Building Effective Virtual Teams January 9, 2009
Posted by Angelo in Scenario Planning.add a comment
Building Effective Virtual Teams: A Workshop bringing together thinkers and practitioners.
Dr. Deirdre Hahn’s article on how the Decision Theater, embedded in the intellectual knowledge network of Arizona State University, offers software applications, tools, solutions and services that extend into regional, corporate and national communities.
Summer Institute@ Wallenberg Hall , August 1-3, 2007
Monograph; Media X at Stanford University, February 2008. Edited by Martha G. Russell
May a 10,000 garages bloom November 26, 2008
Posted by Angelo in Economy, Energy & Climate, Scenario Planning.Tags: ET, Thomas Friedman
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Listening to Thomas Friedman, you get the feeling that his latest book, Hot, Flat and Crowded is his way of lighting a fire under the transitional administration to:
(a) Get energy and sustainability not just on the agenda, but as the top order of business, and
(b) Rapidly tale a lead role in the new economy based not ‘ET’ (Energy Technology) as opposed to IT. He’s throwing a gauntlet to US entrepreneurs to build a Green Google and a Green Microsoft. Specifically::
“We need a market signal that will get a 100,000 people in a 100,000 garages trying a 100,000 thousand things, a 1,000 of which will be promising, 100 of which will be way cool, and two of which will be the next Green Google and the Green Microsoft.”
The idea of entrepreneurship has always been two guys in a garage, or dorm room, dreaming up some pie-in-the-sky business that turns out to be the operating system for the rest of the planet. The metaphor needs to change, because the two guys in the garage could be a garage in Cork City, Ireland and Chandler, Arizona. in fact, the garage could be an industrial-strength wiki.
In other words, ideas born of collaboration and big picture thinking.
BlogTalkRadio interview October 25, 2008
Posted by Angelo in Arizona State University, Scenario Planning.Tags: Arizona State University, Bitgravity, BlogtalkRadio, Tracy Swedlow
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My interview last week with Tracy Swedlow of Interactive TV of Today, about the Decision Theater and what sets us apart in the policy making and visualization space.
We touched on how we may be able to extend our footprint, to think outside the Drum, as it were.
Cut to the chase with visualization August 12, 2008
Posted by Angelo in Scenario Planning, Visualization, Water.Tags: Arizona State University, DCDC, Economy, Energy & Climate, Water
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Despite what your position may be on Shell, you have to admit it invests a lot on visualizing the energy future –”more energy, less carbon dioxide”–it is grappling with, for good or ill. This is the stuff that gets churned out in white papers, and high-brow academic gatherings, but doesn’t often trickle down to the hoi polloi. We know by now that spreadsheets and PPT decks make people’s eyes glaze over..
In Shell’s 2050, post-Kyoto energy scenario, the visualization lets you pick a year from 2015 through 2050, and look at several factors that come into play in a planet that will be home to 9.5 billion in 2050; the ‘picture’ looks grim/complicated, even from within the cheerful graphics. It makes you want to do something whether it is to invest in fuel cells or reduce your carbon footprint.
Visualization is that great lens that puts data in context, and moves us to take action, even if it starts off with clicking a button. It can be as simple as being a dynamic feed. Check WorldoMeters.info. The speed at which you ’see’ top-soil erosion taking place, and ‘dollars spent on dieting in the USA’ will give you a jolt!
We use similar, but more complex visualization tools to create scenarios like this at the Decision Theater. The most interesting one, WaterSim, lets people simulate a drought and see the effects on agriculture and lifestyle choices. The challenge is to take this complexity that works well in our immersive environment (the ‘drum’) and render it in a webified environment.
Looking around at so many data-rich web sites, I could see why many sites are begging to be rendered with more visualization. Those of us writing or designing data sheets and white papers will have to recognize some hard realities:
- New platforms. People will use new devices and platforms to interact with our information via small screens, on high-res devices, and those capable of and hungry for animation.
- Audience habits: Readers will demand to ’snack’ on information, before they dig deep. Will our web pages and PDF’s cut to the chase? What’s a ‘media snack?” Check this out.
- Time shifting. Information might be accessed (downloaded, snacked on) via one platform, consumed on another. Will the visual appeal transfer? Quality isn’t the issue, but compatibility. CNN stories watched on a high-def monitor still transfer to grainy formats on YouTube.
Visualization poses many challenges, but they are grood ones, because they force us to distil information, and give it more context.
Pandemic flu hits blogosphere July 29, 2008
Posted by Angelo in Education, Public Health, Scenario Planning.Tags: avian flu, H5N1, pandemic
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I’ve been tracking how the pandemic flu is being covered over the past few months, and notice a spike in interest across many cities, scary media stories, a military-styled exercise. The blogosphere has suddenly become engaged in this.
Blogging a pandemic I. SDHD PanFlu BlogEx, a blog by the Southeastern District Health Department in Pocatello, Idaho is nothing to sneeze at. It is using a blog format to ‘report’ an outbreak within a two-week period using news-like headlines, fact-filled blog posts, videos and and links to external agencies. I like the fact that comments are open to the public. Every carries this disclaimer in red: “This is an exercise. It is not real.”
Unlike most What-If exercises (considered table-top exercises by the Dept. of Homeland Security) a global event like this cannot be contained by governments and medical professionals. There is a huge public component, not to mention a media component. Information will spread fast through whatever channels are available and it is not a stretch to assume that the blogosphere will upstage the traditional media in the same way it did during recent crises, such as the London bombings and the Asian tsunami. People will upload videos from their phones. Paramedics will provide advice via home made videos published on Youtube. Citizen journalists will break stories from far flung places before Newsweek or Catie Couric even get there –if flights to affected areas will even be possible. This format with potential for greater collaboration and dissemination is truly worth exploring.
Blogging a pandemic II: One Michael Coston, a paramedic, maintains a blog called Avian-Flu diary. He’s onto something, being a sort of a paramedic-meets CitJo.
On similar lines, the Kaiser Network is hosting a web conference called “The Health Blogosphere: What It Means for Policy Debates and Journalism” today at 1 p.m. Eastern time.
ASU fired the first shot? I like to think we had a head start on some of these. Our ‘hybrid’ Pandemic Flu exercise at ASU’s Decision Theater in April this year took the table-top model in a new direction, using the collaboration tools of the Theater with rich media inputs, and scenarios.
Strategic Planning – telling “stories” about the future March 11, 2008
Posted by Angelo in Economy, Scenario Planning.Tags: World Economic Forum
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In the age of GPS, who needs a road map? In the age of short term bumps and market shifts, why even bother with the long view?
Strategic planning is not so much about looking down the road and plotting your next move, but using the long perspective to sharpen the tools we use today to get there. That “road” won’t be the same by the time you arrive at the intersection, but you would know what to make of the resurfaced terrain.
We think about this all the time, here at the Decision Theater. We call it Scenario Planning, which is slightly more complex than strategic planning. Why? Because it involves systems thinking, and gives you (the client) a look at different what-if scenarios that help refine the one plan you eventually settle for.
I recently came across Dennis McDonald’s A short definition of strategic planning that took into consideration social media.
But the best definition of scenario planning I have seen comes from the World Economic Forum, which says thus:
“Scenarios are stories about the future. They are not attempts to predict the future; rather, they aim to sketch the boundaries of the plausible.”
Road maps, both the folded street versions and business kinds, are not always inspiring. Scenarios have inbuilt stories that people could relate to.
