Monday, January 28, 2008

VizThink08 - Evening 1 - My search for the VisualThinking eLearning connection

A few weeks ago my colleague Tony Karrer questioned the idea behind the VizThink Conference. There was a lot of buzz around his post and so Tom Crawford the CEO, hooked up Tony with Dave Gray of XPlane for a webinar to try and figure it out. I listened to the recording and it didn't sound to me like Tony was convinced.

vizthink blog » Blog Archive » Webinar #1 Recording Posted

So here I am in rainy San Francisco looking for that elusive connection between eLearning and the visual thinking community. My flight was delayed, but I arrived just in time for the doors to open on the expo floor for the opening reception. I must say, I was very impressed with the entire setup. It was strange walking around an expo and feeling like I don't know anybody. I did my usual first night scan and cruise. Don't engage...much. Just check it all out and soak in the vibe. Here's a quick update of my scan and cruise:

TheBrain.com - Welcome to TheBrain
I talked with Harlan Hugh of theBrain.com and that is VERY cool. I downloaded the Personal Brain demo and but have not tried it out yet. I'll review that later.

Visuals Speak
I chatted with Christine Martell as well of VisualsSpeak. We've been blogging at each other since Tony's blog post brought us together as commenters. Its always great to finally meet virtual colleagues/friends face-to-face.

Emaki Productions • The website of Neil Cohn
I also met Neil Cohn from Tuft's University. He's a big visual language, and comics guy.

I did see a couple other cool things but I'm out of blogging time this morning. I'll get back to those booths later today and try to keep blogging. So now that my scan and cruise is complete I've got some serious talking I need to do. This stuff is very cool and most of all I want to talk with other attendees and find out what the heck they do, or want to do, with visual thinking. Then maybe we can better understand a framework for visual learning.

4 comments:

bill7tx said...

I think you're going to like Personal Brain. I've been using The Brain since it first came out -- I think that was maybe ten years ago or longer. Very useful. I wish they'd come out with a version for the Mac.

Bill at The Guild

B.J. Schone said...

Great info - please keep it coming! I'm bummed that I couldn't make it there. I spoke with Tom quite a bit at DevLearn and it sounds like this conference is going to be very cool. Have fun!

bschlenker said...

I downloaded the Mac Version of TheBrain last night. I'm really looking forward to testing it out.

bill7tx said...

Oops. I guess I need to go visit the site. I didn't realize that they had actually released a Mac version. Cool -- hope it's as functional as the Windows version -- and that I can import my Brains from Windows to OS X.