The Meeting Planners podcast source for what’s new and exciting in meetings and events industry!

Today our guest is David Gray Visual Thinker and founder of Xplane.com. David founded Xplane to help people communicate clearly in an increasingly complex world. David and I talk about his company Xplane, his blogs, books and conferences on the show.

Some great links to explore to learn more about David, his company, his blogs, conferences and all the visual thinking communities he is involved with.

Company
xplane.com
Blogs
xplanations.com
ComunicationNation
Conference
vizthink.com
Daves reading list: Dave Gray
Books
Marks and Meaning which is a book Dave is writing with his community.
Also- Selling to the VP of No.

More about Dave
Linkedin.com

Mike McAllen of Grass Shack Events Media

http://www.grassshackroad.com/

Tom Hillmer of Creative Group http://www.creativegroupinc.com
Jon Trask of Alliant Event Services http://www.alliantevents.com/

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Please leave us a question or comment, which we will try to address on the show ASAP!

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Music by the www.TheDelgadoBrothers.com

Audio mixing by www.RipTideGraphics.com

Brought to you by Grass Shack Events & Media
Copyright 2008 MeetingsPodcast

Related articles I found

• Interview: Dan Roam Will Draw You a Diagram [del.icio.us]
• Visual Thinking Books – References and Reviews
• Sketching is the new black : inspirations from the analog world
• Recommended Read: The Back of the Napkin
• Communication Nation: Visual thinking
• Kermit learns visual thinking

Transcripts:
Female: You are listening to the Meetings Podcast with Mike McAllen, Jon Trask and Tom Hillmer. The Meeting Planner podcast source for what’s new and exciting in the meetings and events industry. The information and opinions expressed in this podcast are of Mr. McAllen, Mr. Trask and Mr. Hillmer and are theirs alone and do not reflect the opinions of their past, present or future employers.

Please send in your question and comments to MeetingsPodcast@gmail.com and make sure to visit our website for pictures, video and show notes at www.MeetingsPodcast.com

Mike McAllen: Thank you for tuning into mo Meetings Podcast. This is Mike McAllen of Grass Shack Events & Media and today’s guest is David Gray, founder and CEO of Xplane, the visual thinking company. David’s company makes complex business issues easier to understand. Hi Dave, thanks for taking the time to talk to me today.

David Gray: Hi, Michael.

Mike McAllen: Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into the clarity, visual thinking business?

David Gray: Sure. While I was originally trained as an artist, I went to Art school and I ended up in the newspaper business doing information graphics which are those things that you see that are visual depictions explaining events. A lot of times a maps charts but also explanatory graphics that might explain how something works or why something broke or why something happened the way it wasn’t supposed to happen, et cetera.

Mike McAllen: Yes. That’s interesting.

David Gray: And from that, I got very interested in doing, you know, what was coming – it was emerging at that time, those of you who were a boss or around when USA Today first started out, will remember that one of the – that was one of the first newspapers that was full color and super highly visual with a lot of visual explanation and so forth.

Mike McAllen: Okay.

David Gray: And that was about the time that I was getting into that business, so it was really a new and emerging field that came to be called visual journalism. And that was people who are doing the same things that reporters do in print but doing visual explanations instead writing stories and taking photographs. So that became – that was an emerging field and became very interesting and I had the idea that we would, you know, I did a lot of work for the business section and I found that there is a quite a bit of need for this in the world of business where there are a lot of things that are abstract, potentially confusing, not so easy to understand and by making things visual, it was easier to explain them in many ways and also faster to understand them in many ways than it would be if I were to – someone who were to write a story about them. So I got interested in that and then I decided to start a business doing that for businesses because I felt there was a need and turned it out that there was.

Mike McAllen: Yes. It seems like this day and age, everything needs to come quickly to …

David Gray: Yes.

Mike McAllen: … with the internet. You need to click on there and you want to see what’s – what it means with visual processes, a lot easier for people to understand it. That’s fantastic. So you started …

David Gray: Yes and I started 15 years ago.

Mike McAllen: Oh, wow.

