VisualsSpeak blog

Yikes. I’ve been tagged twice for this meme. OK, so it terrifies me. I have colleagues like Patti Digh, Michele Martin, and Janet Clarey who regularly talk about personal stuff on their blogs. I watch them with awe, knowing they have many followers because of their willingness to share who they are. Numerous times in the last months as I have struggled with direction for my blog I have written “revelation” posts like they do— only to hit the delete button instead of publish. So in the spirit of getting over this fear, I am going to tell you WAY too much about me.

My cats rule my house.

This is my all time favorite cat, Shamille. I have a connection to this cat unlike any other I have ever had. She comes running when I am upset or in pain, yet she is a typical aloof cat otherwise.

She lives with two other cats. Darwin, who she adores, is my husband Mark’s cat. We got her Mini-me after Shamille started getting fat, as her personal trainer. The young peppy version of herself. She despised her. Now she tolerates her, but there is a bizarre obsessive thing that involves hissing and hitting. There has been no weight loss. Mini is now as Maxi as her namesake.

How do I know they rule? Might it have something to do with the myriad of cat houses that litter the whole house? The towers and tunnels and houses all over?

I am married to an engineer

When I turned 40 I began the phase I call my Suburban House Life. I married an engineer, instantly became a grandmother, and moved into a 70’s ranch house filled with electronic junk treasures. Soon after I bought a white station wagon (a Subaru, but still). Lets just say it was culture shock. Like a high tension wire shock.

I have opportunities every day to practice my cross cultural communication skills. The form versus function war rages (when function was there first, form loses). The recent US political season was particularly interesting. I have vowed to cancel every vote he ever casts. Some days I feel like I am living in a sitcom.

Yet, this relationship works for me. Gives me a stability and sense of safety in the world that I have never felt before. I am learning about unconditional love and practicing what I preach about acceptance and inclusion.

I love kangaroos

I love kangaroos. Have been fascinated with Australia since I was a kid. I still haven’t been there— but have a long standing fantasy to go there for several months.

This is a self-portrait of myself as a rat, living in the pouch of the roo on the left. Celebrating the creative/resourceful part of myself. But it felt vulnerable, so I made it a protector Roo. I see kangaroos as the ultimate safe haven. Warm snuggly pouches, big powerful feet and tails. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound— all those super hero characteristics.

I like LIVE kangaroos, or renditions of kangaroos. Twice in my life people heard I liked kangaroos, and gave me change purses made out of their fur. I tried very hard to appreciate the thought behind the gift.

There is a petting zoo at the Oregon State Fair that includes a Wallaby. Every time I visit it I completely well up with tears when I have to leave. I don’t know what it is about these creatures, but I have a core level connection to them. It’s probably good I don’t live in Australia, I’d probably spend all my time playing with roos. Or looking for them.

I live with chronic pain

I have pain on my left side from my brow to my hip. Searing nerve pain. 24/7. Never stops. Some days are better than others, but its been a constant companion for over 15 years. I’ve been to over 100 health professionals from western doctors to way far out healers. No one has ever been able to answer the question, why? Or provide the solution to make it stop.

Not easy. It certainly effects my day to day life and those close around me. At this point I forget to mention it to people. I have a whole series of different things I do to keep the pain level down to a level where I can function. I have learned there is no one thing that works. It is now just another part of my life.

I’m a photographer who takes terrible snapshots

Patti Digh does this thing where she holds the camera out and takes pictures of herself with people. I have actually seen her do this live, asked her what she does special. She laughed, and assured me it was nothing. Last August on her birthday, I  bought a pile of her new book, Life is a Verb for some of my closest friends. She was collecting images of people with her book, so I thought— hey I’ll do the holding the camera out thing. Yea, right.

This is just a few of the myriad of tries. I even gave up and decided I would use Shamille to represent me. Even she would not keep her eyes open.

The premise of the book is 37 days to wake up, be mindful, and live intentionally. I wanted to DO some of the things the book suggested. Yet, I couldn’t even get a picture. It took me about 75 days just to get the books to the people I cared about. Many of the heartfelt notes I planned to include with them fell by the wayside.

I guess the lesson for me was just because I am a photographer doesn’t mean I can take a snapshot. I can be inspired by Patti and many other friends and colleagues, but I need to find ways to walk in the world that are in alignment with me. Trying to be or do or put gifts out into the world that aren’t mine doesn’t work.

Another friend offered an insight recently. She said I confused her until she realized I was really an artist acting like a business person. No wonder it isn’t working.

