from twitter to youtube - nice segue from Garr Reynolds

I am not a fan of twitter, but a twit from Scoble in my inbox led me to one from Garr Reynolds the author of Presentation Zen.

Because I like Garr's world view of presentations and zen,Thoughts Illustrated: Ah So! PresentationZen - a book every presenter must read I clicked on the twitter url on Garr's twitter page and found this very personal postcard on YouTube (short 1:14m and I think you'll like it.)



Make you want to go to Cannon Beach in Oregon?

Make me understand how twitter can serve as a microblogging link to videos like the one Garr produced?

Maybe there is a role for twitter in my digital LifeStream.

Obama's 'Cybergenic' Edge - Paul Saffo on ABC News

Paul Saffo is a genius at translating his meta-insights into quotable memes.

Here is his take on how Obama stacks up against McCain ABC News: Obama's 'Cybergenic' Edge

I recall a YiTan teleconference call in May of 2007 when Facebook was just emerging as the social network platform. I put the question to the over 80 conferees " is anyone using Facebook?" Only one person said "yes" - and it turned out he was an Obama staffer honing his Cybergenic edge.

As Paul says in concluding his essay:

"I'll bet we will look back from the other side of Nov. 4 and conclude that the single most important factor in this election was the winner's cybergenic edge.

We might even see a Kennedy-Nixon moment before the race is over. But even if we don't, I'll be very surprised if Obama isn't our next president. And when he wins, let us hope that Obama's cybergenic instincts enable the first cybergenic president to govern as effectively as he ran."

Right on, Paul!

telepresence -

check out slide 14 for Cisco apps data.

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Randy's Last Lecture- lessons for living from a dying man

Randy Pausch is dying of pancreatic cancer and his last lecture at Carnegie Mellon appears in this abbreviated version on the the Oprah show. Watch as this remarkable teacher reveals his lessons for your life.Click over to Youtube for a full screen version.

Noise Creep?

I have been watching the rising tide of concern for the increase in the garbage quotient in the blogosphere and the declining quality of the content of online conversations. Just the other day it was Scoble who admittd to being inundated with Twits from his followers(it's his own fault IMO) and today Seth Godin, another A-list blogger, sounds off on the same theme:

Seth's Blog: Signal to noise:

"Lately, I’m feeling noise creep.

Lately, the noise seems to be increasing and the signal is fading in comparison. Too much spam, too many posts, too little insight leaking through. I don’t use Twitter, but I know a lot of Twitter users are feeling this. So are folks who go to too many conferences. And don’t get me started on victims of Blackberry cc: disease.

I wish I could tell you the easy answer. I can’t. I just know that the faltering signal is a problem."

It sure is, Seth. We're caught in a death spiral of Twittering, Facebooking, Texting, and IM-ing, which Professor BJ Fogg, at the Stanford Center for Persuasive Technologies admiringly calls Massive Interpersonal Persuasion (MIP). As it becomes increasingly difficult to filter out the signal from the rising tide of noise, we are squandering our most precious asset ....Attention!

The Human Network - Cisco

This video is short and to the point and reinforces the message of my previous post ( see link below)



Thoughts Illustrated: Shift Happens - Did you Know?

Shift Happens - Did you Know?

Over 5 million people have seen this video in some form or other - the original was created by Carl Fisch, a teacher at Centennial High School in Arapahoe, Colorado as a PowerPoint presentation . You can download the PPT deck from Carl's blog site but I wouldn't recommend it. The content is the original, but the deck is all text slides.

Here is what Carl said on his blog The Fischbowl: Did You Know? about the presentation :

"I was very nervous about showing this and how it would go over, but it seemed to have its intended effect (at least initially - we'll see if it really helps generate the on-going conversations we need to have). I would be interested in feedback from anybody who decides to download it."

And download it they did - with a wide variety of design takes on the original. Here are two I like the best - worth your time to watch both, because the same message gets to you differently.

Here's the first remix with updated information produced by Scott McCleod and Xplane.



Michael Arnold, with permission from Carl Fisch added his narration and a new set of supporting images. Same story different treatment.




With assistance from Xplane, Carl has created a wiki shifthappens � Suggestions for Using the Presentationfor Shift Happens where you can find research, resource links and a lot more.

TED BIGVIZ - Behind the scenes

I can't embed this informative video by David Sibbet(inset above) so you will have to click on the link below to take you to the video which explains how BIGVIZ was produced in real time and visualized on the PerceptivePixel touch screen displays at the TED conference.


David Sibbet: TED2008-BIG VIZ Production

The Long Tail of David Armano

This image is from David Armano's Visual Thinking Archive shown in Slideshare form below. This archive is available to anyone on the net for free and contains 50 unique images that are as useful as the one shown above.

