of visual thinking I'm currently most interested in and created a mind map of that. The result is below. I hope to flesh this out a bit more as the conference draws nearer, but if you're attending VizThink '09 and you share any of the interests on this mind map, let's hook up and chat.
Friday, December 26, 2008
Slide:ology
I just finished Nancy Duarte's book, Slide:ology. I've recently become interested in presentation development, not because I give many presentations anymore, but primarily because I think presentations shared online through services like Slideshare have the potential to be good vehicles for visual explanations.
My overall impression of the book? Excellent! It should be required reading for anyone who has to develop or give presentations. She starts with an overview of the need for better presentations, discusses some basic prerequisites like identifying audience needs and touches on ideation and story development briefly. The majority of the book though focuses on design aspects of presentations and slides. Lots of good, useful information. I outlined the basic content of the book in a mind map, below. Take a look then buy the book.
My overall impression of the book? Excellent! It should be required reading for anyone who has to develop or give presentations. She starts with an overview of the need for better presentations, discusses some basic prerequisites like identifying audience needs and touches on ideation and story development briefly. The majority of the book though focuses on design aspects of presentations and slides. Lots of good, useful information. I outlined the basic content of the book in a mind map, below. Take a look then buy the book.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Social Media & Internet Marketing Presentation
Yet another presentation about social media. There's already thousands of other presentations on social media available. Why another one? Inspired by Cliff Atkinson's book, "Beyond Bullet Points," I've taken a renewed interest in presentation development. There once was a time as a corporate drone where I developed a lot of boring bullet point presentations. I really like presentations as a medium for visual explanations (they're visual, interactive and user-paced) especially with sites like SlideShare.net that makes it so easy to share presentations.
Much of the content in this presentation is HEAVILY influenced by several other presentations out there, including, Universal Mccann International Social Media Research Wave 3 and Marta Kagan's "What the F**k is Social Media?" The main difference is that I tried to develop the presentation around the structure that Cliff Atkinson outlines in "Beyond Bullet Points" - developing a story outline before even opening up PowerPoint.
As a web developer, I manage several websites for several small businesses and organizations. Over the last few years, it has become apparent that just having a website isn't enough for businesses and organizations. It's the minimum mandatory requirement. But to really join the Internet of the 21st century, businesses and organizations need to adopt a social media marketing strategy. I wanted to develop a presentation myself that I could share with my clients that explains why they should jump on the social media band wagon. Any constructive feedback appreciated.
Much of the content in this presentation is HEAVILY influenced by several other presentations out there, including, Universal Mccann International Social Media Research Wave 3 and Marta Kagan's "What the F**k is Social Media?" The main difference is that I tried to develop the presentation around the structure that Cliff Atkinson outlines in "Beyond Bullet Points" - developing a story outline before even opening up PowerPoint.
As a web developer, I manage several websites for several small businesses and organizations. Over the last few years, it has become apparent that just having a website isn't enough for businesses and organizations. It's the minimum mandatory requirement. But to really join the Internet of the 21st century, businesses and organizations need to adopt a social media marketing strategy. I wanted to develop a presentation myself that I could share with my clients that explains why they should jump on the social media band wagon. Any constructive feedback appreciated.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Creating a Free Blog with Blogger Presentation
Several weeks ago I created a really simple presentation illustrating the process of signing up for a new blog account with Blogger. It's an incredibly simple and basic presentation, but I run into enough people who aren't that savvy with computers or online applications, so I thought a really basic tutorial that walks these kinds of people through the process might be a useful resource to have available. At least when people ask me, "How hard is it to set up my own blog?" I now have somewhere to point them.
Creating a Free Blog with Blogger Presentation
Next up will be some follow-up online visual explanations on how to create a blog post, mark things up in it, add links, add photos, etc.
Creating a Free Blog with Blogger Presentation
Next up will be some follow-up online visual explanations on how to create a blog post, mark things up in it, add links, add photos, etc.
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