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Novamind added as a sponsor

We’re very excited to announce Novamind as a VizThink ’08 sponsor and exhibitor.  Novamind is one of the leaders in the mind mapping space with powerful software with lots of cool features like labeling the link lines, huge flexibility in colors, flexible shapes, and the inclusion of your own images.  For more details, check out their wiki page…

Kinetic Energies Sponsoring VizThink ‘08

Do you write on the walls?  Do you want to take the walls with you?  Do you want to re-arrange the whiteboards in the room to better fit your needs?

We’re very excited to announce our next sponsor, Kinetic Energies.  In addition to their involvement, they are supplying their Nomad Dry erase boards (pictured below) for all of our rooms and areas.  The boards are durable, flexible, portable, solid, and, frankly, beautifully crafted.  We were at one of our members about a month ago who happened to use their boards.  They were over 5 years old, heavily used, and looked brand new.  Come to the event to try them out!

Mapping the Possibilities

As the regular readers know, our goal at VizThink both in the community and at the conference is to represent a large diversity of visual styles and approaches used for learning and communication.  Well, we’ve got another exciting announcement in our next facilitator that adds the ability for us to find ourselves…or at least find places and things we want to find.

John Grimwade is the information graphics director of both Condé Nast Portfolio and Condé Nast Traveler magazines, based in New York.  Over the last 20 years, he has freelanced for 30 other major magazines, including an 8-year spell as graphics consultant to Popular Science. Although he has produced all kinds of explanatory graphics, his speciality is wayfinding maps and diagrams: helping people navigate complex spaces.

He has co-hosted many infographic workshops in Spain and the U.S., and given presentations at the Society of News Design and Malofiej conferences, the Poynter Institute, and the Folio Show.

In another life, John was graphics director at The Times in London. He has a degree in graphic design from Canterbury College of Art.

Designing Software through Visualization

Software design is a complex process.  Creating usable software that’s both intuitive and functional requires a variety of visual approaches.  We’re excited to announce the addition of Dana Smith and Doug LeMoine from Cooper.  Cooper, a San Francisco-based software development firm, was founded by Alan Cooper, author of two cornerstone books in the industry, About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design and The Inmates Are Running the Asylum.

Dana Smith is an Interaction Design consultant at Cooper, and a former interaction/information designer at Xplane. She focuses on facilitating the design process, creating solutions to meet real human and business needs, and clarifying and communicating those solutions. Dana studied user-centered design and innovation in the Industrial and Interaction design programs at the Savannah College of Art and Design.

Doug LeMoine leads the design communication practice at Cooper, a pioneering interaction design consultancy based in San Francisco. In Doug’s seven years at Cooper, he has tackled problems in consumer and business domains, designing compelling interactions for touchscreens, handheld devices, the desktop, the old web, and the new web. He looks forward to the future web, to opportunities for rich, natural, humane human-computer interaction, and to a time when urban bicycling is safe and air travel is fun.

Doug’s portfolio work includes interfaces for personal information management, neurosurgical planning, financial portfolio analysis, database marketing, telecommunication network construction, and computer-assisted surgery, and his clients include Agfa, Charles Schwab, IBM (Lotus) Notes, DePuy, and HP.

Visual Thinking during Software Design

Software design, usability, and the user experience are complex processes.  From the initial concept to prototype to the final product, the process mirrors the development of almost any product or service.  The entire process is ripe for improvement with visual thinking.  The trio of Henning Fischer, Sarah Nelson, and Brandon Schauer from Adaptive Path are a great add to the VizThink ’08 group of facilitators. They bring years of experience in software, interface, and user experience design. Their session will focus on how visual thinking can impact the entire design process.  Here’s a little more about each one of them:

Henning Fischer

Henning Fischer is a design strategist for Adaptive Path. His principal focus is on design research and strategy development. He has worked with a diverse group of organizations to develop multi-channel strategies for communications, services, and products for the web and beyond.  He holds a Master of Design from the Institute of Design at Illinois Institute of Technology, where he focused on the confluence of business analytics, design, and user research. Prior to joining Adaptive Path, Henning specialized in web strategy at Diversified Media Design and the Ruder Finn Group, consulting for a range of clients.

Henning’s portfolio of skills include digital product strategy development, business concept illustration, and user-centered research and analysis techniques.

Past clients include Ameriprise, Eli Lilly, Guggenheim Museum, Hallmark, Hunter Douglas, Japan Society, LeapFrog, Magellan, Novartis, Trek Bicycle Corporation, uGenie, Vanguard Financial.

