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David Sibbet of The Grove added to VizThink ‘08

We’re excited with the addition of industry veteran David Sibbet to the facilitator group.  David is the founder of The Grove Consultants International, a full service organization development consulting firm located in the Thoreau Center for Sustainability in the Presidio of San Francisco. His personal consulting is focused on helping organizations and their leadership teams clarify and implement their strategic visions.

He works extensively with projects and organizations that cross sectors, geographies, and culture.  His highly interactive process incorporates panoramic/real-time visualization with well-designed group processes that focus on blending rigorous work on the substance of issues with leadership and team development. 

David and his Grove team regularly design and lead strategy, visioning, creativity, future-forces, leadership development, and large-scale system change processes for clients throughout the world. These include working broadly across both private and public interest sectors for large and small organizations in all stages of development. He is currently facilitating 48 NGOs and 8 Foundations intent on making the upper Midwest a leader in clean energy. He works extensively in Silicon Valley, and recently was in China teaching facilitation to a leading HR consulting firm.

David is also the author and designer of many of The Grove’s extensive line of process consulting tools and guides, including the Drexler/Sibbet Team Performance system, the Sibbet/LeSaget Sustainable Organizations Model, the Grove’s Strategic Visioning process and related graphic templates, and the Grove’s Facilitation Series.

The conference content is starting to round out, and there are lots more exciting announcements in the upcoming days.  Keep checking back for more exciting announcements.

Nigel Holmes added to the group of facilitators

We’re very excited to announce the addition of Nigel Holmes to the VizThink ’08 facilitators.  Nigel does explanation graphics.  He graduated from The Royal College of Art in 1966, and worked as a freelancer for newspapers and magazines in England until 1977, when Walter Bernard hired him to work at Time Magazine in New York.

As Graphics Director of Time, his pictorial explanations of complex subjects gained him many imitators and a few academic enemies. To this day he remains committed to the power of pictures and humor to help readers understand abstract numbers and difficult scientific concepts.

After 16 years, Time gave him a sabbatical, and he never went back. Now he has his own company, which has explained things to and for a wide variety of clients, including Apple, Fortune, Nike, The Smithsonian Institution, Sony, United Healthcare, US Airways and Visa, and he continues to do graphics for publications such as Harper’s, The New York Observer and The New York Times.

He’s written six books on aspects of information design. The latest, Nigel Holmes on Information Design, is a book-length interview with Steven Heller. It was published by Pinto Books in May 2006.  Wordless Diagrams, from 2005, has been published in Chinese and Swedish editions as well as the original English (although since there are no words, translation was no problem!)

With his son, Rowland, he makes short animated films. Clients have included Fortune, The TED conferences and the Markle Foundation.

He has lectured in India, Japan, Brazil, Singapore, and all over Europe and the United States.

Writing on Walls

We’re very excited to announce the addition of Eileen Clegg as a facilitator for the conference! We’ve known Eileen for years and have been a huge fan of her great work. Her hands on approach demonstrates one of the key features of the conference…real-world practice of visualization concepts.

Eileen is a visual journalist, book author and founder of the company Visual Insight, creating large-scale, real-time murals for organizations. She works with top leadership invoking visual language to wordlessly introduce the power of emotion and meaning into group communications. Her visual journalism combines contemporary reporting techniques with ancient , universal symbols. Her practice emphasizes metaphor, intuition, and story to facilitate business transformation, strategic planning, and team effectiveness.

Her clients have included Art Center College of Design, IBM, Kaiser Permanente, Federated Department Stores, Starbucks, Edwards Lifesciences, American Society of Training and Development, and the Gates Foundation’s Model Secondary Schools Program. She has been a research affiliate for Institute for the Future, in Palo Alto, California since 1999 with emphasis on the future of learning.

Before that, Eileen was a daily newspaper journalist for 20 years with emphasis on education and environment. At IFTF, Eileen worked closely with graphic facilitation pioneer David Sibbet before developing her unique visual journalism approach in 2001. Eileen has published and/or illustrated numerous articles and books including: The 21^stCentury Corporate University (Jossey Bass Pfeiffer, 2005), a chapter in Creating a Learning Culture (Cambridge University Press 2004), Claiming Your Creative Self (New Harbinger, 1999), Goodbye Good Girl (New Harbinger, 1998 with Susan Swartz), Becoming a Wise Parent for your Grown Child (New Harbinger, 1997 with Betty Frain). She is currently working on three books “The Shape of Thought” with Bonnie DeVarco, “Inventing the Future” with Douglas Engelbart and Valerie Landau, and “Writing on the Walls” explaining her methodology from her workshops. She has a B.A. degree in Philosophy from University of California, Berkeley.

Welcome Eileen!

