all posts tagged “Speaking”
If you live near Seattle, you should come out to Ignite Seattle 7 on August 3rd at the King Cat Theater, 7-11pm. I'll be doing a talk that night called "Where Goldfish Come From." Ignite Seattle (like other Ignite events) is a night for speakers to present for 5 minutes using 20 slides that display for 15 seconds each. It's similar to the Pecha Kucha format. I'll be one of over 10 speakers that night.
You might ask - goldfish? Why goldfish? Well, goldfish happen to be a very important part of my life. Here's a quick description from the Ignite website:
Everyone knows goldfish and koi, but very few have ever thought about where they come from – how they are bred, raised, transported, etc. I know these things like the back of my hand. Since 1968, my family in North Carolina has owned and operated one of the largest fish hatcheries in the US. Blue Ridge Fish Hatchery raises and sells goldfish and Koi – millions of fish a year.
I hope we'll see you at Ignite!
Going to SXSW? Come to Our Panel "Shift Happens"
Posted by: leelefever on February 15, 2009- 4:00pm
Categories: conference, event, Speaking, SXSW, visualthinking
Sachi and will be heading down to South-by-Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) March 13th-17th and I hope we'll see you there. We'll have plenty of stickers - just ask!
I'll also be speaking, along with an excellent group of folks from the visual thinking world, at a panel discussion called "Shift Happens - Moving From Word to Pictures." The panel is on Monday (3/16) at 5pm 10am.
Other panelists include:
- Sunni Brown Owner, BrightSpot Info Design
- Tom Crawford CEO, VizThink
- Dave Gray Chairman, XPLANE
- Dan Roam Pres, Digital Roam Inc
It's going to be an awesome discussion. I hope we'll see you there!
Help Us Speak at SXSW
Posted by: leelefever on August 18, 2008- 5:00pm
Categories: conference, events, Speaking, SXSW, visualthinking
It seems like a long way off, but South-by-Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) is just around the corner (March 2009). At the moment, the public is voting on what speaking panels should be accepted for the event. When the voting finishes (August 29, 2008) the SXSW staff will consider the results of the voting when deciding what panels will be picked.
I say all this because I hope you'll vote for our panel. :) Here are the details:
Shift Happens: Moving from Words to Pictures
Description: People are hardwired for visualization yet we rely significantly on text. Most games, graphic novels, magazines, interfaces, IKEA instructions, and many other forms of communication take advantage of people’s natural visual thinking ability. Panelists will discuss how to leverage visual techniques to improve your games, websites, movies, communications, or presentations.
My fellow panelists include Dan Roam, author of The Back of the Napkin, Dave Grey, Founder and Chairman of Xplane and two Austin, Texas natives Sunni Brown and Marilyn Martin. I'm so honored to be a part of this group. Thanks to Tom Crawford as VizThink for getting the ball rolling.
We'd love to have your vote, pretty please?
VizThink in Review
Posted by: leelefever on January 30, 2008- 4:00pm
Categories: conference, event, newfriends, Speaking, visualthinking
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.
This was the first (of hopefully many) conferences on visual thinking put on by VizThink, the brainchild of Dave Gray of Xplane. It brought together people from around the world who focus in communicating with pictures. More info on the wiki.
For example, on the first morning we sat down with three pediatric ER doctors from Loma Linda University. They often talk to parents in the ER about pediatric medical problems and a brochure doesn't work. They see visual thinking as a way to communicate complex problems in the emergency room situation. Indeed, there are near-infinite applications for visual thinking.
I wish I could mention everyone we met, but here are a few.
We had dinner with Ole Qvist- Sorensen of Bigger Picture who was there from Copenhagen, Denmark - I have a feeling we'll be hanging out with Ole before long - a great guy with lots of ideas.
Ryan Coleman of Clay Tablet Technologies turned out to be a friend of our good friend Will Pate. Ryan has started local Visual Thinking BarCamps around Toronto.
Cliff Atkinson of BBP (Beyond Bullet Points) came to our session and stuck around afterward for a chat. We really connected with Cliff - he loves being small and independent and we share a lot of the same ideas.
Speaking of our session, we had a great time and I hope the attendees did too. It was called "Solving Explanation Problems with Simple Online Videos" The session was mostly group activity where we asked teams to produce storyboards.
It warmed our hearts to hear the whole group yelling "yaay!" and
"boooo!" (appropriately) when the teams presented their storyboards. As Sachi said - it was like they were singing a song we wrote. :)
One thing I found interesting was that we didn't meet anyone else doing video. It was like the visual thinking world and the video world had not previously intersected. I hope that we inspired some of the attendees to take another look at video.
We owe a big thanks to Tom, Chris, Denise and the VizThink folks for inviting us to participate and pulling off a great conference. We'll be back!
