The Center for Graphic Facilitation

T. Boone Pickens Scribes Future of US Energy

Click here or image to launch the video.

T. Boone Pickens uses live drawing of the facts and concepts behind potential future energy plans for the US is worth watching in its entirety. I have a hard time coming up with a better example of how to create a series of simple pictures to explain a complex concept.

~ From the blog of Dan Roam, author of The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures:

Xplane's Subprime Explaination

From http://www.xplane.com/subprime/:

This three-and-a-half minute movie by XPLANE shows us the brief history of the subprime crisis.

It takes viewers through the process starting in 2000 and ending in current day, detailing the role that home buyers, mortgage lenders, banks, financial institutions and ultimately asset backed securities played. The production was created by XPLANE’s renowned information design team using Cintiq technology byWacom to allow for live and still animation, and voiceover.

TED2008 The BigViz Animation

Watch a three-minute movie of the TED2008 BIGVIZ sketches, created by Autodesk animator and compositor Keith Chamberlain, with music scored by TEDster Michael Montes.

The images created by Kevin Richards and David Sibbet during the TED2008 are set to music and animated using gorgeous complexity modeling. The hundreds of individual sketches are transformed into rivers of data, DNA strands, and galaxies of ideas.

Watch a behind-the-scenes view with Sibbet that illuminates the integration of hand-rendered art, Wacom tablets, and the multi-touch wall. Unbelievable, really.

You can download the TED2008-BigViz Book and see more here.

Comics + Google = Chrome

What?! A technology company that hires thousands of engineers used a comic book to explain their new web browser? (No one told me that software engineers liked comic books!) Google Chrome is Google's browser project; this comic book by Google, drawn by comic guru Scott McCloud, is scanned here and shown under its Creative Commons license. I have been test-driving Chrome since it's launch and love it--with the exception that all my Firefox plug-ins haven't yet made the leap, but give'em time.

Fast Draw: Gus the Gas

From Deidre Crowley:

While watching the "Sunday Morning" news program this morning, I was shocked to see Mitch Butler and Josh Landis, the "Fast Draw". At interest to me: that these techniques are being used to support the evening news. Here is just one link and you can find many others through Googling Fast Draw, Josh Landis and Mitch Butler.

clipped from www.cbsnews.com 'Gus The Gas' Posted by Josh Landis and Mitch Butler | 1 As the price of crude oil keeps jumping, so has the amount of finger-pointing at factors in the seemingly relentless rise. What's behind it? Have the law of supply and demand and other usual economic forces given way to speculators bidding up the price for personal gain?

The Adventures of Johnny Bunko

Excellent career advice from Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools:

Presented in the form of manga (a comic book for grownups), this is the most succinct course in career counseling I've ever seen.

Not what career you should pursue, but *how* you should pursue it. You can read this masterpiece in an hour, but it will take a lifetime to work out the details of those six lessons.

This compact sermon will make the most difference to those just starting out in the workplace.

The six quick lessons [with my comments in brackets] are:

1. There is no plan. [The economy changes too fast for your career to have a plan]
2. Think strengths, not weaknesses. [Find your advantages]
3. It's not about you. [Serving others serves you best]
4. Persistence trumps talent. [Keep showing up]
5. Make excellent mistakes. [Take risks, but fail forward]
6. Leave an imprint. [Do something that matters]

On the Road with Tony Blair

Graphic facilitator Sita Magnuson has been traveling the world, scribing as she goes.

She has scribed for groups in New Dehli, Bangkok. She has scribed for leaders such as Harmid Karzai in Kabul, and most recently, Tony Blair at the Economic World Forum collaborative workspace in Egypt--which made Time Magazine on-line!

Visit Sita's blog for more travel adventures.

clipped from www.time.com Illustrated Man During a seminar that Blair gave at the World Economic Forum in Sharm El Sheihk, his words (and those of other speakers at the event) were rendered on a white board as he spoke. The comment "You are crazy to try" was made to the former Prime Minister in regard to his effort to bring peace to Northern Ireland.

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.

"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

Quick Primer on Graphs and Networks

The power and flexibility of a network--whether a simple group of casual neighbors or a complex next generation communication network--depends not just on the number of connections, but on the quality of the nodes, and more important, the type of nodes. Below is a fantastic intro to the concept of graphs and networks. It helps in understanding the a social graph and how it differs from a social network.