To get the best view of this image archive click on the slideshare logo to be taken to a larger size version. ( click "full" in the lower right hand corner of the slideshare version to get the full size.

Thanks, David!

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Thoughts Illustrated: BIGVIZ - an ebook of sketches from TED2008

Thoughts Illustrated: BIGVIZ - an ebook of sketches from TED2008

Back of the Napkin -visual thinking - you can do it!

Here is Dan Roam's blog on visual thinking. Back of the Napkin
which is worth visiting to see how his blog complements his new book which he talks about in the video below.

Watch the interview with Dan to get the gist of the book - I'm buying it today!

How Many Earth Days Do We Have Left? | AlterNet

How Many Earth Days Do We Have Left? | AlterNet

Ah So! PresentationZen - a book every presenter must read

A unique forward by Guy Kawasaki launches this most valuable of how-to books for presenters - After 30 years in the presentation business, I am hard to impress - but Garr Reynolds has put it all into a visually stunning and practical guide. Learn how to bring your presentations to the level of the pros in both design and delivery. Go get it now !

Amazon.com: PresentationZen:.

googleforce.com - cloud computing partners

A 3 minute interview with Eric Schmidt CEO of Google describing their partnership with SalesForce.com. A harbinger of an explosive adoption of SAAS and Cloud Computing that will give Microsoft something to think about, and could lead to a merger of google and SalesForce over time.

Wii Multitouch Wows TED

Johnny Lee of Carnegie Mellon graduates to the TED2008 platform to show off his Wii-based interactive whiteboard and give a strong plug for the use of YouTube in democratizing the process of technology research. ( 5 min video from TED Talks).

I posted earlier on Thoughts Illustrated: WiiMote multitouch from CynergyLabs on Johnny's simple, very cheap method ($40) for using the Wiimote IR sensors to provide multitouch interactivity in large "mural" size format brings the price point of these displays within the reach of anyone wanting to integrate the user with the display of visual information. Since I first learned of Lee's innovation, he has reached over a 500,000 people who have downloaded his code to explore the use of the Wiimote and has made a business deal with Electronic Arts the giant game producer to incorporate his 3D "glasses" into interactive games ( shown in the second segment of the video)

This dramatic reduction in the cost of interactive whiteboards presages an explosion of the use of this powerful form of user interface with images and data. Every classroom and business meeting room should have one.

Memory is the New Sex

I am exploring the use of Clipmarks as a short cut to posting. If you click on the link it will open an article by NYT writer David Brooks on the Age of Forgetting. Sometimes humor can be very brutal .

clipped from www.nytimes.com In the era of an aging population, memory is the new sex.

How we think - or Not?

This New Yorker cover by Steinberg appears in Philosopher Daniel Dennett's thought-provoking presentation on Consciousness which you can view by clicking on the video below from TED Talks. Dr. Dennett makes you think twice (or more) about your own and other's consciousness. IMO Dennett is one of the most profound thinkers of our time- His books are at once humorous and enlightening.

PANGEA DAY MAY 10 2008 A TED Prize wish come true.

On May 10th throughout the world millions will gather to "meet" each other through the magic of film. From the Pangea website:

In a world where people are often divided by borders, difference, and conflict, it's easy to lose sight of what we all have in common. Pangea Day seeks to overcome that - to help people see themselves in others - through the power of film.

Pangea Day is the culmination of the TED 2006 Prize dream by filmmaker Jehane Noujaim


TED | Speakers | Jehane Noujaim: "Jehane Noujaim"

View the trailer here:

BIGVIZ - an ebook of sketches from TED2008

This is the cover of a 200 page ebook created by Autodesk capturing in full color, sketches of the 50 or so speakers at TED2008 conference and an artistic visualization of the content of their speeches. The book is offered as a free downloadable pdf at if:book: the big book of TED

BIGVIZ comes very close to my concept for mural casting.Thoughts Illustrated: MuralCasting - Improving ROA (Return on attention) What's missing from the ebook is a hyperlink from each sketch to the audio/video archive of the conference giving a visual context to the recorded archive of the TED speakers. I will be talking with Tom Wujek at Autodesk to see if I can create a hyperlink layer from the BIGVIZ artwork to the audio recording of the speeches from the TED archive. Without the speech link, the images in BIGVIZ are interesting but lack the context of hearing the speaker's voices or watching segments of the selected video.

Realscoop - pinnochio in color - is Barack telling the truth?

A potentially viral facebook app for recording your FB "friends". - and, maybe, a way to derive Trust Metrics in Social Networks.Thoughts Illustrated: Trust Metrics for Social Networks



To see the Realscoop community site click here RealScoop: Barack Obama before he was running for President