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.
Since we started making videos, I had been meaning to talk to Dave Gray, the chairman of Xplane, author of the Communication Nation blog and the person who got VizThink off the ground.
We had a great chat recently and I learned more about VizThink, which is not just a conference, but a community for people who are interested in visual thinking. Dave and Xplane have been working with visuals to communicate more clearly for over 15 years.
Tom Crawford is the CEO of VizThink and is putting together what will be an awesome event. I'm excited to meet people like Scott McCloud of Understand Comics, Kevin Cheng of OK/Cancel and Nancy Duarte who worked with Al Gore on the presentation used in An Inconvenient Truth.
I hope we'll see you there.
New Friends from Bar Camp Vancouver 2007
Posted by: leelefever on August 18, 2007- 5:00pm
Categories: barcamp, event, newfriends, Speaking, unconference, vancouver
Pink shirts - that may be the one thing that will stick out years from now - the pink, er, fuchsia, shirts of BarCamp Vancouver 2007. This is not to say that the content and people weren't amazing - they were. But the shirts were unforgettable.
This was my first actual Bar Camp, but I've become accustomed to the unconference format and really dig it. It gives everyone an equal chance to be involved in a low-key, highly diverse, fun environment with interesting people. It's no surprise that there are so many "camps" these days - the format works.
Sometimes is feels like Vancouver is our second home - we have a lot of friends there that we see often. It's easy to have a good time around the Vancouver Tech Mafia. I talk about those folks enough - what I really want to say is how much I enjoyed meeting new folks.
It was a pleasure to be a part of a panel discussion run by Jordan Behan on Marketing and Social Media. The co-panelists were Monique Trottier, Linda Bustos, Tanya Davis and Geoffrey Gachallan. Lots of interesting questions.
One of my favorite experiences of the day was a session on DIY ads and AdHack, a business from James Sherritt of Work Industries. We divided the room into three groups who each had 30 minutes to produce an ad for a local pizza place called "fatih's pizza" - pronounced "fatty's pizza". Of course, with such a name, the ideas wandered into less-appropriate territory. The three videos are on YouTube here, here and here
I also enjoyed a session with Todd Sieling of Ma.gnolia, who talked about how he is using their Ma.gnolia Twitter Account as a way to work with their fans and customers. His advice was solid and focused on how twittering for business is different - you should be responsible and twitter with meaning and relevance.
My own session ended up being called "Fighting Complexity with Video" and I was happy with the results. Lots of great questions and interest. Monique has a nice write up here.
The conch played a huge role in keeping us organized and Dave "uncle weed" Olsen was a pro, but risked the health of his sinuses with each blow.
I'm sure to miss some folks, but I wanted to give a shout out to some people that I enjoyed meeting for the first time. I've known about Tod Maffin for a long time, but never got a chance to interact - great guy. Simon Koldyk of Scribblewiki and I have talked in email, so it was great to put a name to a face. It was a pleasure to hang out with Derek Miller after seeing his head 30 feet tall at Gnomedex. I'd seen John Ounpuu before, but I never realized he had acting chops (from our Fatih's Pizza ad). I'm not sure but I think Scott Laird from Google was the only other Seattleite there. Matthew Trentacoste showed us his amazing video screens at the lab at UBC at Northern Voice, but this time we got a chance to hang out. John Biehler was someone who got the crowd of Canadians revved up about hacking the iPhone (Canadians can't use iPhones). It was great to get to Wordpress and Automattic low-down from Lloyd Budd. James Andres and Dave Gratton of Donat Group and Project Opus hosted an afterparty (maybe preparty?) with Lyal Avery and the Outcome 3 folks (yay1 more pizza!!) in their loft offices. Phillip Jeffrey got everyone on the same page about Facebook and came out with us for post-event Chinese. Those Canadians really are nice folks.
And of course, a big ole thanks to the organizers, who pulled off a wonderful event - I'm coming again next year.
Kris Krug Roland Tanglao Robert Scales Zak Greant James Sherrett Ianiv Schweber Megan Cole Jordan Behan Aaron Gladders
To this list I would also add Bill from Workspace, which was a great host for a perfect venue (window view below) for the event and to Travis Smith for hosting a homeless American for a night (I have my fingers crossed).
But the pink shirts - that's what I'll remember most. ;)
BarCamp Vancouver is about to lift off and I'm so excited. Vancouver is easily one of my most favorite cities in the world and happens to have a load of great people - many of which are planners of the event.
I was there was for Northern Voice and Moose Camp - the unconference in the Spring. For that event I signed up for a session early and then remember it the night before the event. Luckily Nancy White was there to co-host the talk on "New Rules for the New Communities" which made all the difference.
