Digital Roam

BayCHI talk tomorrow night. (Plus digital paper and hot-air balloons)

The SF Bay Area chapter of the ACM's Computer and Human Interfaces group (BayCHI) invited me to give a talk tomorrow night in Palo Alto, CA. The topic will be: "The Back of the Napkin: How to solve complex problems with simple pictures."

If you're interested in seeing one of my napkin-sketching presentations and you're in the bay area, please join me at 7:30pm, Tuesday, July 14 (a date that will figure prominently later in this post*) at PARC's George E. Pake Auditorium, 3333 Coyote Hill Road, Palo Alto, CA. (map here)

From a technical perspective, this show will be different than usual. Normally I present from my tablet PC, drawing directly on the screen and projecting the pictures live. This time I'm going to try someting else.

Several months ago, I got a call from the creators of a digital pen system called PaperShow. I was dubious about the need for yet another clunky digital product to solve the "problem" of pen and paper, so I gave them a polite 'No'. (What that problem is will be a much longer discussion another time.) But after their fourth equally polite call I relented and agreed to meet product manager Giulia Carla Giovanelli and VP Bob Toth for a demo.

I'm glad I did. Not necessarily because their digital pen is wonderful (that's what you and I will be testing tomorrow night in my talk; nothing like a technical trial-by-fire in front of a couple hundred people, right?) but because I learned about the history of Canson, the world's oldest art paper-maker. As a one-time art student and an all-time sketcher, I knew that Canson was French and made wonderful paper and artist's materials, but what I didn't know was the derivation of the Canson logo.

It turns out to be a balloon.

Canson was founded in 1557 by the Canson and Montgolfier families in Annonay, France. Anyone who knows art knows Canson, and anyone who knows flying knows Montgolfier, but what I never knew was the connection. The short story is that the two families founded the paper mill together, made lots of money and had big families, and sponsored lots of local and scientific events.

Among those events was providing the paper that two sons of the Montgolfier familiy needed to test this crazy idea they had about building a big bag that they could fill with hot air and make fly! (Clearly wackos; they even drew out their plans!)

When the Mongolfier balloon flew on November 21, 1783 carrying Pilâtre de Rozier and Marquis d'Arlandes it was the first time humans ever flew. After a 25 minute flight, they landed successfully and toasted their flight with a bottle of Champagne.

I'm happy and honored that the company that provided the materials for humanity's first flight would ask me to demo their latest project.

I hope to see you tomorrow night, and let's see how well PaperShow flies.

* July 14 is Bastille Day, the French national holiday. How appropriate, n'est-ce pas?

 

Careful Senator, your politics are showing

I just got back from DC where I shared my "solving problems with pictures" tools with the U.S. Senate. It was an eye-opening experience.

Doug Steiger, New Policy Director of the Democratic Policy Committee, invited me to talk to the heads of staff of the Senators from the Democratic side of the aisle.

About sixty of us met in hearing room 628 in the Dirksen Senate Building, across the street from the US Capitol. Since I normally consult with business executives, it was fascinating to talk about the challenges that political staff deal with daily. After all, this is Washington, and this is REAL politics.

Whenever I give a workshop, I ask in advance for a sample problem relevant to my audience, so that I can demonstrate the power of pictures in a context drawn from their real-world experience.

In this case, Doug supplied me with a thick set of economic data comparing eight years of the Clinton Administration with eight years of the George W Bush administration.

Once drawn out, the results are shocking. I share here the drawings that I made for the Senators. (Data sources are listed at the bottom of this posting.)

After eight years of Clinton GDP rose more than 4%. After eight years of Bush it fell to 2.5%:

After eight years of Bush the national debt nearly doubled, and a budget surplus became a budget debt:

New jobs fell; the number of Americans below the poverty line increased:

The number of American families with health insurance fell (the costs of insurance rose), and family income also fell:

The prices of everything went up (at a far greater pace than inflation):

Yet our ability to pay for things fell:

Our dependence on foreign oil went up (and Bush was the "oil president"?):

Our trade deficit doubled while the dollar halved in value against the Euro:

And lastly, every major nation's perception of the US fell precipitously:

Based on looking at this data alone, there was only one more picture I could draw:

Data sources:
Bureau of Economic Analysis
Department of the Treasury
Congressional Budget Office
Bureau of Labor Statistics
United States Census Bureau
Kaiser Study of Employer Health Care Benefits
Energy Information Administration
Insurance Information Institute
Pew Research Center

SXSW: vote early and often!

I had so much fun launching The Back of the Napkin at the SXSW conference last year that I'd like to go back to Austin again this year. I've got a whole bunch of new visual thinking stories, tools, and concepts to share, but I need your help.

To be accepted as a speaker at SXSW, you need to have people vote for your idea on the Panel Picker. I've got two events I'd like to do this year, and if you're interested in either, I'd love for you to vote for them.

The first is a panel discussion called Shift Happens: Moving from Words to Pictures. Tom Crawford of VizThink has pulled together with me and the amazing Lee LeFever of CommonCraft, Dave Gray of Xplane, Sunni Brown of eyescience, and visual facilitator Marilyn Martin. We'll be sharing ideas about how pictures are taking over the world. Should be cool.

