Tilt-Shift / Timelapse Artistry

Another great example of tilt-shift / time-lapse film making - thanks to Photojojo and It's Nice That ... httpv://vimeo.com/37157187 I like the helicopter rescue at about 1:20, a mini-flashback to a previous video from this guy ... http://vimeo.com/3156959 ... which was featured on the Guggenheim site (what a great site to wander through for inspiration!) Take a quick look at the filmmaker's web site - the home page has a video of samples that are just stunning!

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Art and Science of Data Visualization

"Data Visualization" has been an extremely active and popular topic for a few years - we can use Google's Timeline search feature to see the growth in interest since 1980: That local high in July of this year was due in no small part to David McCandless' Information is Beautiful talk at TED this past summer. It appeared in my RSS stream here, here, and here, so I got the hint, spent 18 minutes watching it, and got suitably jazzed…

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Design Thinking and Process – Is It In You? (1 of 2)

Continuing a bit on my recent Design meme; I talk about the current relevance of design thinking, and the impact it can have on change management - but if it feels a bit foreign, how can you tell if you have it in you? Do You Think Visually? Interesting how Design always seems to have a strong visual component, even though functional design (like my data warehouse or the structure of my house) is not directly visible. Still, I thought…

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It’s Design, not Decorating

A few months ago, I read Dan Pink's book, A Whole New Mind. Excellent stuff, with echoes in his video What Really Motivates Us? (check it out here), and it introduced me to the idea of "right mind thinking". I've had a great respect for and interest in Architecture over the years, and have watched with great fascination (and a bit of jealousy) as my daughter progresses through her Interior Design studies at the University of Cincinnati (she's the quote…

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The Sandpit

(via GNC, thanks for this one!) A bit of artistic inspiration; a visually stunning film, combining time-lapse and tilt-shift photography. httpv://vimeo.com/09679622 For the intellectually and technically curious - more information here. For the artist and the observationally curious - tai chi under the freeway? Nice.

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Quantifying Business Benefit of Collaboration Tools (or, What Is This Meeting Costing Me?)

This post started off as an excuse to experiment with Google Docs, and this really neat feature I discovered - embedding a spreadsheet in a web page as a sharing method. However, it struck me as a potential way to cost justify the time, effort, and expense of implementing collaboration systems with the Most Cynical Among Us. We've all been in large meetings, with tens of people from the project team, along with the expensive consultants, sitting around a table…

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If I Told You a Fractal Solution, Could You Change the CEO’s Mind?

As the new year approaches, debates over the "value" of IT and business projects intensify; it's not holiday stress, but the excitement of the approaching New [fiscal] Year. Lately, I'm hearing more about the struggle to quantify business value, especially when selecting those few projects that will "make the cut". We will definitely iterate on our scoring framework, adding a cost / benefit template to facilitate more apples-to-apples comparisons between projects (yes, don't scoff  - it is possible - more…

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