New project: The Carbon Economy

For the second time in recent months XPLANE has partnered with The Economist to create a compelling video on a topic of global importance. After working together on “Did You Know? 4.0”, The Economist enlisted XPLANE’s visual communication expertise to develop “The Carbon Economy” about the growing importance of climate change and green technologies and solutions.

“The Carbon Economy” will be shown at The Economist’s upcoming Carbon Economy Summit on November 17 and 18, 2009 in Washington, D.C. The video is three minutes in length and includes simple visuals and a moving soundtrack to clearly convey the troubled state of global climate change and what steps must be taken to reach a positive outcome. The production was created using Apple’s Keynote software.

For more information on The Carbon Economy Summit, visit http://carboneconomy.economist.com.

Did You Know 4.0

XPLANE is happy to present Did You Know 4.0 — another official update to the original “Shift Happens” video. This completely new Fall 2009 version includes facts and stats focusing on the changing media landscape, including convergence and technology, and was developed in partnership with The Economist.

As Garr Reynolds mentions over at Presentation Zen this morning, yes, this project was created with “off-the-shelf slideware” (Keynote and GarageBand, actually, along with Photoshop and Illustrator). Content by XPLANE, The Economist, Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod and Laura Bestler. Design and development by XPLANE.

For more information, or to join the conversation, please visit The Economist’s Media Convergence conference site at mediaconvergence.economist.com, or stop by shifthappens.wikispaces.com for all things Did You Know.

A Naked Audience?

Presentation prep advice from Nancy Duarte:

“Imagine everyone in the audience naked.”

Are you kidding me?!?!? Why would I want to imagine standing in front of a large group of naked people? Just thinking of that makes me shudder. I mean seriously what if you are presenting to a group of engineers? No offense, but I can’t imagine presenting to Steve Wozniak as he stares at me in the nude! Steve, I love you, but…

The point of this advice is to lighten your focus, relieve your stress, and allow you to relax into the moment. The secret is, there’s no secret–the key is preparation and rehearsal. Here’s some techniques I’ve been shown over the years to help me obtain focus and be more relaxed onstage.

Savings & (mis)Trust: A Credit Crisis XPLANATiON

The subprime mortgage crisis XPLANEd: The United States economy is suffering one of the worst financial crises in history, due to seriously flawed subprime mortgage lending practices over the past eight years. The repercussions have already been severe and continue to unravel. American people are fearful and unsure of what the future holds. How did we get to this point? Clearly understand the roles that borrowers, mortgage lenders, banks, financial institutions and asset backed securities played in creating this financial meltdown of historic proportion.

This four minute animated movie takes viewers through the process starting in 2000 and ending in current day. It details the role that home buyers, mortgage lenders, banks, financial institutions and ultimately asset backed securities played in this financial mess.

Let’s get XPLANE to SXSW 2009!

Hey bBlog readers, if you want, you could go vote for this panel to be part of next year’s SXSW :-)

Shift Happens: Moving from Words to Pictures | People are hardwired for visualization yet we rely significantly on text. Most games, graphic novels, magazines, interfaces, IKEA instructions, and many other forms of communication take advantage of people’s natural visual thinking ability. Panelists will discuss how to leverage visual techniques to improve your games, websites, movies, communications, or presentations.

The panel is scheduled to include Dan Roam, author of Back of the Napkin; Dave Gray, founder and Chairman of XPLANE; Lee LeFever, founder of Common Craft (authors of the wildly popular “In Plain English” podcast series); and expert visual facilitators and Austin natives Sunni Brown and Marilyn Martin.

XPLANE workshops in London and Geneva: 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.

Facilitators for the September 30, 2008 London workshop include Pablo M. Ramírez, Client Services Director of XPLANE EMEA and Martin Hill, VP Marketing EMEA for Lawson Software.

• Understand the meaning and value of visual thinking
• Use a creative and innovative method to solve business challenges
• Use visual tools to help you generate, evaluate and organise ideas
• Learn how to use them to contextualise, prioritise and harness change
• Extend these new techniques and methodology to your team

Go to www.xplane.com/events to download the registration forms and get more info.

“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.”

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.”

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.

A physicist on the “Lessig style”

“Many have asked me about my Keynote (it is not PowerPoint) presentation style. I honestly don’t have much to say about it, as I’ve not thought it through. But Chris Tunnell, a researcher on the SNO neutrino physics experiment has, and he sent me his thoughts about how and why (and whether) the style works based on his own experience using it for physics presentations. Read about it in the extended entry.”