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.

Craving a cigarette? How about 4,000 lethal chemicals?

We’ve just finished a new project: Put It Out is an illustrated poster showing in no uncertain terms the lethal chemicals — including arsenic, methane and formaldehyde — ingested from each cigarette and what some of the harsh health facts are surrounding smoking.

More about VizThink ‘08

“Bringing together leaders in visual thinking for the first time in one location, the VizThink ‘08 Conference (http://www.vizthink.com) is an opportunity for executives to understand ways of incorporating visualization processes into business, learning and communications strategies to gain faster and more effective results. Hosted by Portland, Ore. based VizThink LLC, the conference will include breakout sessions and forums facilitated by some of the most recognized names in the visual thinking space, including the distinguished Bob Horn from Stanford University, renowned author and artist Scott McCloud, award winning designer Nancy Duarte of Duarte Design, most notably known for her work in Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, and Nigel Holmes formerly with Time magazine. The conference will be held at the Westin San Francisco Market Street Hotel from January 27-29. Registration (http://www.vizthink.com/reg.html) is open now.”

What Excessive Pay Package?

“In 1970, The average CEO earned 28 times more than the average worker. Despite all the recent noise around reining in runaway CEO pay, the gap has widened drastically.”

Five Guidelines for Using Statistics

“Do statistics tell the entire story? Managers must make effective use of the numbers they generate. Here are five tips to help ensure that you can rely on the numbers.”

Baseline: Useful tools and calculators for business

Including planners for Calculating Costs of Installing a Workflow Management System; Calculating Costs of Hardening Security Systems; Integrating Information Systems; Calculating Costs of a Digital File Downloading System; Calculating Costs of an Electronic Document Management System and more…

Why Your Pointy Haired Boss Is A Mathematical Certainty

“The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) produces some interesting documents about things like the percentage of the population that can work, the percentage of that population that is employed and so on. Well, one document they produce is the Occupational Employment and Wages report. Basically it says how many people have what job and what they get paid. So I gathered the data from this chart and created this graph that shows how many people get paid what. Each dot represents a type of job.”

Harvard and Wharton Deans Try to Undermine MBA Rankings

“These two top business schools will no longer provide BusinessWeek the opportunity to survey their graduating classes. Why? The deans basically say that rankings are crass and misleading. The real story, however, is quite different.”

What’s Special About This Number?

“If you know a distinctive fact about a number not listed here, please e-mail me. Divisors, algebra, primes, sums of powers, powers/polygonal, matrices, graphs, combinatorics, Fibonacci, digits, perfect/amicable, bases, repdigits, geometry…”