Christine Martell, Principal of VisualsSpeak LLC, will be presenting at the VizThink 2008 conference in San Francisco, California. The Conference is being held January 27-29 at The Westin San Francisco Market Street.

Christine will be facilitating twice. On Monday January 28 her session is titled “What Makes Visuals Speak?” and on Tuesday in the morning General Session she will be one of three facilitators taking the “VizThink Challenge”.

VisualsSpeak will have a booth at the conference. Stop by and say hello.

Christine will be facilitating an audience of three hundred attendees

Before I give you the details, you should know that VizThink has thrown down the gauntlet. On Tuesday morning (1/29/08) in the General Session, Christine will be one of three facilitators “put on the spot” to facilitate a process where a real-world problem about a real-world organization in front of a real-world audience (That’s a lot of reality folks) is presented to the Facilitator Three. Hold on there’s more.

The real-world problem is being held secret from these three passionate Visual Communication specialists so that we can see the stuff they’re really made of. I have it on good authority that VizThink has engaged the services of the NSA, FBI, CIA AND the Boy Scouts (Hey, they’re kids. They can hack in their sleep) to develop a specially encrypted program to keep safe the offending real-world problem to be solved by these out-of-this-world facilitators.

Now here is where VizThink made their big mistake. The other two facilitators are inviting about 18 people in total to participate in their sessions. Thus leaving Christine to facilitate the remaining THREE HUNDRED PLUS attendees (At this time there are 350 people attending). For those of us in the VisualsSpeak Community who know Christine, we scoff at this challenge. If they had asked her to facilitate an audience of three thousand maybe we would have raised an eyebrow. But three hundred…where’s the challenge in that? She could do that standing on her head. Hey, I’d like to see that!

Provide your Input and Make a Difference

If you are attending the VizThink 2008 conference we encourage you to attend the Tuesday morning General Session.

This will be a chance for you to see:

• How visual communication tools and techniques can be utilized to solve the problems your organization faces
• An array of visual communication processes being used in one spot
• What types of processes might be appropriate for your company

And this is a chance for you to use your expertise to help another organization. What goes around…

The Sessions

What Makes Visuals Speak?

Monday, January 28, 2008 from 1:30pm – 3:00pm
Christine Martell

In this session we’ll explore the elements that make visuals speak. We’ll start the conversation with photographs, exploring not only the story, but also the visual language elements that reveal less conscious aspects of what we are saying. By using a set of tested photographs, we will quickly delve into an in-depth conversation of how to utilize visual elements to their fullest. You can expect to come away from this experience with a greater understanding of how to effectively use visuals to uncover strategic vision for individuals, groups and organizations.

This session will be experiential and fun. No drawing required!

VizThink Challenge

Tuesday, January 29 from 9:00am – 10:30am
Jamie Nast, Christine Martell, and David Sibbet

Often, it’s not about the tools we use, but the process we go through to come up with visual thinking solutions. This segment is designed to show just that, and we’ve got three great people to help us with that including Jamie Nast, Christine Martell, and David Sibbet. We’re going to put these three leaders on the spot by bringing them up on stage and presenting them with a real world communications problem. They’ll have never seen it before and have no time to prepare. Their job, with your help, will be to come up with a visual thinking solution, and we’ll look at how they approach it and what they come up with. However, they won’t be in it alone. Each of the tables in the audience will work on the problem too. This segment promises to be a fascinating look into the similarities and differences between visual thinking approaches.

If You Want to Attend the Conference

There is still space available if you would like to attend. This is shaping up to be a great conference with representatives from major companies, great facilitators, international participation, and networking opportunities galore.

To sign up and receive a discount use code FCCM1 by registering here.