Want me to cover an election? No sweat. A plane crash? Piece of cake! Explain genomics or nanotechnology? Child’s play!!
Organize a five week trip to Spain with a bunch of college students?
Put a bullet in my head…
I didn’t even MEAN to set up a study abroad program. I just thought everyone at here had one. Duh. The professor who lured me away from Newsweek to academia was passing me in the halls one day at Michigan State’s School of Journalism when he snapped his finger and pointed at me saying, “Hey, we need to get together to discuss your study abroad plans.”
Huh?
“Okay, cool!” I answered, wanting to fit in my first semester on the job.
“You gotta pick a country, figure out what you want to teach…”
“Right, yeah, cool, sure, wow, okay…Lunch?”
That was over a year ago, and my life has become a logistical nightmare. I’m not a detail person, really, except when I make graphics. I leave the planning of our lives to my wife. I’m forgetful, a procrastinator and frighteningly unpredictable regarding how I make decisions about important things. One night, as my wife was quietly reading Newsweek and studying one of my larger graphics that, according to her, clearly explained some complex subject in a tight, orderly way, she looked up at me (as I was reading some newspaper comics), held up Newsweek and asked, “WHERE’S the KARL that made this. I don’t KNOW this guy!”
Putting together this study abroad course on visual thinking required a focus and attention to detail unrivaled in my life: a visit to Spain, meetings and agreements with universities there, marketing (videos, Google maps, posters…), budgets, a million emails between students, my on-site coordinator (THANKS Nancy!), professors in Spain and the office of Study Abroad, housing and transportation issues, etc.
But I pulled if off. Somehow.
I’m writing this from Chicago’s O’Hare airport about to board my flight to Madrid. I haven’t had a knot of excitement in my stomach like this since, well, too much information!
Dave’s the tall one…!
May 2 (New York) and May 7, Chicago. Details at Vizthink.com
I invented the term “location challenged” yesterday. I needed to complain about the flabbergasting cab driver who became hopelessly lost looking for –and I kid you not– the enormous University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill where I was co-conducting an SND workshop on information graphics.
My driver boasted, in a distracted kind way that I began to find disheartening as our blue minivan shot down I-40 and he fumbled with his war-torn atlas, that he preferred good old paper maps to the costly GPS system his taxi company wanted him to get. With the alertness of an alarmed antelope that senses danger, I sat bolt-upright and forward in the back seat as I slid the atlas from his distracted fingers during one of the rare, and greatly appreciated instances when he had chosen to give the road a dim moment of his attention. I dictated directions without masking my irritation, which he accepted gratefully. I got the impression this happened with him lot.
As I spilled out of the cab into a crowd of UNC students, I suggested to my driver, with substantially more kindness than I was feeling, that he reconsider his cartographic priorities and get some help. There was no need to be so ineffective in his work and lost and stressed out all the time! I hinted that GPS stood for Get Places Sooner.
Like my driver (and I mean this loosely!) people who are “visually challenged” can get help, too. No, we don’t teach you how to use GPS, just how to communicate using good old fashion drawings and other tools. Dave Gray, the founder of Xplane and I are putting on the first two of many workshops for people from all industries who need to communicate their ideas visually but lack the proper training to do so.
Classes in video journalism
Latest Comments
RSS