The Center for Graphic Facilitation

Meeting on the Right Side of the Brain

We've been preaching it for years, but I guess it is now news:

Creative work environments improve creative thinking!

Congrats to Leslie Marquard and Catalyst Ranch on leading the piece. Thanks for bringing "right-brained thinking" to a "left-brained" world. (Actually, working in creative environments and using multiple learning modalities inspires whole-brain thinking.)

clipped from www.nytimes.com Steve Kagan for The New York Times By ELAINE GLUSAC | Published: April 30, 2008 WHEN Leslie Marquard, an executive coach, holds strategy sessions for consulting firms or university administrators, she ushers her buttoned-up clientele into rooms full of Pogo sticks, ethnic art, hammocks, vintage furniture and a pillow “harem.” “They are surprised and also endeared by it,” said Ms. Marquard, a co-founder of Marble Leadership Partners in Chicago. The “it” she referred to is Catalyst Ranch, an independent alternative meeting space in a former sausage factory near the Loop  in Chicago. “They’ll say, ‘That table looks just like one I grew up with.’ It subconsciously releases the mind.”

 

Australia 2020

Graphic facilitator Gavin Blake writes us of his exciting collaboration with other facilitators and scribes at a national summit in Australia's capital, Canberra.

The objective was for the 1000 participants to generate big ideas over a range of 10 topics including Governance, Productivity and Creativity in Australia. All of the ideas will make up our vision for Australia in 2020.

It was a blast meeting music god Peter Garrett, now Minister for the Arts (not sure if you guys know the band Midnight Oil, but I’m a huuuge fan) and Australia’s 100 foremost creative minds.

Yes, there were a few celebrities there (Hugh Jackman below) but, there was some serious intent and genuinely insightful ideas thrown around the room.

I’m very chuffed this video with our drawing of the journey of the day made it into the news. Stoked. Here are some more photos of us having a ball.

Elephant Scribe

Stephanie Crowley sends word of this up-and-coming graphic facilitator. (She adds that travel may be difficult.)

This video speaks of the power of visual language to communicate across cultures... and species! In it, an elephant paints a self-portrait (no joke).

It is absolutely incredible to watch the accuracy and finesse of this beautiful artist. And, watching the images emerge is no less engaging than watching Picasso draw.

The Point: Web 2.0 tool for creating your own change

The Point brings together problems, people, and the pressure of collective action. The site allows users to create campaigns and encourage other people to join anonymously.

Using the principles of Gladwell's Tipping Point, once the number of members reaches a certain critical mass (10, 50, 2000) and action is triggered: a sale, a press release, a protest.

Campaigns are tools for people to organize a group action that occurs only when enough people join to make participation worthwhile. Campaigns can be used for any situation where people want safety in numbers, from planning a party to boycotting a corporation to saving chickens.

Check out the simple, clever animations used to demonstrate the types of people, the problems they want to tackle, and the resulting campaigns--that can use The Point to catalyze change.

Consensus on Colors

Extremely useful when shopping for ties, or arguing with your spouse about what color to paint the kitchen.

clipped from www.kk.org The folks at Dolores Blog "showed thousands of random colors to people on Mechanical Turk and asked what they would call them. Here’s what they said:"  In short the experiment goes like this. They generated random color samples and then paid the anonymous workers on Amazon's Mechanical Turk to give a name to these random colors. Dolores then mapped that name in the appropriate color place on the standard color wheel. The result is this color wheel of names. But the really cool part is that you can search for color names via this Color Label Wheel. Type in a name and see all the colors that random folks think belong to that color name.