In addition to his degree from the Institute of Design, Henning holds a bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Tufts University in Boston and a Certificate in Graphic and Digital Design from the Parsons School of Design in New York. He speaks German fluently and is diligently working on his Mandarin to impress his in-laws.

Sarah Nelson

Sarah B. Nelson is a design strategist for Adaptive Path. She has ten years of experience in interactive media, designing kiosks, mobile and online experiences for clients in a variety of industries. Sarah has a particular passion for practice development, conducting research into methods for improving collaboration, supporting creativity, and encouraging innovation.

Sarah brings a unique blend of creative vision and technical expertise to her work. Her research-focused approach to interaction design has produced successful results for clients such as the Federal Home Loan Bank, Home Street Bank, AOL Mobile, The Metropolitan Opera, and The Royal Victorian and Albert Museum.

Before joining Adaptive Path, Sarah managed the creative team and developed the user experience practice at POP, an interactive design firm in Seattle, Washington. A classically trained violinist, Sarah graduated from the Interlochen Arts Academy and received a B.A. from Oberlin College in visual arts and electronic music. While completing her Masters at the Institute of Design in Chicago, Sarah focused her studies on the definition and design of complex multi-modal systems supporting collaboration and communication.

Brandon Schauer

Brandon Schauer is an experience design director for Adaptive Path. He speaks, writes, trains, and practices experience design as a differentiator for business strategy. Brandon’s passion for finding and understanding the unmet needs of customers has led him to diverse environments, from the homes of cancer patients to tunnels beneath Walt Disney World. This insight with customers — plus a solid grounding in business analysis and a mastery of design methods — allows Brandon to help organizations define and design more meaningful experiences for their customers.

Brandon has over a decade of experience developing new products, services, and user experiences for the web, desktop, and devices. He’s keynoted, presented, and conducted workshops at such conferences at Business to Buttons, IA Summit, Designertopia, and UIE Web App Summit.

Past clients include American Cancer Society, Ameriprise Financial, Bank of New York, Charles Schwab, Chase Manhattan Bank, First Union Bank, Flickr, JetBlue, LeapFrog, Morgan Stanley, Motorola, MorningStar, NYCE, and Vanguard Financial.

Brandon holds two master-level degrees from schools with the Illinois Institute of Technology. He received a Master of Design from the Institute of Design in Chicago where he studied the planning, development, and management of innovation. Concurrently, he graduated with a MBA from the Stuart School of Business. Brandon is a past editor for the Institute of Design’s Perspectives on Design and Strategy, allowing him to pick-the-brains of leaders in the fields of innovation, design, and strategy.

He also has a love of Excel that is unnatural for a designer.

Welcome to all 3 of you!

BOSSdev added as a Premier Sponsor

We’re very excited about the addition of BOSSdevas a Premier Sponsor and Exhibitor at VizThink ’08.  BOSSdev is a global custom software application developer with a very broad array of capabilities and experience.  In addition to enterprise and Internet software, they also create interactive media, games, and advergaming for their customers.  Some of the games they create are even just for fun.  Check out this addicting pool simulation.  It taught me more in a few minutes about lining up a shot then years of playing on a real table.

Welcome BOSSdev!

Guess who’s coming…

We’ve already had an amazing response to our inaugural event. We’ve got an incredible diversity of attendees. Here’s just some of the information about the attendees:

Companies	Titles
Avenue A|Razorfish Bunge Center for Creative Leadership Google Grove Informatica Mattel McKinsey Medtronic Microsoft Pixar Stanford Yahoo …and many more	Director of Product Design Information Architect President CEO MD Senior Consultant Managing Director Head of Marketing Creative Director Sr. Ux Architect Director General Manager CTO Chief Innovation Officer Sr. Director R & D Director Web Designer Vice President …and many more

We’ve also got representation from quite a few countries such as Poland, Finland, Netherlands, United Kingdom, South Africa, Sweden, and New Zealand.  In fact, over 33% are not from North America! 

The pre-conference workshops are filling up quickly and we’re expecting that we will have to close them down very shortly.  Be sure to register now to join this interesting and diverse group!

Strategy Alignment and Deployment using Visualization

Many companies have good (or at least okay strategies).  Where they tend to fall down is on implementation.  There are lots of reasons that strategies fail.  Sometimes they fail because the leaders don’t have a common understanding about what the strategy means.  Sometimes it’s because the people who actually execute the strategy didn’t understand it or didn’t understand their role.  Root Learning uses metaphoric visualization and open-ended dialogue to help create a common understanding at all levels of an organization.  We’re excited to have Jim Haudan, Root’s CEO, on the agenda to help us understand how visualization and dialogue can be used to deploy strategy.