David Gray: And the company has grown since then and now we’re – we’ve got offices in the US and Europe and we’ve got customers around the world. A lot of the Fortune 500 companies are working with us and we’re helping them visualize and explain their businesses not only to their customers but to their own employees.

Mike McAllen: Wow. Yes, they do a lot of internal work at Xplane with companies? Do you do …

David Gray: I say about half of it …

Mike McAllen: [inaudible] different conferences …

David Gray: … I thought half of it is internal for companies to help them explain things, new technologies, changes in their business, changes in business process. You know, to be – to survive so that the company – you’ve got to be able to change quickly when new technologies and new strategies come around and being able to explain things simply and quickly to your own people as one of the ways you can be faster and more adaptive so …

Mike McAllen: Do you have an example of a company that you did something for that to – that you could explain?

David Gray: The internal stuff as you can imagine is sometimes strategic so up on top of my head I’m not sure I know what I’m allowed to talk about or to talk about.

Mike McAllen: Okay. Yes.

David Gray: But we’ve – you know, we’ve helped companies visually described their operating strategy for the year and roll that out from inside their company in the form of pictures. So …

Mike McAllen: I had a couple of events that we produce we had a graphic recorder go up and do that across the – along with the presenters too which is going to be interesting to give a visual idea of the meeting. But that’s usually in very small meetings. So you speak in a lot of events?

David Gray: I do.

Mike McAllen: And can you tell me a little bit about that?

David Gray: Well, I speak about visual thinking an innovation and I often will do exercises of people and work with people or a large groups help them think more visually, introducing the concept of visual thinking. And you know, one of the things that I have noticed in a lot of these events that I go to and they might be of interest to your listeners is that you can do a lot in advance when you’re setting it up to make it more interactive or less interactive. I mean – well I guess what I mean it by that is when I show up at an event and the meeting room is set up where there’s a screen in a podium up in front and chairs arranged in rows and columns, in sort of like a stadium or like a theater …

Mike McAllen: Yes, a classroom.

David Gray: … style seating.

Mike McAllen: Yes.

David Gray: Then there’s – I mean half the battle for what I want to do has already been lost because what I want to do when I come into event is – into an event is facilitate more conversation, more interactions between people and there are ways that you can set up a meeting in a room that can be very conducive to that. And I think what’s happening, at least in the world of events that I go to is partially because of the internet, it think people are more and more interested in having more interactions. People got to conferences not only to interact in meetings, not only to interact with and watch a speaker but also to interact with each other, to learn from each other.

Mike McAllen: Right. And collaborate and network.

David Gray: Yes. So when I walk into a room and I see that there are round tables set up and you know, that it’s possible of the speaker to be mic’ed up and to walk sort of through the tables and have, you know, and be able let’s say if there’s flip charts at each table and markers and paper and post-it notes then suddenly there’s a lot more possibility of the things that can happen in that room than there would be in a more of a theater style setting.

Mike McAllen: Yes, that’s a great idea because you hear now as people are going to conferences and not even paying to go, just to go hang around in the hallways so they could network and meet people there, you know.

David Gray: Yes, I could see that. I can see that and I think that, you know, a lot of it has to do with the internet. People are – more people – the line is not so clear between the guru [style 00:07:50] leader and the person who’s – the listener audience anymore. I think people more and more want to have a conversation. More people have blogs, they’re on a Twitter, and they’re interacting. They’re not just reading content online and they’re not just watching TV online, often they’re publishing their own ideas.

Mike McAllen: Oh, yes. Yes, that’s a really good thought. That’s just the way you see people makes a huge difference.

David Gray: Yes, absolutely.

Mike McAllen: So, can you tell us a little bit about – you mentioned blogs. Can you tell us about your blogs because I know you have a couple of them would explain in yourself.

David Gray: Yes. Sure. I started blogging in 2006 and I have a blog called Communication Nation and that’s communicationnation.blogspot.com if anybody wants to go and take a look.

Mike McAllen: Yes.

