The Center for Graphic Facilitation

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.

Stamen Design: Information Visualization is a Medium

A jet-lagged Regine Debatty of Worldchanging.com writes from etech08 in San Diego.

She describes her excitement listening to Eric Rodenbeck, founder and creative director of Stamen Design, talk on Information Visualization is a Medium.

clipped from www.worldchanging.com Worldchanging readers may already be familiar with the work of Stamen, especially with the visualizations they created for Digg.com (Swarm and Stack) or the brilliant cabspotting, which Alex wrote about here a while ago. The focus of the talk was on process of analysis and how the concept works both for Stamen and culturally. For Stamen Information visualization is a medium, not a technique per se. The first project that illustrated this statement is Trulia Insight, a real estate aggregator, search and information tool they developed for Trulia, a real estate company based in San Francisco which aggregates information about properties around the United States. The mashup combines historical real estate data with a "heat map" that displays which properties are hot. People looking for a house can search for real estate by zip code, or other parameters like size, cost, and building type. Houses glow different colors as they are built and re-built over the years,

On Your Feet: Can Executives Learn to Ignore the Script?

Gary Hirsch in the Portland, Ore., office of On Your Feet, which he helped found. His consulting firm (a self-proclaimed "miniscule multi-national") helps employees loosen up and make “cool mistakes.”

clipped from www.nytimes.com MANAGERS striving to foster creativity often use the time-worn phrase “thinking outside the box” to encourage workers to come up with something nobody else in the room is thinking. But the improvisational actress Patricia Ryan Madson has a better idea: Look inside the box and take a fresh look at what’s already there. The author of “Improv Wisdom: Don’t Prepare, Just Show Up,” Ms. Madson helps organizations find new ways to play off one another in an unscripted romp toward what might be. Turning the planning process inside out, she says, is an important part of learning how best to “ready, fire, aim.” “We’re all creators given the conditions and permission to do so,” she says. “All too often, there are corporate cultures that say: ‘Be creative, but don’t make any mistakes.’  Improv opens doors to doing things a different way.”

Multitouch Mash-Up

The next best thing to telekinesis.

clipped from thoughts-illustrated.blogspot.com WiiMote multitouch from CynergyLabs Building on Johnny Chung Lee's Wiimote example, CynergyLab in San Diego has created a multitouch prototype using a large screen display and IR emitters built into gloves. I'll bet Nintendo never thought of that!

Picture It Solved

Q: How can you see thought?
A: Simple tools can make thinking clear and visible.
Visualizing ideas improves communication, problem solving,
and decision making.

Pictureitsolved.com merges ideas of learning organizations--as articulated by Peter Senge et al. in The Fifth Discipline--with visual thinking and communication, as articulated by Robert Horn in Visual Language, plus the implications of modern physics.

clipped from www.pictureitsolved.com Over the past five years, I've spent a lot of time learning about problem solving and visual thinking. These resources pages summarize ideas that have impressed me as particularly useful, timely, or important. I've tried to distill key information both so it's useful for others, and to clarify it in my own mind. Solving problems means changing something, and change is based on learning. Learning requires both thinking and doing. These concepts drove the structure of this section: 1. Problem solving basics - useful ideas about classifying problems and approaching their solution 2. Principles - Theories, influences, and guidelines 3. Practices - Tools and methodologies, both visual and interactive The breakdown into principles and practices is based on a model in an appendix in Peter Senge's Fifth Discipline. Certain principles (thinking) and practices (doing) are associated with each discipline of the learning organization. Mind map of learning organization disciplines

FastCompany: Infographic: Numerology: SXSW

Over the last 20 years, the South by Southwest Festival has grown from a small Texas gathering of songsters into a star-launching mega-event with music, film, and tech components. This year, it runs from March 7-16.

clipped from images.fastcompany.com