As of this moment, there are only five spots left for the VizThink Austin gathering happening April 30!

And you can still sign up for the Dave Gray/Karl Gude workshops happening in Chicago and New York the first week of May.

“We are so excited to be able to announce our next VizThink Conference! This time we’ll be in Berlin, Germany. Berlin is an exciting, vibrant town with an amazing, growing art community. We’ll have lots of opportunities for hands on experiences, learning from industry gurus, and networking with your visual thinking peers. We’ll be bringing a few of your favorite facilitators from San Francisco with all new content, plus a whole lot of new facilitators from Europe.”

“It’s been a bit of an open secret for the past few weeks but as of today the official announcement is out. I’m excited to announce that as of May 1st I’ll be joining VizThink as their Chief Community Evangelist.

As the title suggests my new role will have me focusing on growing and developing the community surrounding VizThink and the ideas of Visual Thinking. One could argue I’ve already been doing this job for almost a year now, back to when I started running the VizThink evenings here in Toronto - it some sense I have, but it’s always been something I’ve done when I could steal a few minutes to think about it/do something.”

“We’re roommates. We make call-and-response baroque scenes on a dry erase board. They usually have nerdy characters from nerdy things in them. We’re Pat Barrett and Todd McArthur.” (Thanks Drawn!)

Web page for Prof. Nancy Van House’s course at Berkeley: “This course brings together several approaches to visual media, with two goals: first, to use the resources of a variety of fields to understand (and perhaps anticipate) changes in the production and uses of personal photographic images (loosely defined); second, to examine the possibilities of multi-disciplinary approaches to new media and new technology. Our organizing topic will be personal photography, but that will be the springboard for discussions about new media and developing information technologies and ways of understanding them.”

“Are you a visual thinker? Do you want to hone your visual thinking skills? Do you want to learn from some of the best in our industry? Then the Visual Thinking Workshop is for you! VizThink is offering a series of one-day workshops all around the United States. These workshops will help you improve your visual thinking skills. The first workshop series will be run by Dave Gray and Karl Gude.

Apparently separated at birth, together they will show you how to visualize your ideas so you can think and communicate with greater clarity and effectiveness. Working individually and in small teams, you will learn and practice visualization techniques that have been successfully used to improve innovation and accelerate change at some of the world’s leading companies. After completing this workshop you will have a toolkit for thinking and presentation effectiveness — your presentations of complex information and strategies will never be the same.”

Two of our facilitators and one of our attendees from VizThink ‘08 were involved in a significant visualization effort for one of the most famous conferences in the world, TED. If you’re unfamiliar with TED, they choose a theme each year and then each presenter has 18 minutes (no more, no less) to present their story. The presentations are almost always impressive, and most certainly inspiring. One of the most famous TED presentations related to our field was one done by Hans Rosling in 2006.

Here’s a note from Tom Wujec who headed up this visualization effort at TED:

Dear VizThinkers:

As many of you will recall, at VizThink 2008, I extended an offer for a free ticket to TED to a graphic cartographer who had the talent and stamina to capture the ideas of over 50 TED presenters in 3 ½ days of meetings. It probably will not surprise you that the offer was extended to David Sibbit of the Grove Consultants International, one of the leaders in our industry. David and Kevin Richards, from Autodesk, made a herculean effort to create over 700 sketches which are now on-line in a 200 page pdf book as well as in several videos. If you’re interested in seeing this emerging variation of digital visual recording, please download the interactive pdf book as well as the videos that strive to capture the spirit of this year’s Big Ideas.

“A simple drawing can communicate complex ideas quickly and almost effortlessly. It can even be the basis of a successful business plan.”

“Visualizing Information: An Introduction to Information Design is a booklet I wrote and designed to introduce advocacy organizations to basic principles and techniques of information design. It’s full of examples of interesting design from groups around the world in a variety of media and forms. It has tips, exercises, and even recommended Free Software packages to help polish up your graphics.”

A presentation by former XPLANEr Eric Lewallen at Ignite Portland 2. (Thanks Jon!)

Crazy dynamic whiteboard software and hardware. Watch through to the end — it’s not just about drawing.

“The adage that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ is truer than ever on the Internet”

The visual approach of these charts on religious topics is pretty impressive, having been created between 1914 and 1919. This collection includes information graphics describing “the history of man through the ages, the contrasts of the church and the kingdom, the different positions of the “church” in the Bible, the three heavens found in the Scriptures, how the prophets viewed prophecy, an illustrative view of the Ages and Dispensations, the failure of man in every dispensation, overview of the second coming of Christ, view of all the resurrections and judgments found in the Bible and an illustration of the different aspects of the spirit world.”

From The Economist: “A good graphic can tell a story, bring a lump to the throat, even change policies. Here are three of history’s best.”

“Tony Karrer wrote a post VizThink and Visual Thinking and Learning: Still not sure last week. It’s in reference to a conversation he was having with Tom Crawford, the CEO of VizThink about whether it would be valuable for e-learning professionals to attend the conference he is organizing in January.

Several of us who are facilitating at the conference responded, and a very interesting conversation developed… Dave Gray has been a leader in this field for many years, and his company Xplane has opened an office here in Portland. Dave joined in the conversation with Tony, and since he is a featured facilitator at the VizThink conference, Tom Crawford arranged for Dave and Tony to have an expanded discussion in a free webinar.”

• Topic: How is Visual Thinking Related to eLearning?
• Guests: Tony Karrer & Dave Gray
• Date: Thursday, December 20th, 2008
• Time: 8am Pacific, 10am Central, 4pm GMT
• Cost: FREE