David Gray: And I just started – I started the blog really to put down some of the – I really started as an internal thing and the idea was there are – I have all these e-mails and all these conversations that I’ve had and had kind of recorded them, things that I had learned from – just from being an artist and starting a business. I had to really learn everything from scratch. And I learned everything not in business school but in the world. So in some ways, it was – I think very valid and experienced and so I sort of putting these stuff onto a blog. I had collected them on my laptop for many years and I sort of putting them out on a blog and lo and behold, people found it really valuable and it’s evolved quite a bit since then. But it’s just to – it’s just kind of – it’s a very personal place where I just put thoughts and I often will put pictures up there or video or most recently I think that I posted was a video where I was doing some drawing on my desktop and showing people some ideas and to make them maybe a little bit better in [Afghan 00:10:00] sketchers. So I just put things up there as it occurred to me and that’s a personal side of the business.

Mike McAllen: Okay.

David Gray: The visual thinking company, Xplane that you mentioned earlier is – you can go to that website and there a lot of taste that is up there for people who are interested in knowing more about that and that’s xplane.com.

Mike McAllen: Great. And you have another one too, Explanations?

David Gray: Oh, there’s a lot.

Mike McAllen: Yes. I know there’s a lot of stuff.

David Gray: There’s a many of them. There’s – Xplane has at least two that they publish – I do stuff on a Twitter and one of the things that’s really changed my life as far as online is a website called Flickr which has been bought by Yahoo! And that’s a place for people go online to post images that they have taken with their cameras or share photos but it really is a social – really a social site and I’ve found that’s been quite interesting to connect on there not just people who take photographs but people who are doing visual thinking in form of diagrams or visual explanations that they’ll post up up there and it’s been really interesting to see this world of art and business and journalism kind of collide and Flickr is one of the most interesting places for that.

Mike McAllen: That’s interesting. I know that our sites get a lot of hits from images too which is people don’t realize that, that it’s a great way to get inbound links for your site too. Go and put stuff on Flickr and get it out there in the world of images too.

David Gray: Oh, I’m sure it is. Yes, I mean people – you know people think visually. I mean people respond to pictures in a way that they don’t respond to words.

Mike McAllen: How do you think Flickr is going to …

David Gray: You know, who wants to go – when you go onto the internet, you’ve got a big screen in front of you; you don’t really necessarily want it. You just sit there and read stuff.

Mike McAllen: Yes, yes. You know, you’re right. The ways things are going to happen to Flickr was this whole Yahoo! stuff going on.

David Gray: Oh, I don’t like to think about it. I mean, you know, when you start putting your life onto these online services, you have to …

Mike McAllen: Yes, realize that they’re …

David Gray: … I guess you have to let go of certain expectations.

Mike McAllen: Yes, yes. That’s interesting. It had a whole realm there of storage and where you’re putting stuff. It’s like a warehouse almost that may be burned down someday.

David Gray: That’s right. That’s right, absolutely.

Mike McAllen: Can you tell us a little bit – well, do you want to tell a little bit more about Xplane and why you started it or do you kind of got to that already but are there things you want to tell us about that? About your company?

David Gray: Well, I mean – well, I’ll tell you. I was – when I was working on a newspaper, I would go out, you know, most of the time the newspaper is you know, writing about stuff after it happened, of course. And a lot of times, you know, seems to be what people consider news is stuff that went wrong. Disasters, problems, things that broke, you know, I remember you know, a great example I was in Seattle working at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and there was a freeway that was under construction and it was a giant floating bridge that was going across Lake Washington, giant lake and it sank one day. It wasn’t supposed to sink and so I was being you know, then I had to go out onto the bridge and this is in the days when – and we had a mobile phone but the mobile phone had to be checked out from some place and it was about as big – bigger than a brick and go out to this site and trying to figure out what happened, who screwed up, you know, what went wrong.

And really, it was – I kept doing this, you know, very often I would find that if these disasters and these problems often happen because of a communication breakdown. about how much water you could store in the bridge and whether you should leave hatches open and what happened was they were storing water inside this floating bridge which you can imagine is like storing water inside of a boat, you know. Not a great idea and they left same hatches – they had a – they were doing it to protect the environment and they left the hatches open and it rained.