Jim has helped over 70 Fortune 500 companies align, deploy, and execute their strategies by using innovative learning technologies to engage their people and create business results.  He has been a partner in assisting many Senior Leadership teams simplify, deploy, and sustain the execution of their strategy. Jim is a frequent keynote presenter on Strategic Employee Engagement.

Jim has a wide range of experience in areas that include global manufacturing, retailing, insurance, pharmaceuticals, health care, information technology, biotechnology, utilities, aerospace, transportation, and education.  He has begun assisting several companies develop truth telling as a key competency.  Jim has also led the development of futuristic visions for both the HR function with a consortium of 25 Senior Vice Presidents of HR at Fortune 500 companies, and with ASTD on the future of Learning and Training.  His client list includes General Motors, Kaiser Permanente, Baxter, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Boeing, Harley Davidson, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Maytag, Lufthansa, Pepsi-Cola, PacifiCare, Sears, Babcock & Wilcox, Microsoft, and Takeda.

Root Learning’s unique capability to blend strategy with innovative learning has been the subject of business management articles published in Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, The Economist, The Bulletin, Business Finance, HR Executive, and Hong Kong Government publications, among many others.
 
In 1997, Jim was honored as Entrepreneur of the Year in Northwest Ohio.  In 1998, the organization won Sears’ Partner in Progress Supplier Innovation Award—a selection made from a field of 10,000 Sears suppliers.  Root Learning was named a winner of Training magazine’s First Annual Achieving Performance eXcellence (APX) Award in 2003 in the Skills Training category.  HR Executive magazine honored a Root Learning innovation as one of its top HR Training Products of 2002.  Also in 2002, Ameren, a Root Learning client, was awarded the e-Learning Success Stories Award for Gaming and Simulation for its use of a Root product in its Student of the Business program.

In 2005, 2006, and 2007 Root Learning was selected as one of the 25 Best Small and Medium Companies to work for in America by the Great Places to Work Institute.

Tableau Exhibiting at VizThink ‘08

We’re very excited about the addition of Tableau as one of the sponsors and exhibitors of VizThink ’08.  As a leader in the data analysis and visualization space, their software allows you to take data from any source, create instant summaries, analyze visual trends and use the visualizations to understand relationships and causes.  The software includes a wide array of visual formats for the data.  Be sure to check out their website for a free trial, and meet them at the conference for more information.

Conference registration is going on now.  We’re filling up quick, so be sure to register soon.

Session Formats

We’re designing this conference to be different from any other conference you’ve ever experienced.  You’ll not just be hearing or seeing new ideas, but experiencing them and talking about them with your colleagues.  We’ll explore new ideas, approaches, and concepts using a variety of formats.  Each pre-conference workshop, general session, and breakout session will use one or more of these types:

	Hands On:Active participation in the concepts, ideas, approaches, and styles presented by the facilitators. We’ll supply all the writing utensils and paper you need. Be sure to bring your laptop for any of the computer-based sessions.		Discussion:Networking and discussion are the primary goals of VizThink. We’ll bring the community together with both small and large group discussions on topics presented by the facilitators. The general session room and all of the break outs will be set up in rounds to encourage discussion throughout the event.
	Debates: We’ll place opposing views or approaches on the stage to field questions from you to show both shared and differing views. How far can the concept of a global visual language go? How does online approaches differ from in person methodologies? And many more…		Quick Hits: During the general sessions, we’ll cover a bunch of topics providing quick exposure to a bunch of new ideas and research. Some will be technology based and some will be new ideas or approaches. Some of the quick hits will be used as teasers for the more in depth follow up sessions later in the day.
	Interviews: Part talk show, part audience participation…we’ll get your favorite facilitators up on stage and ask the tough (and maybe a few easy) questions about their area of expertise.		Panels: Teams of experts and practitioners will field your questions on a variety of topics. The panels will be seeded with people from various sides of an issue to expose similarities and differences on topics.

Notice what’s missing?  Presentations or lectures.  Certainly, you’ll hear from and learn from these industry experts, but the majority of time will be spent trying out and discussing each of their ideas.

The community and conference wiki will be launched next week.  Each session will have one or more of these icons to help you identify the format of the session.  Soon we’ll be adding icons for art style and application as well.

Subscribe to the blog or check back often for all of the exciting updates.  Also, be sure to register soon, before the early registration discount ends.

All you need to know about Visual Thinking