Disney’s $100,000 Salt + Pepper Shaker

“You’re probably familiar with Randy Pausch. If not, you should go and familiarize yourself with his story. Randy is both a a tenured professor at Carnegie Mellon, a scientist, a husband and father. And he’s dying of cancer. His last gift is for all of us, in the form of a video that’s made it’s way around the internet—as well as a precious book titled “The Last Lecture”. There are many stories worth talking about which Randy has put into words, but I wanted to take a moment to highlight one of them as it’s helping me think through the idea of “Micro-Interactions”.

The $100,000 Salt & Pepper Shaker

The story is simple. At 12 years old, a young Randy Pausch was exploring Disney World with his family and he and his sister decided they wanted to show their parents their appreciation for the trip…”

“Marks and Meaning” a new book by XPLANE founder Dave Gray

“Marks and meaning is a work in progress; an evolving exploration of visual language, visual thinking and visual work practices by the founder and Chairman of XPLANE, the visual thinking company. An unfinished work, it’s a hybrid: part sketchbook, part textbook, part workbook, and continuously updated by the author, based on feedback and conversations with readers. This is version zero: the first version available to the public.”

Fight the Bull – Why Business People Speak Like Idiots

“If you think you smell something at work, there’s probably good reason — Bull has become the official language of business. Every day, we get bombarded by an endless stream of filtered, jargon-filled corporate speak, all of which makes it harder to get heard, harder to be authentic, and definitely harder to have fun. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The team that brought you the Clio Award-winning Bullfighter software is back with an entertaining, bare-knuckled guide to talking straight. Grab your cape and sharpen your sword. It’s time to fight the bull!” (Thanks Magda!)

Great business leaders are not necessarily great presenters

“After my first day at Brainstorm in Half Moon Bay I have this comment to make. Great business leaders such as Michael Dell and Jeff Bezos, people whose companies reach hundreds of millions of consumers and whose revenues are in the tens of billions, are not necessarily great communicators. While bloggers who reach millions and whose ad revenues are in the single digit millions, people like Robert Scoble, Kara Swisher and Om Malik, are phenomenal, entertaining, insightful communicators. Dell´s and Bezos´sessions were hard to endure, while the bloggers where tremendous fun.”

Startup Ideas We’d Like to Fund

“When we read Y Combinator applications there are always ideas we’re hoping to see. In the past we’ve never said publicly what they are. If we say we’re looking for x, we’ll get applications proposing x, certainly. But then it actually becomes harder to judge them: is this group proposing x because they were already thinking about it, or because they know that’s what we want to hear?

We don’t like to sit on these ideas, though, because we really want people to work on them. So we’re trying something new: we’re going to list some of the ideas we’ve been waiting to see, but only describe them in general terms. It may be that recipes for ideas are the most useful form anyway, because imaginative people will take them in directions we didn’t anticipate. “

Visual thinking workshops in London with Dave Gray

XPLANE founder Dave Gray is giving a couple workshops in London this month. You can get more info at his blog, Communication Nation.

London is calling my name again.

Next week I’ll be in London for two events, July 9th and 10th.

On July 9th, from 4pm-9pm, I will be leading a workshop called Thinking visually to tackle business challenges: A creative and innovative approach to problem solving.

Statistical surveys have shown that design and visualisation have a verifiable impact on business performance. Visual articulation is important when solving a problem that involves strategic goals and initiatives. At its core, it helps bridge the problem or opportunity with the solution. That is why helping decision makers to think and express themselves visually gives organisations a competitive edge in the marketplace.

Joining me will be a couple of XPLANE clients, who will share case studies of how they employed visual thinking in their organisations…

On July 10th I will be leading an interactive session and discussion at VizThink London. That event goes from 5:30-9:00pm.