Got some pleasant news a few days ago when I learned my large scale visual notes were being used as a magazine cover illustration.
The backstory:
My friends at ImageThink asked me to represent them by providing Graphic Recording at the March 2010 Pharmaceutical Meeting Management Forum in Philadelphia.
People at this event shared ideas for finding innovative ways to make their meetings successful in the current challenging economic circumstances while I represented those ideas in pictures and key words as they spoke in a kind of real time mural.
People at the conference gave me great feedback on the visual notes. I sent them photos of the graphics and filed it in my memory as another rewarding and interesting session.
Months later, I was delighted that the editors of Medical Meetings Magazine decided to use a closeup of my large scale visual notes from the event as the cover for their June issue.
This is a great example of the way graphic recording can extend the impact of your event long after it is over. Even if the visual notes don’t end up on the cover of a magazine, you can share them in email newsletters, brochures, slideshows, websites, and so on. If you want conversations to really count, graphic recording is a powerful way to create a vivid record of the ideas bouncing around the room at forums, meetings, and conferences.
I am excited to be the graphic recorder at Supernova Forum 2010, a conference which “…explores the transformation of computing, communications, business, and society in the Network Age. ” It will be a delightful challenge to translate the ideas bouncing around the event into pictures.
Held since 2002, Supernova events bring together several hundred leading executives, entrepreneurs, intellectuals, government officials, and business practitioners to make connections, discuss emerging trends, and discover innovative new ideas and companies.
Supernova will take place July 29-30 at Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.
The two days will contain a mix of self organizing sessions as well as a plethora of excellent speakers in a more traditional conference format.
Just got back from a week in San Diego where my wife was running a half marathon.
If you are ever in San Diego, I highly recommend that you walk from Ocean Beach to Point Loma. Stunning coves accessorized with schools of surfers bobbing offshore.
Have you ever been in the midst of a lousy situation and gone, “Man, if I’d just negotiated differently a few months ago, I would not be in this mess” We negotiate every day, with ourselves, our spouses, our kids, our business partners. When I want to understand things better, I usually start doing research and drawing pictures of what I’m trying to learn. Here’s one of the basic concepts you will find in many negotiation books—positions versus interests. Positions are a what a party states they want, and interests are what motivate those assertions.
You can think of interests as the tip of the iceberg—they are what are visible. But dive deeper and you will find the interests that underlay those positions.
So how do you find out the interests of your negotiating partner? That’s coming later! For now, try thinking about the interests that motivate the positions you are taking. Are your positions actually going to satisfy your interests? Just a thought.
Jeff Pulver assembled an amazing roster of people to speak at the conference, from NBC’s Ann Curry, to MC Hammer, to Jay Rosen.
They, and many other speakers, discussed the implications of what Pulver calls “Now media” for business and society. “Now media” is the combination of emerging social platforms with older media forms.
Jeff Hayzlett, the Chief Marketing Officer at Kodak, gave a moving talk about the power of helping people sharing emotional moments.
New York Times writer David Carr explained why he though Twitter will continue to thrive, summarized above in key words.
To see video clips of all the speakers, check here.
Thanks to R/GA for lending me the iPad for the day. R/GA is a visionary international digital design company. I am honored that they worked with me on this.
Technical Notes:
I drew the SketchNotes on an iPad using a Pogo stylus and the SketchBook Pro App.
I am delighted that I will be taking visual notes at the 2010 140 Characters Conference, as I did last year. Only this year, on the first day, I will be creating the notes on an iPad that award winning digital agency R/GA is sponsoring me with.
Since the conference is about the business and social implications of the emerging real-time web, I thought it was appropriate to use the "nowest" device, the iPad, to capture the ideas and energy of the event.
If you are attending, be sure to say hi, and if not, I hope my viznotes will help you glean some of the knowledge and energy that will be coursing through the 2 day event.
Dave Martorana was kind enough to let me play around with the SketchBook Pro App on his shiny new iPad.
This was all done with my fingers. While it was fun, it is highly limited.
Limitations:
1) Not pressure sensitive—that means you have no control of your line weight in real time. This is caused by the iPad, not the software. The iPad interface is does not allow for pressure sensing.
2) Not precise–Hey, I was drawing with my fingers, so I had to let go of precision.
3) 7.99 cents. A little steep compared to other apps.
Awesomeness:
1) It’s fun to fingerpaint/fingerdraw, once you let go of the fact it’ll be a little loose. There’s a visceral connection to the drawing when one uses fingers in the making.
2) Great to be able to zoom in, zoom out, and rotate the image with finger gestures
3) Nice to have layers
4) Easy to email yourself the image once you are done
I am not going to run out and by an iPad quite yet. I would rather have a tablet that allows for pressure sensitivity. Still, super fun, and it’s a lovely device. I would probably opt for a simpler and less expensive drawing app if I had an iPad. I think all the features of SketchBook Pro are overkill given the limitations of the iPad interface.