Governing Sovereign Wealth Flows

From Kevin Kelly's Lifestream.

clipped from www.kk.org A wonderful New York Times graphic showing the global flows of sovereign wealth. see large view   A sovereign wealth fund is a huge heap of money that is controlled by a nation -- say Singapore or Saudi Arabia -- rather than by a private transnational company. The latter is called private equity funds and their investments have been prime movers in global finance for decades. Some of the largest banks and finance companies that are in the current news cycle, like Bear Stearns, or UBS, are good examples of private money. They buy and sell business across national borders. According to the New York Times in their article The Leveraged Planet, the amount of sovereign controlled wealth is expected to rise to $12 trillion by 2015.  These funds also buy and sell businesses across borders but since their owners are other nations, or nation-state organizations, the implications of their scale and intent are proving enormous.

Bay of Capitalist Pigs

How Havana might change after Castro
by Graeme Wood

clipped from www.theatlantic.com U.S. business interests have been eagerly awaiting Castro’s departure—one way or another—for years. Otto Reich, who worked within the Bush administration on post-Castro planning and other Cuba issues from 2001 to 2004, says that for a time, after the Cold War ended, construction companies were pre-positioning materials in Florida warehouses in anticipation of a Cuban counterrevolution. Bulldozers and cranes waited to cross the Florida Straits and start building condos and shopping centers. see large view Whenever Havana opens, it will face a clash of interests—between developers and preservationists, and between moneyed exiles and poor habaneros. This map, based loosely on the visions of Quintana, Cuban American economist Jorge Sanguinetty, and others who’ve been eager for Castro’s end, depicts what might follow, and how the city might be rebuilt.

New Bigger Picture Newsletter

From graphic facilitator Ole Qvist-Sørensen of Bigger Picture in Denmark:

This is Bigger Picture’s first newsletter. I am really proud and hope you will find the content relevant and inspiring. You have not signed up for this “newsletter”, but because we are all in the same network and share interest I think it will be of interest. Please – if you have ideas, questions, feedback, comments and ideas, please send them. We plan to send out newsletters 3-4 times a year.

"Back of the Napkin" Gets Inside Your Brain

Alright. Enough already. Of all the people I have been jealous of, Dan Roam is gunning for the top of the list:

1. Dan wrote the book I always wanted to dang it!
2. Dan has got endorsements from Business 2.0 gurus also named Dan--Pink & Heath!
3. Dan has a swank Flash-animated website and way-clever blog!
4. Dan lives in San Francisco!

Mostly, I resent the fact that Dan has been able to do the impossible:

Dan describes why visual learning is the best way to work with others to make stuff happen in a way that we can actually understand!

Keep reading for a brief book review and fun interview with the author who talks about the influence of Einstein, his fighter pilot dad, Optimizers vs. Disruptors, and the heroes of the Russian space program.

I was invited to participate in this Virtual Book Tour by Paul Williams, the wild child behind Idea Sandbox. Here are the other bloggers who interviewed and reviewed Napkin:

Principled Innovation Blog
Jeff De Cagna

Design Crush
Kelly Beall

The Paddlewheel
Chris McCrory

Pureplay
Keith Bohanna

SXSW Interactive 2008 Sketchnotes

Rohdesign is the site of designer Mike Rohde, who writes about design, sketching, writing, mobile computing, technology, travel, cycling, books, music and more.

via Lee Potts of Visual Being.

clipped from www.rohdesign.com SXSW Interactive 2008 Sketchnotes are up! I've just completed scanning, tuning and uploading 34 pages of sketchnotes I captured in my pocket Moleskine sketchbook at SXSW Interactive earlier this week. With the SEED Conference sketchnotes being pretty popular, I'm curious to see how these SXSW sketchnotes are received. While sketchnotes capture concentrated concepts for each session well, I think they're even better at awakening ideas stored in the minds of session attendees. Speakers Featured Here are the speakers featured in the SXSW Interactive Sketchnotes: Naz Hamid, Veronica Belmont, Casey McKinnon, Ryan King, Glenda Bautista, Ariel Waldman, John Gruber, Michael Lopp, Jim Coudal, Dan Rubin, Didier Hilhorst, Eris Stassi, Lea Alcantara (sorry for the Leah misspell in the notes!), Ben Brown and Frank Warren.