VizThink Blog

Conference Visualization

Many things are going on in the visual thinking community and the blogs (see the blog role along the side) have been capturing much of it.  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.

	THE TED2008 BIGVIZ A 200 page Acrobat eBook featuring over 700 sketches, illustrations and idea maps of each of the TED main stage presenters as well as pages of themes and connections that bring them together. Drawn by David Sibbet and Kevin Richards, this document will remind you of the moving stories, memorable quotes and TED moments from this year’s conference. Ted 2008 BIGVIZ PDF (51mb)
	THE BIGVIZ INTERACTIVEA 30 second video demonstrating the use of multi-touch technology to display the idea sketches while they were being created on-site. This technology experiment, a collaboration between Autodesk and Perceptive Pixel, illustrates a history timeline (or memory mode) as well as an interactive digital corkboard (or meaning-making mode). This video has no audio track. View the movie now.
	THE BIGVIZ Movie Watch a visually-rich three minute movie of the TED2008 BIGVIZ sketches by Autodesk animator Keith Chamberlain with music scored by TEDster Michael Montes. Small | Medium | Large | HD | iPhone

We’re keen to build on this visual experiment, adding stories and further themes to the BIGVIZ book as well as exploring other venues for this approach, including VizThink.  We hope you enjoy these visualizations.

Sincerely,

Tom Wujec