Following our needs to find a way to easily filter through the vast see of data the internet is providing us with, and the possibilities the web offers us, visuals and visualizations are becoming more and more important. Data journalism is becoming more and more important and the bigger the data sets, the more the need to create overview and meaning to it. Applications that help us visualize these sets of data into a visual story are helpful and  welcome tools.  Datavisualiztion.ch has very beautifully summed up a useful set of handpicked tools that will help you generate maps, charts and sift through data. So that you can ‘see’ the story behind the data and use insightful visuals to underline a story. The key element of these tools being that they use the data as a start to create a visual overview. The sets of data in charts maps and graphs will than help you create the whole story, whether in visually or as a written story with visual overview.

With this risen need of visuals, the infographic has become the  tool of choice to generate more traffic, tell tales and bring insight. There are several services to jump into this given is Easel.ly, a service ( still in beta) that promises easily generated customizable inforaphics. It offers multiple templates to choose from as well as ok looking graphics to help you create your infographic. Info.gr offers the same service with basic visuals and the possibility to add your own data. They sell their service as being the solution for journalist to tell their story and skip the hire a designer process. The latest addition in this automated infographic hype is venngage a similar service ( or so it seems because the service offered by infographic platform visual.ly  has yet to go public)

Although I think it is a good thing to make the making of understandable beautiful insightful graphics easier for everyone, there is one problem with these kind of services; It is working the wrong way around. To tell a story visually you take the data, decide on the story that needs to be told and than take that data to create visuals that accurately tell that story, with comparison, connection, mapping and other visual possibilities so that it clarifies the story and the numbers to go with it. Instead of choosing a visual basic and add numbers and text to it. Although beautifully displayed, the added value that visuals can provide is neglected in this way.

The future will tell, will infographics look all the same, not providing us with the great visual insights visuals can help us with… or will it challenge us to differ..

Again this year, the last week of April was reserved for TNW, The next Web conference 2012, a yearly recurring ever growing international conference on innovation, tech and web. This is the 4th year I have provided sketchnotes for the conference, and the first I’ve done them completely on iPad, live, updating on the big, no, huge! screen.

This has led to a lot of positive reactions of people that really felt they were helped by the overviews and asked for real-time viewing. Although this is entirely possible, I’ve done these sketches in the Adobe Ideas app, and we did test real-time viewing on the big screen the night before. It also might distract people from the presentor on stage. So we decided that every new sketchnote once the speaker was ready was up to watch during the next speaker as well as an overview of all the speakers during the break, as well as in the live stream online.

Click here to view the embedded video.

A selection of my favorite sketchnotes and speakers of this years TNWconference;

This animation I made for a client that wanted their brief on the change of their internal culture to be visualized and more understandable. I wrote the script, flow and did the animation for this short clip. The editing was done by the client themselves. The video will run for the year and a half that the entire change project will last, on their internal blog.

Click here to view the embedded video.

On the spur of the moment, invited by Bob Jansen, we (Timan and I ) decided to go to Barcelona. Barcelona LeanCamp that is. An unconference that encourages people to share their knowledge with one another on the theme ‘lean businesses’. Since I am all into ‘lean thinking’ especially after reading Eric Ries’ Lean Startup this felt like a great opportunity to explore the lean thinking part of my visual thinking mind as well as exploring Barcelona while Amsterdam was in the middle of a deep freeze.

The unconference started of a little shy, people where called on stage to introduce themselves and the proposed session and fill the board or schedule for the whole day. Luckily there where some awesome speakers invited that had prepared presentations and led the way, their enthusiasm worked on others and the schedule soon began to fill up. Bob decided to put a visual thinking workshop given by me on the board as well. I agreed, thinking that a couple of people, 10 at the most, would give me the intimacy to draw and talk together.

I actually learned a lot during that day in Barcelona. I have made a couple of sketchnotes I will share with you, but the mingling of people from all different trades on this subject and talking to them gave me new insights. One of the most important is the fact that Lean and visual thinking are best buddies, and the visual way of thinking can help lean teams. In communication, but also in solving problems and breaking them into smaller little bits.

Another quick learning process was my session visual thinking, instead of 10, more than 50 people decided to show up. No intimate drawing, a lecture!. After a rough first start it went a lot smoother when I decided to ask for someone with a problem and have him draw that on the board. Having prepared nothing at all, it turned out to be a lot of fun. I never realized that what is so very obvious for me, is not necessarily for some one else.

