Rohdesign | Mike Rohde

May 19, 2008

First Day at Northwoods

Today was my first day at Northwoods Software and I think it went very well.

The 15 minute commute was enjoyable. It provided a time to mentally shift gears and prepare for work, while enjoying El Ten Eleven tunes in the car.

Everyone was very welcoming, and I felt right at home in the culture, even though I was processing so much information. I know I'll eventually learn the new names, the way things work, and settle into a work groove.

With such a significant change of environment, culture, people and systems to adapt to, a little shock to the system is to be expected. I'm OK with that, because I know this is the way every new job is. It's a challenge, but I'll adapt. Just knowing this is normal, frees me to relax and enjoy the adaptation process.

I found it strange my first day to not being working from my home office. While I'm sure there will be times when it makes sense to work from home, shifting away from the comfort of my regular work environment was a big change.

My office is still very sparse, featuring only a desk, computer, dual screens and two chairs. However, I'm looking forward to adjusting the room orientation, adding furniture, artwork and applying paint to the former hospital room.

Northwoods has a DeLonghi Automatic espresso machine in the kitchen and I plan a daily visit to create creama-topped shots of espresso. Yum!

I'm excited about this new phase in my life. Having an opportunity to be challenged, to grow in new ways, and to share with others is what life is all about. :-)

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May 8, 2008

VizThink Workshop Chicago Sketchnotes

I'm back from the VizThink workshop in Chicago with Dave Gray, Karl Gude and Tom Crawford. What a fabulous time, learning about visual thinking, and getting to exercise my mind and my drawing hand in new ways.

But first, go check out the 16 pages of sketchnotes captured at the workshop:

Here are a few observations on the VizThink Workshop in Chicago:

Smart Leaders — The workshop was run by great people. Dave, Carl and Tom are great guys and know their stuff. Even for a practicing visual thinker like me, I found their offerings and insights valuable and challenging.

Dave Gray is the Professor of Visual Thinking & Language, having though long and deep about the whole topic as a language and as a tool. It was fascinating to hear how he's processed visual language at an atomic level to better understand how it works and how to use it effectively. He's also a great teacher.

Karl Gude is the Professor of Infinite Drawing, whose passion for drawing and solving problems literally oozed from his pores. Karl spent 27 years in the news business, generating news graphics for AP and Newsweek on tight deadlines. It was a blast to see him getting excited as he talked and taught us his techniques for more effective drawing and communication. Did I mention he's a complete nut? :-)

Tom Crawford made sure everything ran smoothly, while quietly observing the visual thinking workshop. At the gathering afterwards, I had a chance to talk more with Tom, and he's very well versed in visual thinking. Very cool guy.

Great Attendees — Attendees were fun to be with and from such diverse backgrounds and locations. I had a blast working with my teammates on solving information challenges together. It was also great fun to see team members who don't normally use visual language finding out how valuable visual thinking can be.

Fun Socializing — It was as much fun after the workshop as in the workshop. I had a chance to hang out with a core group of leaders and attendees at Rivers, on the Chicago River. We talked in depth and shared some great stories. It was so much fun, in fact, that I barely made the last train back to Milwaukee, running down the platform, climbing aboard with a only minute to spare!

My 2 big takeaways from VizThink Workshop Chicago?

Visual Thinking Will Help Me at my New Gig — I'm convinced that visual thinking will help me take on the next challenge of my career, as art director at Northwoods Software. I'll be working on large sites, organizing information as well as design, so these techniques will most certainly help in this regard. I'm excited about sharing these techniques with my new colleagues.

I Want to Share Visual Thinking Techniques — My passion for encouraging others to use visual thinking skills has been stoked up. Seeing non-artists experieicing the joy of solving problems with visual thinking tools was enlightening, because it reminded me that it's not about drawing skills, but about communication.

If you're considering a VizThink Workshop, I highly recommend the experience. It's quite reasonable, and you'll get great new tools and ideas from the workshop.

Thanks Dave, Karl and Tom for a fun and informative workshop!

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May 5, 2008

The Joy of Creating Handmade Cards

Today in my Flickr account I came across a photo from my trip to Belize in 2007:

This photo reminded me how much joy I get creating handmade cards and giving them to family and friends. For many years I've preferred to create cards (when I plan ahead) because they're fun to do and are always received well.

And you know it's really much easier than you think. With computer card software being so popular, you can get pre-folded blank cards, complete with matching envelopes at any office supply or Target store. Most stores will have simple colored pencil kits, and as for pens, the Pilot G2 and Uniball Signo 207 work well.

I recommend sketching out your idea in graphite pencil very lightly, then draw over the pencil with the G2 or Signo's black gel ink. Erase the pencil. Color the card with the colored pencils, or if you wish, keep it black and white like my card above.