I was proud to have the opportunity to speak at a press conference at City Hall on the topic of Philadelphia’s request for Google to install an ultra high speed data network here in Philly.
That is Mayor Nutter looking at me as I share my thoughts on why Philly would be an ideal testbed for Google to experiment with a high speed data network.
Philly is rich in knowledge sectors—pharma, health care, education, technology, financial services, art, and design. All those dots, when intraconnected and interconnected with high speed fiber will grow bigger and more powerful.
The Mayor poked a little fun at me when he closed the press conference, saying that the kind of idea “jamming” volunteers did with each other to come up with Philly’s pitch to Google was a little different than the kind of jamming he did with his friends in the old days. I decided not to press him on the details. I know Google’s mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” but sometimes there’s such a thing as too much information, and what Mayor Nutter was doing in his youth falls into this category for me.
Now that the deadline for cities to submit their applications to Google has passed, some of the crew from the Philly effort have redirected the site GigaBitPhilly.com to GigaBitCity.com which seeks to catalyze efforts by cities to implement high speed local networks with or without the help of Google.
I created these illustrations for a video that promotes Philadelphia as the perfect testbed for the google high speed fiber initiative. The video will go live on Friday, but I thought I’d get them up ahead of time. To find out more about the public-private partnership in Philly to promote the City of Firsts as a site for this project, please visit gigabitphilly.com And if you have ideas for how Philly could use an ultra high bandwidth data network that connects individuals, industry, and government, please submit your ideas here.
You can also show your support by coming to the press conference with Philadelphia Mayor tomorrow (Thursday, March 25) at 2:30 at City Hall on the 2nd floor.
A high speed data network in Philly has the potential to accelerate our medical, film production, university, technology, financial services, and community sectors by letting people share massive amounts of data rapidly—that means rich interactivity, problem solving, and communication.
Gigabit Philly Videos GigabitPhilly Site GigabitPhilly Facebook Fanpage Follow GigabitPhilly on Twitter
Enjoy!
—Jonny Goldstein
Lots of stimulating conversation and new connections at the world’s first TrendCamp. TrendCamp arose out of a session at BarCamp Philly on emerging web trends led by Mark Magliocco. People enjoyed it so much that people banded together to do a mini unconference about the future. Thus TrendCamp, which took place last night in space donated by a law office in Center City.
The attendees: An eclectic bunch of technologists, educators, business people, marketers, publishers, media makers and many more.
Sessions:
I attended two sessions: “Augmented Reality” and “Retro Future Trends” and I led a session called “Visualizing the Future.”
Augmented Reality: This session was thought provoking. One possible application of AR—to augment the often challenging reality of having to assemble something—For example an AR layer could show you where to insert your screw driver and start tightening a screw. The thing that stuck with me the most were the implications for marketing to people and the related implications for privacy. AR provides yet another way for us to engage with marketing and yet another way to track that engagement. When you realize that by it’s very nature AR is location based, that gets into whole new realms of privacy and digital interaction away from our desktops.
Retro Future Trends: Mark Magliocco talked about past predictions of the future—what panned out and what did not. He showed a bit of a great clip produced for 1964 World’s Fair about a utopian, clean, stylish, future. What do our fantasies about the future show about our hopes, dreams, and values?
Visualizing the Future:
Sharing a vision of the future
Many visions of the future, arranged chronologically, from now to 100 years forward.
I led this mini-workshop where I gave a quick drawing tutorial and then had everyone draw a scene from the future. Then we shared our drawings with each other and arranged them along a timeline from the near future to 100 years from now. Among the predictions—
1) Bio tinkering for fashion (e.g. Mom? Why can’t I grow a tail? All the other kids are doing it!)
2) Faster travel—-suborbital flight that got people around the world in a couple of hours
3) Augmented reality—-a drawing of a person walking around with a bunch of floating logos in front of her
4) Custom real time pharmaceutical fabrication and delivery—picture a patient in a hospital whose medicines are being created in real time, customized to her genome and current needs, delivered in just the right dose as needed.
5) Rich real time distance interaction
I was very proud of the participants who dove into drawing their ideas even though most were not professional artists or designers. They got their ideas across clearly, which is what the session was all about.
Afterparty: Had some unusually deep conversations with people at the afterparty. Especially enjoyed chatting with people I had just met at TrendCamp, Laurence Tom, Manny Rechani, and Paul J. Mathison.
Thanks very much to the organizers (Tyler Baber, Mark Magliocco and Mike Jewsbury, and Gloria Bell) volunteers, sponsors, and participants for helping make this event a success! There were many sessions I wish I could have gotten to, which is the hallmark of a good happening.
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