Northern Voice, SXSW - Will You Be There?

By leelefever on February 19, 2008 - 11:52am.

• Categories:
• conference
• events
• travel
• Comments: 15

Updated: I've created a schedule of sessions and parties I plan to attend at SXSWi (maybe Sachi too!).  You can see the schedule here.

I suppose it's the time of year for directionally-based conferences. 

I'm heading up to Northern Voice in Vancouver this weekend and Sachi and I both will be heading south to Austin, Texas for SXSW Interactive starting March 7th.  I hope we'll be able to meet you at one of these conferences. 

VizThink in Review

By leelefever on January 31, 2008 - 12:37pm.

• Categories:
• conference
• event
• newfriends
• speaking
• visualthinking
• Comments: 8

Text and bullet points - they are dead, or at least used inappropriately.  That was one of the overwhelming messages from VizThink, a two day conference on Visual Thinking.  We agree.

Visual Thinking Resources

By leelefever on January 24, 2008 - 2:13pm.

• Categories:
• conference
• visualthinking
• vizthink
• Comments: 2

We're headed to a conference called VizThink in a few days.  It's a conference on Visual Thinking.  It wasn't clear to us when we got started, but our videos are examples of visual thinking and I've been keeping an eye out for related resources.

Discovering the RSS Explanation Problem

By leelefever on January 23, 2008 - 10:29am.

• Categories:
• conference
• explanation
• explanationproblems
• rss
• Comments: 16

I remember the exact moment when it first became apparent to me that there was such a thing as an explanation problem.  I was at a small conference on Silicon Valley in early 2004.  There was a CEO of a start up there and during his talk, he mentioned RSS.  Someone raised their hand and asked the question "What is RSS?"

This CEO's responses to the question, and I'm not kidding, was "RSS is an XML-based content syndication format." As you might expect, this was met with a look of bewilderment.

VizThink Conference - Jan. 27-29, San Francisco

By leelefever on October 19, 2007 - 9:41am.

• Categories:
• conference
• event
• speaking
• vizthink
• Comments: 0

VizThink is a conference about visual thinking.  We'll be there leading a yet-to-named session that will focus on our story and the role of video and simplicity in communicating ideas with clarity. 

New Friends (and some old ones) from Gnomedex

By leelefever on August 13, 2007 - 9:49pm.

• Categories:
• conference
• event
• gnomedex
• newfriends
• seattle
• Comments: 10

I had high expectations for Gnomedex - a conference run by Chris Pirillo in Seattle. The only other one I went to was in 2005 and it was an amazing experience. There was this feeling of changing the world - people were hyped up and it was palpable.

Unfortunately, this time around, I didn't feel the same. I didn't leave the event with an uplifted feeling - if anything, I left a bit of cynicism.

Off to the Online Community Unconference

By leelefever on June 5, 2007 - 7:41am.

• Categories:
• community
• conference
• event
• speaking
• travel
• unconference
• Comments: 0

I'm heading down to the Silicon Valley for the Online Community Unconference put on by my friends at Forum One.  If you're unfamiliar with an unconference, check out this wikipedia entry.  Basically it's a great way to get people together without all the baggage (and costs) of a "conference."

10 Lessons from My Speaking Coach

By leelefever on May 11, 2007 - 9:26am.

• Categories:
• conference
• lesson
• speaking
• Comments: 6

I thought I was a decent speaker, really, I did. That was until I spent 4 hours with a speaking coach who essentially made me realize all things that should work together to make a speaker and presentation great. This is me last week at WebVisions:

Webvision 2007 in Review

By leelefever on May 7, 2007 - 8:54am.

• Categories:
• business
• community
• conference
• event
• speaking
• Comments: 1

This was my second WebVisions - a conference focused on "the future of the Web" that has happened in Portland, Oregon for the last seven years. I enjoy Webvisions and was honored to speak there this year. My talk was about how blogs, communities and mobile devices are changing the travel experience. Of course, it was all based on stories from our trip last year.

SXSW and Community 2.0: New Friends and Favorite Topics

By leelefever on March 15, 2007 - 2:09pm.

• Categories:
• conference
• newfriends
• travel
• Comments: 1

We're still reeling a bit from back-to-back conferences in two places that don't cater well to sleep or overall health: South-by-Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas and Community 2.0 in Las Vegas. Conferences are a fire hose and six solid days is just too much to document. This entry is focused on some of the people and talks that mattered most to us.