You can add a message inside, and be sure to write some kind of "created by" message on the back of the card. My line in college when I started creating cards was:

"Rohde Cards: When you're too cheap to send the very best."

Belize Thank You Card Story
As for the story behind the handmade card above, I was in Belize in July 2007, as a part of a church service group. A small team from the larger group paid a visit to a Mennonite family in the village of St. Margaret's, in the mountains of Belize.

The family we visited was incredibly hospitable to our team. They offered fresh pineapple juice and friendly conversation at their home overlooking the river, high on a hillside. I wanted to say thanks, but what can you offer a Mennonite family they don't already have — or will accept?

How about a handmade thank you card?! :-)

With this in mind, I drew up a little thank you card on spare construction paper, had our entire group sign the back and sealed both sides with leftover clear contact paper. Our team presented the card to the family, which they loved.

Go Forth and Create Handmade Cards!
So, visit the store this week and get your supplies for Mother's Day! Your mom will adore your handmade work, regardless of your drawing skills. Remember, it's not about your skills as an illustrator, it's about sharing from your heart!

Photo Credit: Laura Winslow

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May 3, 2008

The Amazon Kindle is Back In Stock

Just in case you were aching for an Amazon Kindle, I got word today they're back in stock at Amazon. If you buy a Kindle through my Amazon Associates link, Amazon pays me a referral bonus, in case you were feeling generous. :-)

Photo Credit: David King

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May 2, 2008

Clay Shirky & the Power of Disposable Attention

Thanks to Derek Dysart, I was able to hear Clay Shirky's "Gin, Television, and Social Surplus" talk from the Web 2.0 Expo, embedded for your viewing pleasure:

Clay's assertion is that like gin sold from pushcarts helping Londoners cope with the sudden shift from rural farming to urban industrialization, the TV sitcom helped post-WWII society cope with a new surplus of leisure and free time:

If I had to pick the critical technology for the 20th century, the bit of social lubricant without which the wheels would've come off the whole enterprise, I'd say it was the sitcom. Starting with the Second World War a whole series of things happened--rising GDP per capita, rising educational attainment, rising life expectancy and, critically, a rising number of people who were working five-day work weeks. For the first time, society forced onto an enormous number of its citizens the requirement to manage something they had never had to manage before — free time.

He argues that society is awakening from a focus on TV sitcoms, and is realizing that they are in a position to create the content they want. They are able to contribute to the discussion, in ways not possible before:

And it's only now, as we're waking up from that collective bender, that we're starting to see the cognitive surplus as an asset rather than as a crisis. We're seeing things being designed to take advantage of that surplus, to deploy it in ways more engaging than just having a TV in everybody's basement.

What Shirky calls a cognitive surplus, I like to call disposable attention. Some may choose to spend attention on one-way activities like TV, but this is changing with the new generation. Shirky shares this story about one young girl's reaction to TV:

I was having dinner with a group of friends about a month ago, and one of them was talking about sitting with his four-year-old daughter watching a DVD. And in the middle of the movie, apropos nothing, she jumps up off the couch and runs around behind the screen. That seems like a cute moment. Maybe she's going back there to see if Dora is really back there or whatever. But that wasn't what she was doing. She started rooting around in the cables. And her dad said, "What you doing?" And she stuck her head out from behind the screen and said, "Looking for the mouse."

I'm fascinated at how deeply this 4 year old has been impacted by interactivity in her life. She so wanted to have an impact on the TV show she was experiencing that she had to "find the mouse" in an effort to make an impact. Consuming was not enough for her — she wanted to interact.

There are many new opportunities available to us that were not available 10 years ago. We have the power to create. We have the power to write our own stories on blogs, tell them in podcasts and show them in videos. We can contribute to larger projects like Wikipedia or attend BarCamps.

The encouragement to me in all this is we're moving beyond the stage of simply sitting on a couch, accepting what's being presented. We're given the opportunity to create and share our own stories, finding there are others like us out there, interested in our stories and willing to share theirs with us.

Here are a few great parting quotes from Shirky's talk:

Here's something four-year-olds know: A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken. Here's something four-year-olds know: Media that's targeted at you but doesn't include you may not be worth sitting still for. Those are things that make me believe that this is a one-way change. Because four year olds, the people who are soaking most deeply in the current environment, who won't have to go through the trauma that I have to go through of trying to unlearn a childhood spent watching Gilligan's Island, they just assume that media includes consuming, producing and sharing.

We're looking for the mouse. We're going to look at every place that a reader or a listener or a viewer or a user has been locked out, has been served up passive or a fixed or a canned experience, and ask ourselves, "If we carve out a little bit of the cognitive surplus and deploy it here, could we make a good thing happen?" And I'm betting the answer is yes.

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