The Center for Graphic Facilitation

How Adobe uses Adobe: Developing new ways to collaborate

The secret to being a successful Chief Information Officer is simple: 

1. Always know what your people are working on, and...
2. Eat your own dogfood.

As a management and development team, Adobe is creating new ways to collaborate, both in terms of internal projects and in the products they are offering the world.  

In this video interview, Gerri Martin-Flickinger, CIO of Adobe, speaks to ZDNet Editor in Chief, Larry Dignan about her top priorities at the graphics software maker. 

She describes an emerging world of collaboration that graphic recorders and facilitators need to understand and adapt their services to...quickly!

Visualizing Obama's Inauguration Text

Several cool tools have emerged on the Web 2.0 tech horizon that enable swift data visualization of numbers and text. Below are examples of Obama's speech as parsed by two such on-line utilities.

Wordle.Net creates remarkably well organized text constructions remeniscent of the graphic works of Russian Constructivists and the Dutch De Stijl Movement. 

ManyEyes is the “shared visualization” site run by the Visual Communications Lab at IBM Research. This utility allows for more data formats, including bubble charts, scatter plots, networks, word trees, and block charts. See more versions of President Obama's speech here.

(via PopTech Blog)

ILOVESketch

ILoveSketch from Seok-Hyung Bae on Vimeo.

From Kevin Kelly, The Technicum:

Speaking of screen fluency, you should check out this video of an intuitive 3D sketching pad demo. Using a large-screen touch-sensitive Wacom tablet-screen, an artist can produce 3D sketches as fast as he/she can draw.

The software, called ILOVESketch, appears to be experimental, but I would imagine that the folks producing special effects would be the first to pick it up when it goes commercial.

Also industrial designers.  With quick strokes of the pen you can build a complex curvy shape (not just the blocks that Sketchup does) faster than you could sculpt it in clay or in CAD. This is one of those technologies that people have forever said "they ought to invent this."  It almost seems like magic.

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.

Evernote Makes Scribing Searchable

OK. This changes the game.

Using Evernote, the new software to integrate collections of images and text across platforms, graphic facilitators now have a tool that allows for their work to be searchable.

It works, too! Once you upload, drag-n-drop or email a photo of a drawing, the software adds it to a "notebook" that is either public or private. Then, the user can do a normal word search and Evernote finds the word--even in handwritten form!

Buzan's iMindMap

The man himself, Tony Buzan, shows how his computer program works with his principles of creating mind maps.

"The human brain does not think in tool bars and text. It behaves organically like nature."

More at http://www.imindmap.com

Plotting Terror: The Global Incident Map

My grandfather was a geography professor for four decades until his death in 1970. I can only image the awe and enthusiasm that he would have felt at the powerful, simple and free tools brought to us now in the form of Google Maps and Google Earth.

From bomb scares to stolen radioactive material to rebel attacks, alarming things happen around the world, all day, every day. Morgan Clements, founder and publisher of the Global Incident Map, talks about why it’s important to map them.

MindMeister,

From a post by graphic facilitator, Steph Crowley:

This new, free, brainstorming/mindmapping tool enables virtual teams scattered across the globe to brainstorm or mindmap on the same project in real time.

Users can create, manage and share mind maps online and access them anytime, from anywhere. In brainstorming mode, fellow ‘MindMeisters’ from around the world (or just in different rooms) can simultaneously work on the same mind map - and see each other's changes as they happen. Using integrated Skype calls, they can throw around new ideas and put them down on "paper" at the same time.

MindMeister is still in it's beta phase and is pretty basic at the moment (and free), but just thought I would pass it along as a potential resource for you and/or your clients in the future.  I know I'll be tracking the tool’s progress/editions - I think it has potential to be a useful tool in the future for graphic recording and facilitation.

To try out the beta version of MindMeister, click here.  You can also sign up for their newsletter to get the latest info on the progress/versions of the tool. For more info about MindMeister, click here.

Picnik Photo Editor

[ Submitted by Jeremy Rue to Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools ]

Picnik Photo Editor
Free! Created by Picnik, Inc.

I've seen many quick and dirty photo editing programs via web browser, but this Flash-based editor definitely takes the cake. Hands down, the ease of use is the best part. As you work, little windows pop up with explanations, but I've never needed them because of the usability. For a professional photographer or someone looking to get into the nitty gritty of what's outlined in the Pro Digital Photographer's Handbook, the program would be mostly unpractical for regular use, but it's certainly beneficial as an emergency tool (getting stuck at someone else's computer, etc.) or doing stuff on the fly. It's obviously not a replacement for Photoshop, but if you're a consumer who can't afford Photoshop or you just want to fool around, this is a great, really intuitive option.

Moo? Moo, Who?!

Moo is a Web 2.0 service takes content from other web and print apps (iLife, Flickr, Bebo) and mashed the content together with on-demand printing. Both the site and the products are very savvy and design oriented. Great for creating rich, artistic, post-event deliverables for participants.

from Liquid Treat...