VizThink in Review

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.

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New Friends from Bar Camp Vancouver 2007

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.

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New Friends (and some old ones) from Gnomedex

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.

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Did You Miss Common Craft Week?

I'm not sure you realized, but it was Common Craft week last week. I know, it snuck up on you again. Me too!

Really though, we were surpised and honored to see that the folks at New Media in the Land of Manana decided that such a week existed last week. Well, it started in Tuesday, but we'll call it even.

Tuesday: The Common Craft
Common Craft Wednesday: What is a Wiki?

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SXSW and Community 2.0: New Friends and Favorite Topics

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.

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New Friends of Common Craft

Across a few different conferences I've met some folks face-to-face that impressed me. Here's a shout out to some of these folks... I hope our paths cross again soon.

Mark A. Smith is the founder of Mikonoclast, LLC. Mark's idea is all about connecting people through personal icons or Mikons that you can create, share, wear, etc. Look for Mikons at SXSW this year.

Denise Wilton is the lead designer for Moo, a UK-based business that prints mini business/contact cards from your Flickr photos. I'm about to order some myself.

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Dog Sledding or Blog Sledding (groan)

Blogs-n-Dogs today was much less about blogs and much more about dogs. We took a break, piled into the Howling Dog Tours vans and went up into the mountains for a couple of hours of dogsledding. Being that Common Craft is not so focused on recreation, I'll point you to the entry on TwinF, Eric Rice's videos and the Flickr tag blogsledding. Great, great fun.

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Pre-GnomeDex BBQ Retrospective

I few months ago, I had a bar-b-cue at my house and invited the Internet to come over. It was the afternoon before GnomeDex and I wasn’t sure what I was getting into. I didn’t write about it much then, but the results were incredible and I hope others will do similar events.

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Seattle, Renaissance and the Creative Class

Jordan Rule, a former stranger who stayed at my house recently has a few things to say about his decision to quit his job and move to Seattle.

On a related note, he previously pointed me to an article by Richard Florida about the Rise of the Creative Class. It opened my eyes to some of the reasons I, like Jordan, were so attracted to places like Seattle to start a career.

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Jordan, Meet Seattle

A guest stayed with us this weekend as he looked for a place to live here in Seattle. He is a bright young guy named Jordan Rule and this is the story of how he got here.

On Friday night over dinner, a friend of ours said this before Jordan arrived: “So, let me get this straight, you left a comment on this guy’s web site and now he’s staying in your HOUSE?” My answer was yes, with a grin.

This friend was looking at web sites in the old view- that web sites and people are different things – that you can’t trust someone based on their web site. My reality was that Jordan and his site are the same thing and I trusted him.

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