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Going Forward – An update on where VizThink is headed

It’s now been about a month since VizThink 2009 and in the background the VizThink team has been working away on planning how we move forward and sustain the community through these challenging times. Through this post I’d like to share with you some of the changes we’ve implemented and the plans we have going forward.

Welcome Dave Gray
It’s not like Dave really needs a “welcome” to the community in general, as he was an integral part of the creation of VizThink and has been an active participant since day one – but it’s worth highlighting a change in his day to day interactions with VizThink.

With the changes we announced a few weeks ago we essentially went from a three man team, to one made up of two guys working half time to keep things going. Dave recognized our challenge and is fortunate enough to be in a position where he can contribute some of his time to helping further VizThink in a more official capacity – so he stepped up and volunteered to help us out wherever he can.

As a result expect to see contributions from Dave pop-up from time to time here on the blog, or on the website. He’ll also be helping us with implementing and realizing some of the ideas listed below.

If anyone else out there is interested in helping out please feel free to drop me a line at community@vizthink.com with your ideas & interests and lets see what we can get started!

With that said, lets talk about some of the things we’re working on:

VizThink University
The biggest of these changes is the introduction of VizThink University (a.k.a. VizThinkU). Starting in April we’re going to begin offering regular, online-based “courses.” Most of these will be approximately half a day long and feature sessions with 2-3 visual thinking professionals in the industry. Each course will be based on a central theme. Watch for schedule announcements and further details over the next week or so.

If you’ve got something you’d like to share with the community, and would be interested in being one of our facilitators then be sure to drop me an email at community@vizthink.com with an outline of what you’d be interested in teaching.

Website Revamp
With the help of a couple of members of our community we’re currently in the process of revamping & redesigning the VizThink website from top to bottom. We’re revisiting the navigation structure as well as adding some new features. Expect to see the new structure and design emerge over the next couple of weeks.

New Membership Structure
We’ve also stepped back and revisited our membership structure.  As part of the launch of the new website we’ll be releasing the details. The good news is we’ll still have the free  membership and the basic paid membership will actually be getting cheaper. On top of that we’ll be introducing a few new levels (with various benefits) that you may want to consider going forward.

For our existing paid members, watch your inbox, we’ll be emailing around additional information about your membership shortly before the official roll-out.

VizThink Board of Advisors
We’re very sensitive to ensuring that VizThink continues to provide the content, events and opportunities that our community wants or needs. As part of achieving this goal, we decided to form a VizThink Board of Advisors. This process actually began at VizThink 2009 where we began to reach out to some of the industry leading visual practitioners who have been supportive of VizThink since the beginning. We’re still ironing out some of the details but we’ll announce the founding members of this board as soon as we’ve got everything arranged.

Local Communities
Last but not least we’ve got the local communities which are still humming along and growing. Many people have asked how to get a community going in their area , if you’re interested be sure to check out our Organizer Resources pages on the VizThink wiki and if it sounds like something you’re up to drop me an email at community@vizthink.com and we’ll arrange a time to chat and get you setup!

Thanks again for being a member of our community – I look forward to hearing your feedback as we go through the next few months of changes.

Ryan

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Ryan Coleman
Chief Community Evangelist

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