Since then, our videos have taken over our lives and I just signed up for a session at Bar Camp. See what you think of this title:
Making Paper Work in Video - A discussion on the role of simplicity, plain English, basic tools and technical amateurism in the creation of online videos that go places.
Does that sound interesting? What would you want to know from such a session? Any suggestions are welcome...
I'll be a panelist in an upcoming webinar that is being put on by Vocus, the parent company of PRWeb. It's called "Maximizing PR Impact with Online Video." We're just finishing up a video for PRWeb and I plan to focus on the democratization of video, among other things.
The panel will be moderated by Jiyan Wei and my fellow panelists include two very experienced folks in the online video world:
- Stephen Harris, Executive Producer, Discovery (see the TLC broadband series Makeover Train).
- [Updated] Bart Feder, CEO, The FeedRoom.
I'm really looking forward to the discussion - I hope we'll see you there!
I'll be speaking at what is shaping up to be a fun event at Zaaz in downtown Seattle on August 14th. I'll be presenting a version of the Online Community as Party talk. The event is free and focused on folks in the local UX / usability / IA / design community. To RSVP, pleae leave a comment here.Â
I'm looking forward to seeing my friend Paul Ingram from Ingram Labs and hearing more about "The Effective Use of Kittens" from Jason Carmel of Zaaz and "The Art of Deep Hanging Out" from Emma Rose. Good fun - thanks for putting all this together Ryan!
Online Community Planning - Getting the Party Started
Posted by: leelefever on June 6, 2007- 5:00pm
Categories: community, CommunityManagement, event, Speaking, unconference
One of the mantras of the Online Community Unconference became "keeping the party rolling" - not because we partied all day in night, but because many attendees were already in the community business, but looking for ways to improve the experience and value on an ongoing basis. Indeed, the group was a mix of the very experienced and those just getting started.
Speaking of a mix of people, my guess is that that there were about the same number of women as men at the conference and as tech conferences go, that is something different and special.
The session I led was called "New Community Planning" with an appended title of "Getting the Party Started." I was happy to see the party metaphor put to this use and introduced the session with some of my thoughts from my previous post "Your Community is a Party Waiting to Happen." The party metaphor worked well in this case and, as it turned out, I did little talking during the session (a good thing!).
We started off discussing some of the elements that go into getting started with community and I started writing things on a whiteboard. Here are my mostly mental notes, based on what I wrote on the board...
- Look at the communities that exist offline and consider interviewing them or doing a focus group
- Understand the #1 priority of the community - why does it exist?
- Have a strong understanding of the audience
- Define the user - where are they now? What do they need?
- Make sure to have a host or "social director"
- Create an outreach strategy - how will your audience know about the community?
- Ensure that the initial experience is compelling - give people something at the very beginning (people, content, event, etc.)
- Think about the initial discussions that will occur and make sure they are pertinent to the desired audience
- Define what success looks like - is it addressing a need?
- Question - does the organization have a definition that's different?
- Set expectations around the ebb and flow of participation - it will come and go - try to see trends
- Create clear and useful guidelines
- Start small - don't create a large number of forums until the community needs them.
- When thinking of features and tools, relate them to specific purposes - no features for features sake.
- Make it easy and obvious that members should invite their friends
- Show energy - display the flow of member participation - show the community is alive
- Give the members easy ways to learn about and connect with one another
- Understand diversity in terms of new members and veterans - try to find a matching or mentoring system
- Give new members a safe place to ask questions, etc.
- Maintain community life - once members start to feel it, keep looking for ways to promote community
- Have rituals - events or practices that the community can participate in on an ongoing basis - something that is specific to the community
- Enable people to become "gardeners" - people who take care of the community
- Give hosts the ability to mentor other hosts - learn about hosting practices.
- Make hosting a privilege, not a right - consider asking hosts to re-apply after 6 months
- Share the vision of the community with members - enable them to "buy" into the goal of the community
- Balance vision with control - don't let control issues get out of hand
- Be transparent as the hosts and/or the organization - show who you are
All in all, I thought the session turned out well and the attendees had great questions and insights. I owe thanks to Scott Moore , Gail Ann Williams and Jake McKee who contributed a wealth of knowledge and experience.
As for the conference, I was very impressed. The Open Space Technology worked perfectly for the group. All the sessions I attended were lively and informative - people were not bashful about getting involved. Kaliya Hamlin ran the show and Bill Johnston rocked as the MC and organizer.
I was also impressed with the experience of the group, from the originators of online communities like Howard Rheingold , Cliff Figallo and John "Tex" Coate to community managers from eBay, Yahoo, Amazon, Cisco, Microsoft, etc. There was just not enough time to take it all in.
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