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.
RSVP HERE
In the upcoming VizThink, we will look at some processes and visual tools to make group collaboration more productive.
Justin Witman and Fraser Marshall will lead a mini-workshop on visualizing individual character and group profiles, which can then be used to find collective group purpose.
When a group has a shared sense of purpose, collaboration becomes much more productive.
The duo are in the last semester of University of the Arts'innovative Masters of Industrial Design program. At UArts, Justin and Fraser are focusing on "The science and design of sustainable collaborations, founded on basic principles of human behaviors that govern learning, motivation and purpose." They call this focus, humantic design.
When: 6:30-8PM Weds, March 10
Where: Where: Room 116 SHDH (downstairs) Steinberg-Dietrich Hall 3620 Locust Walk University of Pennsylvania Between Spruce and Locust Walk along what would be 37th street. Note: Locust walk is a pedestrian only area on UPenn campus.
Thanks: As always to Erin Murphy and The Wharton School of Business Alfred West Jr Learning Lab for being our hosts.
Richard Saul Wurman delighted me when he spoke at the SenseMaker Dialogs last Tuesday in New York City. I remember picking up his book, Information Anxiety for the first time in the early 90’s, a terrified and confident young man, and loving every little bit of it, the provocative micromanifestos, the frequent sidebars, the anecdotes, the impatience with the dreck that gets in the way of understanding. Turns out he speaks the same way he writes–stories, sidebars, provocation, improvisation. Any good improvisor knows that you’ve got to know structure to be good. And nobody loves exploring and applying structure like Wurman.
Below are a few details from illustrated notes I created as he spoke.
At one point Wurman railed at one of the audience members to stop taking notes. “Listen,” he cajoled, and then launched into an anecdote about how he managed to take way beyond a normal course load as an undergraduate by forcing himself not to take notes—just to listen and open himself to understanding. Of course, I didn’t take his advice! But I get what he’s saying . Take a breath. Put down the pen. Listen. I am actually doing this more often lately. Sometimes notetaking gets in between me and understanding.
I loved his fable of a person sitting by a fire, progressing to groups of people around fires, connected by paths, evolving to what today is a city interlaced with roads. Poetic.
If it’s hard it may be interesting. Comfort is the enemy, simultaneous terror and confidence are your friends. He poked some fun at a guidebook publisher, who makes a lot of money but doesn’t push the envelope of what guide book could be.
You could hear his delight in playing with information, approaching it in different ways, going deeper and deeper, like peeling layers in a neverending onion.
Wurman ended up by emphasizing the power of asking a good question. And maybe that is the beginning of the end of information anxiety. When you have a good question, you can start the hunt for the right information, connected in a way that makes sense, to create understanding.
Thanks to Humantfic and The School of Design Strategies for hosting the event. I will post my thoughts about Gary K Van Patter talk which comprised the second half of the event in a few days.
Had a fantastic experience at the PhillyChi Design Slam. Here are a few photos and short video clips.
Here is how the slam was described before the event:
"Contestants will participate in a fast-paced race to create the best design solution to a "made-up" real-world problem. Awards will be given to the victors!"
"During the meeting, participants will be teamed and introduced to a full-fledged hypothetical project, including appropriate client-side deliverables. They'll then have an opportunity to interview key players on the client's team. The session will conclude with proposal presentations from each of the groups to the "clients" and the assembled audience.
Then the "clients" team will choose a winner. Members of the winning team will receive a plethora of praise from your peers and an award."
My Experience:
Was put on a team with several other folks, only one of whom I already knew–Ruth Kalinka. The hypothetical project was to create a new strategy for a general retailer "Archer Inc." who competed with Target at the high end and Wal-Mart at the low end. They wanted to build a bunch of new locations that would have higher profit margins than their existing stores. They also wanted to make inroads into two distinct market segments, "Eco-Fashionista" Moms and "Sportscenter" men. They also wanted to lower their costs while going in a greener direction.
After hearing the brief, we had 45 minutes to come up with a presentation. We had no trouble coming up with ideas, but filtering them and synthesizing them was more of challenge. That did not stop us from trying though! We had very diverse group–from mechanical engineer, to information architects, to visual designers, to a graphic facilitator. I pulled out all the stops giving a musical intro when it was our turn to present. We took turns presenting different pieces of our proposal, but unfortunately ran out of time before everything was presented.
Todd Warfel and Kelani Nichole's group gave what I felt like was the most coherent and businesslike sounding proposal, and indeed their team won. I was told over beers later that our group came a close 2nd.
The main thing is it was fun, challenging, and a great way to stretch and meet new people.
Special Bonus: One of the stakeholders in the fictitious company played the part of founding family member, Jake, who had completely different ideas from the company's management team. He went from group to group throwing wrenches in everyone's ideas. I loved this detail.
Thanks to PhillyChi for producing the event and Messagefirst for hosting it and all the participants and specators. Great stuff.
I have been a fan of Brandy Agerbeck's work for the last couple of years. In this video, she explains how she uses graphic recording as part of a facilitated event. In the video, gerbeck explains two benefits of graphic facilitation: better thinking and better communication.
She works in an iconic, colorful, playful style that is as distinctive (and awesome) as she is. Behind the playful style is a discerning and expert graphic facilitator.
(Video of the Graphic Recording From VizThink Philadelphia Show and Tell).
We had an amazing turnout at VizThink Philadelphia Show and Tell. Particiapants included the web team from the Philadelphia Federal Reserve, Medard Gabel of Big Picture Small World, Erin Murphy from UPenn's Wharton School of Business Alfred P. West Jr. Learning Lab, and many other designers, writers, illustrators, entrepreneurs, technologists, and researchers. Each presented for about 3 minutes, while I graphically recorded their talks. In the video above I show parts of the graphic recording, which will give you a taste of the range of fields represented.
And we also snacked on some VizThink Philly flowchart cookies.
Thanks as always to Erin Murphy of the UPenn Wharton School of Business Alfred P. West Jr. Learning center for hosting the event. Tip of the hat to Julia Pellicciaro, Bianca Cevoli (who couldn't make this event, but was there at the inception), help plan the event, and Julia did a great job keeping the presentations flowing. And biggest thanks of all to all the attendees who came out in the midst of their jam-packed holiday season to share with other people interested in using visual thinking to make their work and lives better. Here's to a splendid 2010!
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