As you probably know, XPLANE is now Dachis Group. We are integrating everything as the year closes out — xBlog included.
On the heels of our post celebrating 4,383 days online (that’s 12 internet years!), I want to let everyone know that we’ll be importing key posts into Dachis Group’s Collaboratory blog, and we’ll continue publishing our thoughts and work on visual thinking there. In fact, my first post went up yesterday and other XPLANE alumnus have started blogging there as well.
We won’t be transferring all 8,333 xBlog posts. So many of them are outdated and linkrotted. But we will make sure key posts redirect to their new homes on the Collaboratory and all other posts don’t 404.
It has been a wonderful, amazing, enlightening ride here at xBlog, from hand-coding it starting in 1999, to embracing the first release of WordPress .7 in 2003, to today — a world where blogs are more than commonplace — they are ubiquitous. I don’t know that I could give a better rundown than I did for last year’s 11th anniversary, so if you want a trip down xBlog’s memory lane you can read it here.
Blogging has been core to me and XPLANE for a long time and we’re not going to stop. I truly hope XPLANE’s fans and xBlog’s readers will continue to follow our work as Dachis Group. We’ll still be doing that visual thinking thing, just as we have been for all these years, only now we’ll be bringing to it many more people and businesses.
So on behalf of xBlog… so long, and thanks for all the links.
Below are the links of the case studies featured at XPLANE | Dachis Group’s November 17, 2011 presentation at AIGA Shift 7 in Portland.
1. EXPLORE INTEL
The community had concerns about the environmental impact of Intel’s Rio Ranchero, New Mexico plant. We worked with Intel to design a website that transparently communicates key environmental information (click this link to view). It’s updated hourly and there are videos, links and a webcam providing additional info about the facility and the data.
Here’s a new video Dachis Group made for for Xylem:
The demand for water will increase 5 times by 2050 but the amount of fresh drinkable water on Earth always stays the same. Xylem finds ways to efficiently save, protect and control water. It’s what we do every day. It’s why we share a goal of solving the world’s water challenges…one drop at a time.
XPLANE | Dachis Group (now Dachis Group) announced today that it ranked #17 on the Great Place to Work® list of Best Small Business to Work in 2011. Presented by Entrepreneur.com the annual list recognizes companies that have exceptional workplace cultures. In its eighth year, the competition is divided into two categories, Small (50-250 employees) and Medium (251-999 employees).
Today we are happy to publish a new Dachis Group XPLANATiON about Social Business.
What’s a Social Business? It’s a business alive with energy and big ideas. It’s collaborative, authentic, customer-centric, trusted, open and real-time.
Over the past 18 months we’ve worked to integrate the value and heritage of the XPLANE services into the broader offerings of the Dachis Group as well as offer the Dachis Group value and services to XPLANE’s clients with the overall goal of delivering a unified approach and experience to all of our clients.
So far this series has been unoriginal and had a few bad ideas, but today’s installment can be especially crippling: self doubt. It usually goes something like this: “I can concept this, but I can’t execute it. I don’t have the requisite skills to pay the forthcoming bills.”
The fear of undertaking a project beyond your abilities is enough to stop you in your tracks while concepting. And it’s especially frustrating because the idea you have may be great. It may be inspired. You can see it, right there, clear as day in your head. But getting it out in the real world? That isn’t your forté. And that’s a bummer.
Back in June the federal government unveiled a newly designed visual to replace the Food Pyramid many of us are familiar with. Rather than simply showing us what each food group is, the new graphic also is meant to give us an idea of proper portion control of each food group. Shaped like a plate (and cup for the milk) the graphic is very simple, especially when held in contrast with the food pyramid.
This change prompted us at XPLANE | Dachis Group to take a look at a few other long-standing charts, graphics and diagrams and ask whether they could use a bit of sprucing up.
The web’s full of it. And social has dramatically increased it because so much can be said so quickly and so easily, from anywhere, by almost anyone. But social connects us — and a lot of us think of it as a purely personal experience. Friend to friend, person to person, fame to fan, etc. As individuals we struggle to make sense of it all as we juggle Twitter, Facebook and Flickr accounts, friends, contacts, comments and feeds.
This 3-minute overview animation is being used to drive adoption and usage of IHG’s Green Engage program, which helps individual hotels analyze their energy usage and devise action plans to reduce their environmental impact. Check it out on our YouTube channel.
XPLANE | Dachis Group drives breakthrough results with Business Design Thinking. Our approach includes a set of comprehensive business architecture solutions that combine research, collaborative consulting, design thinking, social media technology and incredibly effective visual communications.
It’s what makes us different. And better. The world’s biggest brands have found success with XPLANE. Are you ready for results too? Contact us.
Founded in 1993 by Dave Gray, XPLANE has evolved from an information design company into a global communications and business transformation consultancy. As part of the Dachis Group XPLANE drives results for the world’s leading corporations through the sophisticated process of Business Design Thinking.
XPLANE founder Dave Gray, along with XPLANER James Macanufo and our friend Sunni Brown, have written a playbook for innovators, rule-breakers and changemakers. It's called Gamestorming and it's filled with useful, fun knowledge games — games designed to help you get more innovative, creative results in your work. More info at gogamestorm.com.
At XPLANE | Dachis Group we have some of those fun perks you often hear about at great workplaces -- wine every Friday, free M&Ms, a pool table, and a duck pond to name a few. But we think the reason our workplace is so great runs a little deeper than that. For us, building a great workplace is a big commitment, and it’s all about building trust, pride, and camaraderie. We wanted to share a few of our practices with the hope that it might inspire you to think about how you could build a better workplace -- wherever you work.
Subscribe
Maybe you'd just prefer to grab our RSS feeds instead of visiting our lovely little site? Here you go:
Check out this video we made for Kronos to help celebrate International Women's Day, 2011. Learn more in this xBlog post or jump over to YouTube and watch it there.
Azure poster
XPLANE | Dachis Group developed a A vibrant, engaging poster showing how Microsoft Azure enables developers to run applications and store data on Microsoft servers. The poster recently took top honors in the American Business Awards.
As you know, 
XPLANE founder Dave Gray, along with XPLANER James Macanufo and our friend Sunni Brown, have written 