And you know – but you know, what I found was that a lot of these situations would have been avoidable if there had been better communication within the business or within the – between the businesses in advance that a lot of these disasters would not have happened. And so – and I remember, you know, I was doing the research on this one. I have talked to one guy and he said, “I’ve been telling them for 10 years this was going to happen.” You know, he had been telling them for 10 years this was going to happen so I thought why not instead of being always reporting after the fact, why not start a company and then actually work with these businesses to help them explain this stuff so these horrible things would not happen so often.

Mike McAllen: Oh, well. It’s a great idea.

David Gray: Well, that was probably the original idea was you know, maybe we can – maybe instead of drawing the picture of the disaster after it happens, you could draw the picture of the disaster before it happened. You know, so people can see it and go, “Oh yeah, we better not do that.” you know.

Mike McAllen: Yes, printed in their head, yes.

David Gray: Yes, exactly. And a lot of these things – and it’s a case more and more, you know, these future scenarios – you know, with all the new technologies that’s coming around, you know, there are more and more possible future scenarios that could be dangerous or could scary to think about and it does help to visualize them before it’s too late.

Mike McAllen: All right.

David Gray: I don’t know if you know much about RFID, radio frequency identification but it’s the next generation of the bar code, it’s coming up. It’s you know, it’s now being used in warehouses and it will soon be you know, used in a lot more everyday life the way the bar code is.

Mike McAllen: Right.

David Gray: And you know, there’s a lot of open questions about the RFID technology because you know, it’s one – it’s a very, very small technology, very simple but instead of it just being you know, the difference between an RFID tag and a bar code is with an RFID tag, you can read it from you know, several feet away or you don’t need a reader, it’s more of like a radio. It’ll read anything in the environment. So we’ve been working with the RFID people to visualize all these different scenarios of how this technologies going to alter the world and there are some really you know, interesting things about it, you know. For example, how do you feel if you know that someone can drive down your street in a van and they can read everything that’s in your house.

Mike McAllen: Yes. Not too good.

David Gray: Not too good, no and these are the kind of things that you want to actually sit down and visualize before they happen. Now they’re building in technology to the RFID stuff that makes it turn off. As soon as you take it out of the store, it’ll turn it off. So nobody will be able to read that stuff. But you know, they don’t come up with these ideas until you start thinking about the future and visualizing things is a great way to think about them.

Mike McAllen: Right, right. Well, how it swelled. I do have one of those in my dogs. Don’t I?

David Gray: Oh yes you do.

Mike McAllen: Yes. When you said that right away, I thought, “Oh yeah, so I could find my dogs.”

David Gray: Yes and then you know, there’s all kinds of issues that come up you know and with – as we enter into an age where more and more technologies are available and they’re changing faster than ever before, I think you know, you get to a point where just describing things verbally or in text just doesn’t get the ideas across well enough or fast enough. And …

Mike McAllen: Yes.

David Gray: … you know, you – by making things visually, you can make them just much simpler and quicker to understand.

Mike McAllen: Right and then people – all people learn differently anyway too, right? I mean …

David Gray: Absolutely.

Mike McAllen: … the visual, most some people are more – you know, I’m way more visual than I am reading things. I can always remember barely things so; I see a great need for that for people like me.

David Gray: Right.

Mike McAllen: So can you tell us about the VizThink and conferences and workshops? I wanted to hear a little bit about it.

David Gray: Sure. VizThink is a pretty new thing. It’s been around – I think the first VizThink conference happened in January of 2007, no, January of this year maybe.

Mike McAllen: Oh, yes.

David Gray: Or 2008, I’m not sure but basically, where VizThink came from is this idea that you know, this visual thinking is becoming a more and more important skill and more important area today and there is a market emerging. There’s a market of people who are buying visual thinking services, people who are doing visual thinking consulting, people who are helping companies innovate by doing – helping them do more visual thinking. Two of the best selling books recently on Amazon or visual thinking books, one is Dan Roam’s book that’s called The Back of the Napkin and another is called, Slidology and that’s by Nancy Duarte, who’s the woman who did Al Gore’s PowerPoint for The Inconvenient Truth.

Mike McAllen: Yes, I interviewed her for the show actually.

David Gray: Oh, wonderful.

Mike McAllen: I went down there into Duarte and interviewed her straight.