The second is a solo presentation I'd like to give called Convincing with Pictures: First, We Throw Away all the Computers. During this session I'm going to take a different route and introduce concepts from my second book. Among them:

• Why computers are killing our ability to see the obvious.
• Why making things simple has become so complicated -- and how to make the simple simple again.
• The neurobiological reasons why a hand-drawn sketch is always more compelling than a slick presentation.
• How to paint the Golden Gate Bridge. (No, not a painting OF the bridge -- I'm talking the bridge itself.)

Anyway, it should be a lot of fun.

There are about a zillion other great panels too, so check them out and vote. Again and again!

DANGER! DANGER! Voting deadline is Aug. 29!

Back of the Napkin workshop in DC on Sept. 11

Since the publication of The Back of the Napkin, many people have asked when and where they can attend my visual problem-solving workshops. I'm been pretty booked at private business events, so it's tricky to schedule open workshops.

But on Sept. 11, 2008, Gartner has asked me to lead a half-day "Back of the Napkin" workshop as part of their Gartner BPM Summit in Washington DC.

This workshop will be available to anyone attending the full conference, so if you'd like to know more about how to solve problems with pictures, this is a good opportunity.

During the three-hour session, you'll learn how to use the entire visual thinking problem-solving toolkit:

Including the SQVID:

And the <6><6> framework:

With these tools in hand, you will be able to start solving any problem (BPM or otherwise) with a picture immediately.

To attend, you'll need to both register for the conference and register for my workshop (an additional fee of $100).

I hope to see you there!

Napkin teleseminar with Seth Godin, Anil Dash, and Rich Sloan -- now this is going to be fun!

Thanks to Elizabeth Marshall at Author Teleseminars, on July 9 at noon EST I'll be giving a live Back of the Napkin session online with Seth Godin, Anil Dash, and Rich Sloan.

We're going to talk about solving problems with pictures, drawing our way out of business conundrums, and saving the world through simple sketching. (But frankly, with this group, I'm sure we'll cover a whole bunch of other topics along the way as well.)

Please join us live on Wednesday, July 9 at noon eastern. You can sign up here.

Have your pen and napkin ready!

The Back of the Napkin @ Google

Thanks to the interest and generosity of the folks at Google, it was my turn last week to head down to the Googleplex and talk about solving problems with pictures.

CNN Money gets pictorial

I recently shared several on-air napkin business sketches with Poppy Harlow at CNNMoney.com. The first to air is my sketch of the ongoing Microsoft-Yahoo-Icahn story. I've come up with a quick picture that I think explains the story clearly and sets the scene for what's likely to come next.

Watch the CNN clip here.

Upcoming napkin sketches include airline mergers and why Starbucks is in trouble. Stay tuned for those and other whiteboard sketches on CNNMoney.com.

Getting the word out on MSNBC... in pictures

As host of MSNBC's "Your Business" show, it's not surprising that JJ Ramberg is really smart; if you're going to run a nationwide business program, you'd better be. But what amazed me most about JJ when we shot a program the other day at 30 Rockefeller was how quickly she saw the power of pictures as a way to convey complex business concepts -- even though she's an admitted "terrible drawer".

Play video: MSNBC Consultant's Corner: The Back of The Napkin

JJ was just a little skeptical as we chatted before the cameras rolled. But once we got going and she challenged me to illustrate a typical small business marketing challenge, she got it immediately... and when our episode was done, I noticed her sketching circles and arrows on the back of her notes.

Aside from hosting MSNBC, JJ also runs her own businesses, and it turned out that she was sketching an idea that came to her during our show. Hmm... helping an on-air personality find a new way to look at problems while ON-AIR: that made me feel pretty good about how well back of the napkin sketches work.

Two visual thinkers walk into a bar...

When the Fox Business Network asked me to join them for a visual thinking session, I was surprised by the address: the Bull and Bear Bar at NY's Waldorf Astoria. It turns out that's where hosts Rebecca Gomez and Cody Willard hold court for the network's "Happy Hour" segment.

(If video window does not appear, click here to play video.)

So when Rebecca asked me about back of the napkin business sketches, I felt right at home. After all, isn't the bar where all the really good business ideas were hatched? (or hammered...?)

VizThink starts tomorrow!

The first official conference of "visual thinkers" from around the world begins tomorrow right here in SF. Held this Sunday through Tuesday at the The Westin San Francisco Market Street, VizThink08 is the brainchild of VizThink CEO Tom Crawford and Xplane's Dave Gray.

The lineup of presenters is literally the 'who's-who' of visually-oriented communicators, from Nigel Holmes to Scott McCloud, from Karl Gude to Nancy Duarte. With 350 attendees coming from around the world and sponsors from Microsoft to Wacom, it promises be an eye-opening conference.

I'm happy to say that my own name also appears on that otherwise stellar list of presenters. Yes, at 11:00 on Monday, Jan. 28, I'll be leading my "Back of the Napkin" workshop, helping participants learn to solve problems with pictures.

Which problems? How about these:

Which pictures? Simple ones -- you know, back-of-the-napkin ones. Like this:

More details on VizThink here (blog) and here (wiki). More details on my workshop here. Hope to see you there.