Edward Tufte Visualization Seminar in Houston January 2006

Edward Tufte, ""the man" when it comes to visualization" as one client referred to him, was in Houston the last two days for visualization seminars.  Attending with four others, it was a great presentation and included three of his books and the infamous Minard poster showing Napleon’s March.

In particular I enjoyed Mr. Tufte’s presentation and verbal description of Sparklines – small inline graphs of meaningful and relevant data associated with the word.

Like many great public speakers, almost everything he said was "obvious".  Multivariate graphs are difficult to display in "flatland" and there are known ways to attack the problem.  His books are a constant reference during the presentation because of the increased resolution. 

Example – Tufte on Presentations:

"They did not come to see your amateur design efforts.  They came to see your professional content"

On sparklines:

"No more tinker toy graphics.  We finally have graphics worthy of the resolution of the human mind eye resolution; sparklines."

Other quotables:

"The most embarrassing words in web design are "skip intro""

"Graphical design recapitulates hierarchy"

"Pitching out corrupts within" (on the evil of convincing PPTs for everything external)

The last image is from the Tufte site where he has the chapter on sparklines in draft form in its entirety available.  Worthy of a visit.

He finished the presentation going over presentation rights and wrongs and the essay "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint".  The short version is that PPT encourages crappy writing.  Certainly there is more to it than that, but I suspect he would agree with that summary. 

So now, as I prepare my deck for tomorrow’s presentation, I am somehow a bit more concerned than I usually am before public speaking!

 

Offshore Technology Conference Event Marketing Seminar

Clare Sullivan CSEP

Sullivan Group


Thu 2-Feb-06 2:00 PM to Thu 2-Feb-06 5:00 PM

 

Distributed Authoring – Vocal Authors and the Silent Majority in Associations

Some eye candy for those interested in Associations and Organizational dynamics. 

First, I firmly believe that successful online organizations can be identified by looking at three primary characteristics:

1. Distributed Authoring – humans adding content and the wisdom of crowds
2. Strong Subgroups – meaning active committees under 150 people typically
3. Transparency – a level playing field must be in place for all with controls

These were first articulated in "Engaging Your Membership: What Are You Doing and What Should You Be Doing?" and the Distributed Authoring bullet was expanded in "The Concept of Distributed Authoring for Membership Associations – Getting Your Association to “Virtualization”.  And of course everything we program in Tendenci is designed to facilitate these three organizational goals.  But at the end of the day it is up to the association to determine the action and policies it will demonstrate.

Some data.  Here is one graphical snapshot from a randomly selected Tendenci client in aggregate.  I changed the numbers a bit, but in a statistically consistent way so the trends are valid.

This first graph is almost completely useless.  I am just sharing my initial frustration.  With over 10k users on the site, less than 50 are adding content for others to read. 

I filtered out stuff like editing a profile or registering for an event as those are more data entry in my mind.  Authoring means contributing an article for the newsletter or posting an event on the calendar (again this is subjective and my opinion).

Of the members of the sample association adding value to the group as a whole through authoring content, they follow something close to a power curve. 

I did try fitting a logarithmic and an exponential distribution, but the power curve was the closest match despite the divergence as it approaches zero.

This last graph is a pie chart limited to people who actually added content.  Again the data has been changed a bit, but not much, so the trends are consistent with the actual distribution.  Note again that there are two or three super users adding most of the content that is read and absorbed by the entire membership. 

Specifically the top 5 users are adding almost 85% of the content. 

One possible explanation is that someone is functioning in an administrative role (not the security level but the act of functioning administratively) with others emailing articles and society events to post on the site.  This is likely in my opinion based on observing interactions and I made no effort to correct the data for author versus typist.

A possible future post or article should probably look at which articles and events are being read the most.  Something along the lines of what AttentionTrust is interested in as long as it can be done anonymously for the users (nobody likes big brother, especially me!).  Thanks!

Quotable Futurist – Perhaps Baby Boomers Don’t Need Technology in the Future

I recently attended a presentation at IABC Houston by Dr. Peter Bishop, Houston’s resident futurist.  Some great quotes below, and then perhaps some constructive feedback and questions.

Riding the Future’s Waves of Creative Destruction
Dr. Peter C. Bishop Futurist, and Associate Professor in the College of Technology and Coordinator of the graduate program in Futures Studies
University of Houston

The Dr. Bishop is very quotable dropping a few lines on the future such as:

“What goes away (in the future) is the traditional job. … if you are not using judgment and value adds then I can tell a machine to do that job.”

“The very thing you think you have the least control over, what happens 15 years out, is what you have the most control over.”

“When an era ends we will be in a world of confusion and risk. … When the first person realizes they are in a new era they have a significant advantage.”

“Communication (in the future) is instantaneous and simultaneous.  If you are not instantaneous then you’re not there yet.  If your information is not simultaneously available to everyone then you’re not there yet.”

More quotes on the future here.

I had a presentation at 2:00 so had to leave the IABC luncheon quickly.  So we were not able to spend much time with Bishop after the presentation, but looking for a moment of bonding I asked briefly if he used bloglines.  "No time" was the response.  I protested that lack of time is the reason to USE tools that improve your consumption and filtering of information.  "For a futurist, I don’t use the computer much." was the follow up response. Baroo?

