David Sibbet

Leading Change: The Role of Serious Play

2007 is almost over, and a weaving of insights for the new year is already beginning, fueled by a good studio day of just letting things arise, and several visits with good friends and counselors. The twin themes of “prototyping” and “leadership” are starting to dance together in a wonderfully hopeful way.

Simulate to Innovate
Let me start with the prototyping theme. Casting over my library (the one I keep at my home studio focused on the projects I am developing) Michael Schrage’s book on Serious Play: How the World’s Best Companies Simulate to Innovate (Harvard Business School Press, 2000) popped into my hand. My colleague, Ed Claassen got it for The Grove library several years ago. I took it home, knowing that there was a connection between prototyping, play, and what we do at The Grove with interactive graphic communications and groups.

The Story of Stuff

This holiday was a complex time of joyful immersion in family and community and sober reflection on the course of our consumer society. I felt good about spending much more time on relationships and less time on shopping this year. But we did give some gifts, heartful expressions of love... and in the back of my mind I rationalized that I was helping support what is clearly a challenged economy. I asked all the clerks I saw how things were going and they said OK, but slower than last year. I know Grove clients are starting to slow down on their bill paying, an early indicator of recession. I wrote earlier about a client who is experiencing unprecedented fuel driven commodity price hikes and is VERY worried.

Is it possible that our society, like the stock market, needs a "correction" like this, as painful as it could be? A got a confirmation of that perspective in an e-mail from my colleague Diana Arsenian, a gifted graphic facilitator and designer who is part of The Grove network. She included a link to "The Story of Stuff," and really encouraged me to watch it. Coming from her, and supported by two other friends who I remembered has also pinged me about it, AND having some time the day after Christmas led me to watch. It's a 20 minute, beguilingly simple, clever, graphically animated  story narrated by Anne Leonard, linked to a very rich web site encouraging involvement and action. 

The Story of Stuff is a powerful example of visual storytelling (supported by our neighbors at the Thoreau Center for Sustainability, The Tides Foundation) and took me into thining how we at The Grove might start using our visualizaiton expertise.

So there I was, fully implicated, considering the impacts of my (and most of the rest of our) chosen lifestyles. I'm still roiling with the impact. Could this year be a time when we make a turn as a society toward more sensible thinking? Will I be a part?

Do take the 20 minutes to watch this. It should shake you into some deep reflection if not change. We all need to do both!

Did You Know 2.0

I was going through my back e-mails and came across a link from Lisa Kimball of Group Jazz (also the Organizational Development Network Board) to an amazing little video called Did You Know, created by a high school education project in Colorado with the help of Xplane. It's a powerful example of how simple graphics can communicate a staggering amount of information, and pose some sense shaking challenges to conventional wisdom. When I question my own attempts, at age 63, to try and understand the new media and web 2.0 environments, I'll just need to play this as a reminder. Click HERE to see it.

Visual Thinking Conference Brings Together Renowned Leaders In Visualization Techniques

The VizThink ’08 Conference - San Francisco January 27, 28 and 29, will bring together leaders in visual thinking for the first time in one location. I will be presenting on "Panoramic Visualization: A Mind Gym for Group Intelligence" in the context of a very distinguished group from across the visualization spectrum. It's billed as an opportunity for executives to understand ways of incorporating visualization processes into business, learning and communications strategies to gain faster and more effective results. Hosted by Portland, Ore. based VizThink LLC, the conference will include breakout sessions and forums facilitated by some of the most recognized names in the visual thinking space, including the distinguished Bob Horn from Stanford University, renowned author and artist Scott McCloud, award winning designer Nancy Duarte of Duarte Design, most notably known for her work in Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, and Nigel Holmes formerly with Time magazine.  The conference will be held at the Westin San Francisco Market Street hotel from January 27-29.  Registration is open now. (Click HERE).

Crayon Physics Is "Doodlicious!"

Josh Kaufman from CoVision tracked down this terrific game for tablet PCs that bridge simple drawing and physics!! As the post on  Gizmodo says "The Crayon Physics Deluxe must be one of the coolest touchscreen games ever. The aim is very simple: take a ball to where the start is. The tools to do it are a crayon and your imagination, since whatever you draw will automatically get recognized by the physics engine and put into motion over a piece of paper. Microsoft must buy this game and ship it with every Tablet PC. And somebody should port this to the iPhone. Pronto. [Kloonigames] Click HERE to see it.

Jamais Cascio Maps the Metaverse

Jamais Cascio sent me a link to his cogent overview of the emerging "metaverse," a term for the emerging world wide web coined by Neal Stephenson in his now famous cybernovel Snowcrash. Cascio gave his lecture with questions and answers in a 90 minute video available if you click here. The event was held at the Stanford Humanities Lab and Second Life simultaneously on November 27, 2007. It was one of those overviews that drove me to take some notes which I share here.  He is involved in a range of projects looking at future scenarios which are not predictable but plausible and full of learning. He is a very clear and reflective presenter and well worth the watch.

Flight of the Visual Bee

Click here to see Stephany Crowley's amazing time lapse video of the creation of a 36 foot graphic mural. It took five days in the studio but only a few minutes here, and demonstrates as few media can, how visuals can illustrate the complex parts of a process while providing a sense of the whole at the same time. Stephany is a new board member of the International Forum of Visual Practitioners. We are lucky to have her representing the association.

Simple Animations Bring Commoncraft Videos Alive

Ole Qvist Sorenson, our Bigger Picture colleague in Denmark, linked me into a wonderful source of simple, animated videos that explain things like blogs, social networking and other subjects relevant to the emerging metaverse of the web. These videos replicate the experience people have working with a skilled graphic facilitator who can sketch out things like this, and go further by providing a reusable format. Thanks Ole. 

To See all of Commoncraft's video on blogs, click here.