Here’s the scoop….

Back in 2008 here’s what Google Maps did to celebrate.. Google did not feel like celebrating today : (

Design for global learning conference.

Some iPhone and iPad apps e.g. Lucktricity and Leprechaun Beer Pong

Of course a survey via social networks, see results.

There must be more, what have I missed?

Teachers use word clouds to help kids make sense of words, web designers add this to make websites interesting.

Here are some data visualization tools that I have come across that are interesting.

Ushahidi, which means “testimony” in Swahili, is a website that was initially developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008. Ushahidi’s roots are in the collaboration of Kenyan citizen journalists during a time of crisis. The website was used to map incidents of violence and peace efforts throughout the country based on reports submitted via the web and mobile phone. It is now used to visualize information.

Here is a list of other data visualization tools.

Many Eyes is from IBM/Cognos, you can upload a data set and it creates a visualization based on your settings e.g. graphs, word clouds

Here is an interesting representation of oil consumption by country.

Woordle is a great tool for depicting word clouds from text. I have used this to help me make sense of the content on my website.

Here are a few more tools that I came across.

Tagul – Tagul is designed for web masters who want to place nice clouds on their web pages.

Tagxedo – visually stunning tag cloud

Orange – Open source data visualization and analysis

Ggobi – open source visualization program for exploring high-dimensional data.

Have you used any of these tools? How have you used them or how could they be used?

“it is social media….. start using the media”

So I always try to walk the walk and not just talk about what others are doing or how to do it. These awesome photos were taken by Victor Turco.

The complete set is on the Virtual EyeSee fan page on facebook.  So the next time you have an event take some photos. If you don’t have a budget for a professional, then take your own.

To explain where I came from I used the analogy of social media being the invitation to the house party and the house being the company website. I went further to stress that if the house either did not exist nor was structurally strong then the party would fail.

So my starting point was reinforcing the house and creating the invitations.

Details are in the following presentation.

My goal was to let the people in the room leave with information that they could use to implement these basic social media tools into their websites and social media marketing mix.

The room was fairly silent with not a lot of questions however I did notice a fair bit of note taking. I guess it’s a very different dynamic from the interactive workshops that I am used to giving.

So if you were at the presentation today and have had time to digest this do you have any further questions? If you do, then drop me a line via this post and we can take it from there. Remember there is not such thing as a stupid question. Also there are other people out there that have the same questions in mind.

This concept is geared towards museums and galleries to drive new traffic to their exhibits. Typical visitors generally fall into 3 categories

• tourists
• members
• occasional visitors

Most of these institutions are very heavily funded by various foundations and tax dollars. The revenue generated by visitors is minimal. This has been the model for quite some time but Social Signage aims to change this by getting more people into the museums.

It’s all based on connecting with the community by interacting and sharing their comments during their visit. The end result is for a more dynamic museum/gallery visit.

So if you are in the business of Museums or Galleries and want to know how to get more people through those doors, then RSVP to natasha at virtualeyesee dot com

Date: October 7, 2009
Time: 4:00pm
Location: Maple Room, Executive Meeting Centre, Westin Hotel