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This is one of six topics discussed at the Future Commons open space workshop held at IFTF June 27, 2005.

Enhancing IFTF Maps
Convener: Jerry Michalski

The Premise: With the assistance of talented graphic facilitators and other visual interpreters of complex information, IFTF creates many maps to illustrate the Ten Year Forecast, custom forecasts and more.

So far, the maps are produced in paper form. With a camera or scanner, it's easy enough to create jpg images that can be emailed or put on a website. That's where this project begins.

How might we instrument those electronic images so they are more useful? What can we do to make them more interactive, better vehicles for communication? One possible approach by Chuck (see below)

Meeting notes:

Useful for:

• New audiences
• IFTF Clients
• IFTF FC members

Notes:

• Marina: We need Benchmark examples: Google maps - Zoom, pen, pin, directions (geography, thematical path...multi-path); like a Rorsach test
• Marina: The map by itself is a hard to explain without a face-to-face conversation/story. Needs a video, a talk-track. A personal narrative is helpful.
• Jerry: John Udell's screencasts (explanation of the German umlat)...a nice way to annotate; The Brain - links things associativly, no AI, the person makes links, search time is reduced; Jeff Raskin - one of the Mac idea guys, complete zoomable environment, could be applicable
• Jerry: Map is a device, a background for stories. Explicit hierarchy vs. flexible paths.
• Jerry: Use conversations from Tipping point, Long Tail, Everything bad is good for you, etc. and feed them into the map.
• The map is a series of notes that leads to deep literature. Anything listed dives into deeper research when clicked upon. List the researchers that focus on the specific areas. Another notion - associative engines on large blocks of text: GETA from National Informatics Institute Search an entire article and get content that is relevant. Self generated maps. Devan-think, IFTF's S&T Scan.
• Grokker: search aggregator, save/filter/share
• David: not a digital artifact...but a book. Marina: it is a synthesis of more research
• Jerry: start with something and then share it with an open community for a time, then we synthesize it and then release it. Mark Twain approach.
• David: Snapshot...doesn't need to stop. Content is ongoing and always open for review
• Chuck: a lot of the comments are about diving deep and getting more detail. But the main appeal to most clients is the high level flyover. Yes there are different ways to fly over. Most people are not deep divers, they are high level context seekers. The map gives a different perspective to the massive amounts of depth and detail that they deal with in their real jobs. The Ten Year Forecast used to be a thick book, but most people won't read book-length reports.
• David: If all the background info is available, then have it searchable.
• William Gibson is preposterous/outrageous. Tie retrospection in: How predictive/accurate was the map?
• Jerry: Appropriation - through usage of tools, people will find their own uses. Don't give them the perfect solution, let it evolve itself.
• Jerry: Allow people to annotate themselves, but look at other's if desired.
• Jason: The main problem is where to enter it, how do you tell a story from it. What is your favorite paper analog example. Ex: Scott McCloud (sp?), Larry Gonick (sp?), Whole Earth Catalog, The Way Things Work, McCauley (sp?), 3-D maps, books with transparent overlays
• Urban Planner: Portland had a nicely-designed , un-dumb-downed, fun read on urban design. They had a report and a communication tool. 64 page, professional piece that was quite readable.
• Jerry: symbols book from China
• John: artifacts: embodiment of ideas
• Marina: mock up a game
• David: Modular pieces, Lego, Puzzle
• David: Strategy game, ideas card to spur thought and creativity. You draw a card and correlate that to the map. I'll trup the Tipping Point with a Long Tail view.
• Jerry: Doctor, VW van - we make up stories beforehand
• David: Memes, notions - forecasting dates...why take so long? What can spur something to happen sooner.

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Chuck's approach

How can we make the maps more useful and better vehicles for communication?

Here's a technique I've often used to get an audience engaged with a pre-defined set of material like the Map of the Decade.

-Define a set of questions that force people to respond to issues raised by the material. For example: For each of the six major trends on the Map, indicate what impact you believe it will have on your company over the next 5-10 years:
1-Strongly positive or supportive
2-Moderately positive
3-Neutral or no impact
4-Moderately negative
5-Strongly negative or disruptive

You could also have questions about specific topics from the Map, like the future of globalization or the role of cooperation vs. competition.

The whole survey should take no more than 10-15 minutes to fill out, and should have quantifiable, graphable responses.

-The survey can be put on a user-friendly on-line service like Zoomerang and distributed via email a week or so ahead of a planned meeting or discussion about the Map.

-The results of the survey can help shape the way the material is presented and make it more relevant to the specific audience being addressed. What does the audience think are the most important trends? Is there internal agreement or disagreement about the likely impact? What company-specific issues are influencing the responses? How does this audience's responses compare with responses from other audiences?

-Analysis of the survey responses often provides audience-specific hooks to stimulate discussion. At the very least, it tells you what they are likely to be most interested in. It makes it possible for the audience to provide its own context for the material and helps them link the material back to their own environment.

-One big benefit of this approach is that it requires very little investment in trying to customize the material. Instead, it is the presentation that gets customized in direct response to audience input. This approach is also relatively easy to experiment with in a client setting.

(Not sure if this is the right way to start a discussion. I first tried entering this as a Discussion entry, but it wouldn't preserve any of the formatting, so it was very difficult to read. I guess Discussion entries are only intended for brief comments. If there is a better or more appropriate way, someone please let me know.)

Chuck Sieloff

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