New keynote added: Bob Horn

We’re very excited to announce the addition of Bob Horn to VizThink ’08.  Bob is the author of Visual Language: Global Communication for the 21st Century.  The landmark book, out of print until recently, has been republished and will be available for sale at the conference.

In addition, Bob is a visiting scholar at Stanford University and has taught at Harvard and Columbia universities. His pathbreaking book Visual Language: Global Communication for the 21st Century is recently back in print. He is also author of the Mapping Great Debates series Can Computers Think? and of Mapping Hypertext. He is the director of the project to apply visual thinking to public policy issues, working on climate change and energy strategy, nuclear waste disposal, foreign policy, as well as other “wicked” problems on the local and state level.  

We’re excited to have him at the conference.  Welcome, Bob!

Interactive Data Visualization & Analysis

As we design the conference, we’re trying to bring in people from a variety of disciplines that apply visual thinking techniques.  The networking and cross-pollination will provide tremendous insights and ideas for your work.  So far, we’ve added experts in information graphics and corporate communications.  Now, we’re very excited to add data visualization and analysis with our next facilitator, Stephen Few!

Stephen Few has worked for 25 years as an information technology innovator, teacher, and consultant. Today, as Principal of the consultancy Perceptual Edge, he focuses on data visualization for analyzing and communicating quantitative business information. In addition to consulting and training services, he writes the monthly Visual Business Intelligence Newsletter, speaks frequently at conferences, and teaches in the MBA program at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of two books: Show Me the Numbers: Designing Tables and Graphs to Enlighten and Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data. You can learn more about Stephen’s work at www.perceptualedge.com.

 Stay tuned, there are many great facilitators to be announced in the next several days.

Business 2.0 Ad

Our first advertisement, which can be found in the September issue of Business 2.0, should be just about ready to hit news stands.  Definitely go buy a copy!  Until then you can get a preview of the PDF right here:

Business 2.0 Ad for VizThink ’08

Dave Gray added to the schedule

We’re very excited about the announcements of facilitators for the conference.  There’s a great line up on the way.  We’ve actually chosen the term “facilitator” intentionally.  We’re not looking for speakers or presenters.  We’re looking for people who have a ton of experience and have a proven ability to help people not only understand the “what” of visualization, but also the “how” through hands on experiences.

No one exemplifies this better than our next facilitator, Dave Gray.

Dave Gray is the Founder and Chairman of XPLANE, a global consulting and design firm. XPLANE is an innovator in the field of visual thinking, working with clients all over the world to help them use visualization to explore business issues, gain alignment and communicate more clearly. His work focuses on applying visual thinking and visual language to business strategy and communication. His early career spans several newspapers, including the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, Seattle Post-Intelligencer and St. Louis Post-Dispatch, where he won numerous awards for excellence in graphic journalism. He has also taught Visual Communication for both the Design and Business schools at Washington University in St. Louis. In addition to consulting with XPLANE clients and speaking at conferences, Dave has started an acclaimed online Visual Thinking School and gives occasional seminars on visual thinking and visual language. Learn more at XPLANE or on Dave’s blog, Communication Nation.

Welcome Dave!

Updated: 8/29/07, Revised Bio

Registration is now open!

Good news!  Registration for VizThink ’08 is now open.  All of the details are available on the registration page of our website.  We look forward to seeing you in San Francisco!

Switching gears

We’ve spent the past six weeks getting all the logistics worked out for the new event.  We’re really excited about the possibilities.  However, we’re even more excited about the quality of content for the event.  Over the next few weeks, we’ll be announcing a steady flow of facilitators.  We’re gathering the best of the best in the industry to conduct hands on sessions and get insights into their latest work.

We’re really excited today to make the first of those announcements!

Karl Gude has spent nearly three decades in the news business visualizing the complex in the form of information graphics. Up until last year Karl spent eight years as the Director of Information Graphics at Newsweek magazine and previously held that position at the giant wire services The Associated Press and United Press International. He also directed the graphics departments at two large daily newspapers, the New York Daily News and the now-defunct National Sports Daily. Throughout his career he has conducted scores of training workshops around the world on visualizing information, most recently in India. Last year Karl accepted a position at Michigan State University’s School of Journalism to create an information graphics and visual thinking program.

What other facilitators would you like to have at the conference?  Leave us a comment here.

Be sure to check back for other exciting announcements over the next few days!

New logo

We continue to move along quickly here at VizThink HQ.  There are lots of very exciting announcement coming in the next several weeks.  Be sure to check back frequently.  Registration opens in just one week on August 15th, 2007.  One of the most recent accomplishments is the new logo:

It’s featured in our first ad for the conference in the next issue of Business 2.0 which hits newsstands next week.  Be sure to check it out.

All you need to know about Visual Thinking