Note I am not protesting someone using alternate tools, Mac vs PC, Linux vs Unix, Photoshop vs Gimp, rather I am questioning an apparent unwillingness to look at tools of the future now.

"The future is already here – it’s just unevenly distributed." – William Gibson

So basically our baby-boomer futurist doesn’t keep up on communication technology.  I truly believe you can have great Doctors who aren’t tech savvy in the geek way.  But a freakin’ futurist?  This is just lack of discipline.  Perhaps a lack of respect for the craft of "futurism"?  Perhaps most damning is that by his own choice his communication inbound and outbound is not instantaneous and simultaneous. 

Maybe I’m wrong and I’ll get a Bishop trackback telling me I am nuts and got it all wrong.  I hope so for the sake of the future!

Graham – Sarfati: Mapping The Future of Your Association: Eight Super-Trends

Working with numerous association clients I try to study organizational structures and trends.  I was pointed to this association PPT presentation by a client with similar interests.  If you are a sociologist or are involved in associations I highly recommend a review of the Graham-Sarfati association super trends presentation deck (linked below).

Mapping The Future of Your Association: Eight Super-Trends
John Graham, IV, CAE, President and CEO, ASAE
Susan Sarfati, CAE, President and CEO, The Center for Association Leadership

Full PPT recommended! – http://www.centeronline.org/ppt/MappingFuture.ppt

1. Demassification – Break-up of the Mass Market
2. Unbundling – One-Size-Fits-All No Longer Appeals
3. Scrimping – Greater Return on Dues Investment
4. Wave 3.1 – Knowledge, Not Information is the Competitive Advantage
5. Virtualization – Virtual and Personal Relationships
6. Cyber-Mobbing – Web-based Communities are Organizing for Advocacy
7. Scrutiny – Oversight Demands Greater Transparency
8. Counter-Americanism – U.S. Styles, Values, Products No longer Dominate the World

update: Got a comment from Ben Martin (see comments) with ASAE who is trained on all sorts of association stuff and is certified to deliver the ASAE presentation to your group.  Give him a shout at http://caeexam.blogspot.com/.  What makes social software so interesting is that you can NOT predict the outcomes of social groups.  Which is exactly why we need to study and seek understanding starting with Weber’s Theory of Bureaucracy and going forward.

update2: Speaking of virtualization, Jason McElweenie, Katie Laird and I delivered a webinar on Podcasting for associations for TSAE on Thursday Jan 26, 2006.  Contact TSAE (or Join) for a recording of the webinar or contact me for a copy of just the presentation deck on podcasting.

Economics DO Matter for your Brand – Learning from GM

General Motors, the once might house of vehicle brands, is ailing.  Primarily in my opinion from poor economics.  They have been writing checks they can’t cash in the form of expected future growth (pensions, union agreements, etc.) and unrealistic forecasts while stepping away from pricing theory.  The bankruptcy of Adelphia left everyone wondering when GM would fail driving them to actually run ads countering the notion of a GM bankruptcy.  (image info below)

That said, strong brands could have helped GM prevent the pending train wreck futureliner crash.  The Rieses have fun with the lack of consistent brand identify of GM product lines in their book "The Origin of Brands".  And Rance Crain is piling on with his latest article in AdAge.com

GM’S REAL BANKRUPTCY IS IN FAILING TO DISTINGUISH BRANDS
Automaker Considers Ad Campaign to Adress Bankruptcy Rumors
January 23, 2006, Rance Crain

General Motors is considering an ad campaign to dispel the widespread notion it might go bankrupt. “As much as I hate to do this, we’re probably going to have to do something proactively on the marketing side just to address that issue,” GM’s marketing boss, Mark LaNeve, told The Wall Street Journal. “How you do that, I don’t know. It’s a tough thing because you really don’t want to go there.”

GM doesn’t need to go there. What it needs to do, in a forceful and surefooted way, is trumpet the new vehicles that are coming on line, talk about how it’s lowering prices across the board to be an attractive buy without incentives, and, in general, act like a winner. And please, no more whining about how it’s got to create a level playing field to compete. (more)

As for the top image, that is a screen shot of a web site that has images of the GM Futureliners from the 1930s linked from BoingBoing and a variety of other blogs.  I chose it because the irony of such forward future thinking crossed with the current situation for GM illustrates where they have stepped away from the heart of the brand.  From http://www.metafilter.com/archived.mefi/12/1/2002:

The GM Futureliner It began with the Streamliner and GM’s 1936 Parade of Progress, the brainchild of inventor Charles F. Kettering. The show was a tremendous success. Redesigned in 1941 and again in 1953, the 12 Futureliners and its band of Paraders were ready to hit the road, set up shop in a town near you, and showcase the marvels of science. Of the original 12 built, 9 have been found, 2 are being used for parts, 1 is for sale, and 1 is being lovingly restored by a group of volunteers. [more inside]
posted by snez at 12:45 PM PST

For those of you interested in the future, consider attending the IABC event in Houston tomorrow with Dr. Peter Bishop.  More info on that in full microformat hCal glory.

Riding the Future’s Waves of Creative Destruction
Dr. Peter C. Bishop Futurist, and Associate Professor in the College of Technology and Coordinator of the graduate program in Futures Studies
University of Houston
Thu 26-Jan-06 11:30 AM to Thu 26-Jan-06 1:00 PM