All in all a day of good fun and great insights, thanks Nicky Smith and Salim Virani for organizing. Hope Bob Jansen will bring a LeanCamp to Holland soon.

Of course we had some great walks exploring the street of Barcelona, check out my pic’s here

sketchnotes by @wilg

main picture by Bob Jansen

The moon over a beautiful sunny and very Dutch snowskape, the icey ‘polder’ whilst skating on a ‘sloot’

According to a new report by the PewResearch centre, that combined both response data and log data and combined those, Facebook users on average receive more friend requests, likes, messages, and phototags than they themselves give away.This phenomenon is explained by a number (20 to 30% ) of users who are far more active than the average user, furthermore, these ‘PowerUsers’ seem to have picked up a speciality; meaning that power users are likely to be exceedingly active in one of the areas, either likes or messages etc. rather than be overly active in all of the areas.

Furthermore women are 3 times more active in updating their facebook status than men are.

The survey also didnt find any evidence of Facebook decline, rather they found a correlation between the number of friends you have on Facebook and your height of activity.

Pinterest has been around for a while, but is growing more rapid lately. Some people find that surprising I think it all has to do with their invite and sign up procedure. Pinterest was, and still is, by invite only, this means that while starting out with a small group of people to work and test with, growth is only as big as the groups you started out with and the invites they send out. This gave Pinterest the time to get feedback, test, and optimize its features.

The larger the number of users, the more invites they will send out and the bigger numbers of growth it will generate. Slow at the start, allowing for feedback and optimization processes, faster now, generating a big fan base. The other good thing about this invite only signup process is the word of mouth principle that is generating interested users that most of the time are already introduced to the pinterest features by the ones that invited them. Add to that the brilliant way in which Pinterest users are guided through their sign up while being pointed out the features and lay of the land at the same time and you have great potential for stickyness.

Pinterest lets you ‘pin’ stuff on digital boards pretty much like real life moodboards. Playing into feminine habits of collecting pictures of themes like weddings, houses, interior designs and recipes, no wonder that 70% of the pinterest user base is female. Pinterest lately also started suggesting boards and people to follow according to your interest as well as adding the gift ‘button’ indexing every pin that has a price in its comments. But that is not why I really like Pinterest. The visual boards just also come in handy visually bookmarking your finds. This is how it works; you get to ‘pin’ a picture of choice from a URL and add a note to it. The picture is than added to a board named and categorized by you. This works beautifully for visual minded people like me. I can bookmark visually, which means I get to retrieve things lot faster than going through tags and text just because I usually remember things in pictures.  I also use Pinterest for searching things. Already when looking for things I tend to prefer Google image search over normal, it giving not as much results is the only drawback. Pinterest lets me search by themes and pictures and that works for me. Needless to say, I’m going to stick with Pinterest for a while.

Just a doodle while enjoying the fire, red wine and a fine saturday evening at home. Sometimes that’s all I need.

Waiting out the blizzard in front of the fireplace in Tigne, France. Had some excellent days of skiing just before.

A week of total exhaustion and total excitement , never seen so many highs and lows due to cramped spaces, exhaustion and lots and lots of inspiring people.

Where I first meant to go along on the StartupBus as support and reporter, I ended up in a StartupBus team. There already was a special vibe going on when some of us started working on the site via Skype 2 days before the bus departed. The intensity of the bus just makes you want to participate and dive into the vibe. Three days of building, trying to focus, frustration and refocussing gives you a short version of actual startup problems with real people. My team, Saskia Videler and Steven Beeckman were the ones I spoke most with during the three days in the bus. Tight quarters and no where to go, with only one thing on your mind, no distractions, just the product, the milestones, and most important the wifi (If there is any you start doing what you need to, if there isn’t, you prepare to be ready for the next precious dose)

One spectacular ride with too many kilometers in to little time, far too short meets with other interesting entrepreneurs from all over Europe and far to little sleep have made this trip something I will never forget. (You can see my reports here in Dutch) Still to tired and with Startupbus vibes we arrived at leWeb, even bigger than two years ago and with far more show and professionalism than ever before. More interesting people and far to many to be able to talk to every one. I ran from lounge to stage to stage and back to the bus to try to catch up with all the buzz going on. One great party and again far too less sleep the week ended in a blur of bliss in the Thalys back to Amsterdam.

Below my sketchnotes of my favorites on LeWeb 2011

Featured image; breakfast at Google Zurich with local entrepreneurs