VizThink conference kicked off last night

I love this conference because you see the coolest art &  meet the smartest people. The opening reception was last night at the Fairmont in San Jose, and it gave me the chance to meet up with some of my favorite people.

My first order of business was to catch up with Joni, Eduardo, and Mark from Soap. They are the only other significant agency I know of in the world whose focus is presentations. And they are my absolute f-a-v-o-r-i-t-e, ’cause they do it right! It has taken us twenty years to grow to sixty-five people, and just six years in, they’ve already got 55 folks. Their headquarters are in Sao Paulo, Brazil and they recently expanded to Portugal. It was great to compare notes on creative process, quality of work, and the economy. Robin and I had a great chat with them.

Sunny

I also had a chance to see Sunny, a visual facilitator on our GE whiteboard project for TED. She and her crack team of visual facilitators were responsible for sketching the ideas of TEDsters & uploading them for the world to see. The whiteboards were connected to the web, so folks could their share their thoughts via Twitter, and have conversations around the questions that were posed. To see their illustrations, check out the online demo at: http://ge.ecomagination.com/ted/

David Gray

If it weren’t against my religion to have an idol, David Gray would be it. He is the owner of xplane, and a key force in VizThink. He has a team of  smart, energetic people who help visualize change that organizations need to make. I truly admire his firm and their work.

Jessica Hagy and Rudolfo Carpintier

Rudolfo Carpintier (pictured right) is one of the founders of VizThink and owns Digital Assets Deployment in Madrid. He has poured his life into the advancement of visual thinking.

It was a treat to meet Jessica Hagy (pictured left). I’ve been a fan of hers for quite some time. She’s so young to be so wise. She has the coolest blog. Every day she posts a profound diagram representing an insight from her life, simply sketched on an index card. She has compiled several of the index cards into a book, Indexed, available on Amazon.

An excerpt from Indexed

Tom Crawford

Tom Crawford is CEO of VizThink and a dear friend. He’s the one who talked me into becoming a raving fan of this movement. He’s been very supportive and even arranged for a slide:ology book signing on Tuesday, after my session.

It’s so great to hang out with folks who are so passionate about visual thinking. Hope you have a chance to check ’em out, and get inspired by their work.