Fear of eyebags has cost me hundreds of dollars

Lets just say aging is not kind. I remember a conversation I had with my dentist ten years ago. She was saying she was going to cover the grey in her hair as soon as it started. I was a redhead, always assumed my hair would be interesting. I swore it would never bother me to have grey. Until the moment my husband mentioned my hair was actually very close in color to his dirty dish water color. Looking in the mirror with him, he was right. Mud. How did that happen? Now I have the Suburban Striped Hair to go with my Suburban House Life. My dentist has gracefully gone grey around the edges.

Aging, pain, less sleep, genetics, hormones — all an ugly combination facilitating significant eye bags. I am a mark for cosmetic ladies in department stores. You know, the ones with the perfect skin and straight white teeth. They see me coming and almost break into a run. I have hardly worn any makeup my whole life. Yet, all they have to do to get my attention is to mention the evil dark circles– and there goes the cash. I have wasted hundreds of dollars in my forties on all sorts of “solutions”.

I’m hoping that as I move closer to my fifties I will realize that accepting the aging is significantly less difficult and way cheaper than fighting the losing battle with age.

I’m struggling with my  business

OK, I admit it. I don’t know how to make my business work. I have just enough skill to pull off the illusion, but I’m missing some core that might make it viable. Might it have to do with this theme throughout this post of struggling to be authentically who I am? Instead of trying to be something else? I don’t know.

What I do know is at the core I am an artist. What that looks like in the context of a Suburban House Life is still a mystery to me. How that can be effectively expressed in the world is still fuzzy. But I am looking, listening for clarity. Opening myself to new possibilities and opportunities.

Tagging you…

If you are reading this, do feel tagged. It’s an interesting quandary, recognizing how different this is for each person. To some, it’s just another silly internet thing. Yet, for others, it does raise the issue of transparency and blurring the lines between personal and private. I know you’ll all do what is right for yourself. I don’t really know yet, since I haven’t hit the publish button.

So I invite the following, should they care to participate:

Sean Harry Shari Ward, Gina Anzaldo, Kevin Jones, Robin Reagler, Maria Pfeifer and Bettina Hansel

VizThink is a community of visual thinkers. What does this really mean? Tom Crawford, the CEO of VizThink recently joined me using the VisualsSpeak ImageSet to explore this in two video podcasts. The first one can be found on the VizThink blog.

In the second one, we talk in more depth about what the visual language can tell us. This podcast is part of the premium VizThink community site. You can join for free, with a 60-day trial of the premium content. There are a number of webinars, and podcasts on a wide variety of visual thinking topics. I have watched all of them, and have learned a lot. I consider this site an important part of my professional development, and encourage you to consider it for yourself.

This is all in preparation for the VizThink North America 09 conference in San Jose, CA on February 22-25. There is nothing like being with a whole conference full of visual thinkers for inspiration and sharpening or developing skills. You can get a $100 discount on the conference with the code DCCM01.

Love to see you in San Jose. Do let me know if you will be there so we can connect.

Christine Martell and Tom Tiernan, owners of VisualsSpeak LLC, are pleased to announce that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued a Certificate of Registration for the trademark VisualsSpeak.

VisualsSpeak®

Reg. No. 3,435,236

Registered May 27, 2008

Owners’ Response

Co-owner Tiernan ’s response was to say “Now we are finally in a position to challenge Microsoft’s dominance of the global software market.” When reminded that VisualsSpeak® is not involved in developing software, he was quick to point out “But we could be”.

VisualsSpeak’s® principal, Christine Martell, could not be reached for comment as she is currently luxuriating on a private island in the Caribbean awaiting the riches to roll in after the Trademark announcement.

Newsflash: arrived today

That was an unexpected blogging vacation. I was sick for two weeks, and I’m still recovering slowly.

Just back from the International Association of Facilitators conference in Atlanta. I’ll be writing about the conference, and about the session I facilitated in the days to come. Stay tuned.

We have updated the content on our website

In an attempt to serve you better, we have changed the content on the VisualsSpeak site to give you a clearer idea of what we do and the products that we offer.

We are experimenting with the site by using a WordPress blog template. This allows us to change and update the content quickly and easily, and with little expense.

Our plan is to test the new content by listening to your feedback about what works and what doesn’t. When we feel that we have arrived at the right content, we will fork over the money to have our regular website template updated.

We need your feedback!

