"TEDViz" Community begins...
Attending TEDGlobal 2009 in Oxford last month was one of the most amazing experiences. I met people from all walks of life from all over the world. I have a notebook filled with scribblings from the talks as well as coffee breaks on all the amazing things people are doing, the websites and blogs I need to follow, the amazing ideas people were spreading, and the new ideas or thoughts I brainstormed relating to my own work. However, I have learned one of the magical spells that TED is able to cast over its people is the power of chance meetings. I bumped into more people (literally!) then I would have imagined and got the chance to hear people’s stories and visions. But one of these chance encounters has really snowballed into something fantastic, and I write here to share the story hoping what has started as a snowball going down a hill will really turn into an avalanche of ideas and knowledge.
Our story begins at the Malmaison hotel by the chocolate fountain at the Grand Opening Party of TEDGlobal. A lively guy bumps into me and, upon glancing at my name tag, says “I’ve been looking for you!” I had one of those moments were I felt myself looking behind me to the left and right, and then realizing he was talking to me. I found myself facing Tommy McCall, information graphics editor and designer from New York City (http://www.tommymccall.com/). Turns out he designed the fabulous map showing where all the TEDGlobal Fellows were from and happened upon me, a fellow visualization aficionado. Well, when I pulled out my 3D stereo viewer with cards and he his camera with stereo lens, I knew our meeting was clearly meant to be!
I would have been happy enough to have that be the end of the encounter, but instead the snowball started rolling… “Hey Michelle, have you had the chance to chat with Manuel Lima yet?” with my reply “What?! *The* Manuel Lima? Visualization guru Lima?” (http://www.mslima.com/) Well, it was not a few minutes later that I was being introduced to him and the conversation kept rolling. Then it happened, the idea was born: how about “TEDViz”? A whole TED meeting devoted to “visualization”? Visualization in the abstract, in art and design, in business, in the sciences, online and in print… It is one “field” that is extremely important and valued by TED, yet has in many ways been neglected. We instantly started rambling off the tops of our heads all the brilliant visualization designers, researchers, and developers who should have a chance to spread their ideas in only the way TED intended yet have never had the chance to attend TED…
Well the discussion was suspended at that point and we went on our merry ways, only to converge again two nights later at the Late Night party at the Malmaison. I, once again, literally ran into Tommy and we grabbed a table outside. It was not long before our table turned into the first meeting of the TEDViz community after I grabbed my friend Arzu Coltekin (http://www.geo.unizh.ch/~arzu/) to sit with us, Tommy waved down Maria Popova (http://www.brainpickings.org/), and then Maria brought over Aaron Koblin (http://www.aaronkoblin.com/). We quickly realized that despite all of us doing “visualization” for work, we all came from different parts of industry and academia with extremely different backgrounds. We also all attend visualization conferences, but most did not know about the ones others attended! The schisms between design, information visualization, and science visualization were all apparent. It was then we all hardily decided these schisms must be stopped, and TED must step in! Well, a TED Late Night “Sponsored by Absolut” sign was flipped-over and we signed our compact:
Since TEDGlobal ended, we have all been emailing and added fellow TEDizen Evan Grant (http://www.evangrant.com/) to our ranks. We have a collaborative Basecamp site set-up for all of us to stay in touch, share notices about upcoming visualization conferences, and brainstorm other ideas such as the potential for a TEDx Viz as well as visualization ideas for TED conferences of TED related data. TEDViz does not just start or end with its own dedicated meeting, but can be part of every TED event with interactive or static visualizations relating to TED or TEDTalks!
Thus our story continues into the future… If anyone out there has any ideas to share with us or wants to be part of the TEDViz community, feel free to drop me a note at michelle_borkin - at - harvard.edu.
Your TEDVisizen,
Michelle Borkin
Posted by Michelle Borkin