Please let us know what you think about the new content. You can let us know here on this blog or make comments on the VisualsSpeak website itself at the bottom of the pages.

Thanks

Christine & Tom

We started having some trouble on the backend of the blog, so I decided I would upgrade the software to see if it would self heal. The good news, maybe some of it did? The bad, the images are now running into the words. I have tried to edit the code, to no avail.

I am facilitating large sessions the next two days. I fly out to the next conference Wed morning. Oops, didn’t really leave enough time to research and fix upgrade challenges.

I need a favor

Please, visualize space around the photos on the blog. I promise I will fix it as soon as I can. I recognize how visually disturbing it is, and how it violates many of the things I have been saying in posts about using visuals. I think it is one of those little jokes the universe plays…..let’s mess with the thing she cares the most about, he he he.

The key to getting the most out of the VisualsSpeak process is designing an effective question.

In the VisualsSpeak process, we create a framing question based on the desired outcome of the group or individual. Participants select photographs that have meaning for them in response to the framing question and assemble them on piece of background paper, which represents the question.

In VisualsSpeak sessions, a great deal of the planning is devoted to designing the question(s) which will create a bridge between the characteristics of the particular participants and their desired outcome. Know thy audience and their desired outcome!

We could write pages and pages about the importance of questions, but we would fall far short of a wonderful resource already available. While attending the 2007 International Facilitator’s Association conference, Christine had the pleasure and good fortune to meet Dorothy Strachan. Dorothy is an author and top level facilitator. She works with a wide variety of clients from elite athletes to non-profits.

Her book “Making Questions Work: A Guide to How and What to Ask for Facilitators, Consultants, Managers, Coaches and Educators” is a wonderful resource no matter what your profession. We highly recommend it.

It’s like a cookbook for questions. First you determine what part of a process you are trying to develop a question for, then go to that section and search through sample questions. With a little adaptation and customization, you can generate a whole session’s worth of questions very quickly.

I’ve been reading some interesting material by Robert Middleton on how to market a service company. Even though its about service companies, the concepts apply to product companies. VisualsSpeak is actually both a service and a product company. As I write this my partner, Christine, is facilitating a 2 day retreat for an executive management team for a branch of our state government. So we offer consulting as well as sell products.

The marketing material suggests that the first thing you do is create what they call an Audio Logo. Most of us know this as an elevator speech. Actually its the one-liner part of an elevator speech which is designed to gain interest in what you do. This comes in handy, because people always ask ‘What do you do’? If you have a good audio logo, they will ask you for more information about what you do. Sounds simple, right? Not so. At least for this entrepreneur.

Read the rest of this entry »

True Confessions and more

We haven’t been entirely honest with you. Its true and I, at least, feel badly about this. The truth is that doing VisualsSpeak exercises can be fun. A lot of fun. This is one of those family secrets we’ve been guarding. Quietly whispering to one another hoping that no one overhears.

The reason for the secrecy is because the messages out in the ‘real’ world are that businesses shouldn’t be fun. Business is, well, serious business. If we mention or god forbid say that one of the primary benefits of using our tools and processes is that they are fun, no one will want to do business with us. We’re not serious enough. We don’t get ‘it’. Anyone who values fun is not going to make it and shouldn’t be associated with.

Photograph © Tom Tiernan

Recently Christine and I have been doing some startegic visioning work using the VisualsSpeak ImageSet. Practice what you preach, right? One of the exercises we did was to ask ourselves “Where do we want VisualsSpeak to be in five years?”. Interestingly enough, a lot of the information that surfaced had to do with our core values. Remember we’ve been telling you that this is one of the benefits of using our tools. “But why would knowing your core values be important to a strategic plan?” I hear you ask. Ah, lean closer Little Grasshopper and I will expound on this most important concept.

Read the rest of this entry »

When I choose an icebreaker I am hoping to accomplish three things. First I want to create an opportunity for people to start talking to one another. Second I want them to be successful. Finally I want the activity to be related to the content of the session. Asking people to talk about photographs can accomplish all of these goals. Most people find it easy to respond to a picture as long as they can say anything they want. So, it is important to ask an open ended question where there is no right or wrong answer.

Try a question or statement to repond to that either serves to help people get to know one another, gets them started talking about something that will be explored in greater depth later, or gives them an opportunity to voice an expectation or dream.

There are endless ways to use VisualsSpeak as an icebreaker. You can ask any number of questions and have people select photographs that speak to the question or statement. For example: Read the rest of this entry »