David Gray: Well, I mean – so visual thinking is emerging and it’s becoming a thing and the VizThink conferences designed as an idea to help that market coalescent define itself and to provide a place where people can go to learn more. So …

Mike McAllen: And they’re all over the place too. I was seeing – I mean, I saw there was coming up in San Jose. Is that where it is or San Francisco?

David Gray: Yes, there’s an …

Mike McAllen: I wanted to go into that one.

David Gray: … international community. There’s an international community and there’s an event, an international event coming up in San Jose, California. I think in January or February and there are also a bunch of regional VizThink communities. There’s one in Amsterdam, one in London, one in Toronto, one in Austin, Texas.

Mike McAllen: Wow.

David Gray: One in – there are several of them around the – I think one just starting out in Washington D.C. and I believe one in Seattle. So these regional communities are meeting up on a semi-regular basis to talk about visual thinking, to have speakers come in and people facilitate and basically to learn from each other. And then once or twice a year, they’ll get together in these international conferences.

Mike McAllen: Yes, I’m looking forward to the one in San Jose and I’ll go to it for sure.

David Gray: Oh, excellent. Excellent.

Mike McAllen: Yes. So let’s – so do you speak? You don’t speak at all of them or do you get all of them?

David Gray: Oh no, no. I mean, I speak at conferences. I can’t even tell you how many conferences I’ve spoken at this year but I speak at conferences on in a lot of different topics but usually around visual thinking and innovation. I’ve spoken at all of the – so far all of the VizThink conferences, the international ones.

Mike McAllen: Yes.

David Gray: The first one was in San Francisco, the second one was this fall in Berlin and the third one’s coming up in San Jose.

Mike McAllen: Wow.

David Gray: And I’ve spoken at some – a bunch of other conferences on design and user experience and so forth but the regional events, there are just too many. And I’ve spoken at a couple of them. I mean when I’m in town, I’ll do it but they have their own speakers and I mean, it’s really a community.

Mike McAllen: That’s great. It’s great, yes. I’d like to hear more about them and I did go up to the VizThink website and logged in and everything and – but it’s interesting. It’s great. It’s a great, great idea. So …

David Gray: So far so good.

Mike McAllen: … yes. Yes, that’s great. So tell us a little about your books because I see you’re involved in a few books and I wanted to ask you about them …

David Gray: Oh, but actually before we leave this thing, I would just tell people if they want to check it out, there is a very extensive website at VizThink.com and that is – there’s a whole community on there and you can find out more about the conferences and so forth if you want to go over there.

Mike McAllen: Great. Yes, I do put links to all your links.

David Gray: Okay.

Mike McAllen: On our website.

David Gray: Good luck with that.

Mike McAllen: I know, I have a list of them already started so – but that’s great, that’s great. It’s more information, that’s good. That’s what you’re all about, right?

David Gray: Yes.

Mike McAllen: So, tell us a little bit about your books because I know I saw you have a couple of them. They’re Selling to the VP of No. I thought it was an interesting …

David Gray: Yes.

Mike McAllen: … yes. Why don’t you start out with that one and then …

David Gray: Sure and that’s a book I wrote several years ago when I was starting up my company and as an artist and a journalist, you can imagine that there’s a lot of aspects to business so I had to really had to learn. And one of the first things that you’ll learn – anyone learns when you start a business is that nothing ever really happens until somebody sells something.

Mike McAllen: Yes.

David Gray: So whether it’s an idea or whether it’s a concept that you have to sell to event your capitalist or a product that you need to sell to the marketplace, you have to understand how to, you know, find people who might be interested in that and deliver a message that can help them understand why they should buy it.

Mike McAllen: Yes.

David Gray: And there’s been a lot of literature written on sales but you know, at the same time, most salespeople don’t like to read, I found. So there’s a big gap between all the literature that’s been written about being an effective salesperson and what actually gets read by the salespeople and understood. And there’s a huge wealth of information there and so, starting with my own sales course because I would read these books and I would you know, get excited about a method or an idea and I’d buy several copies and give them to my salespersons and I would notice that they would not be reading them.

So what Selling to the VP of No was especially related to enterprise sales or consultative selling? Selling to the VP of No is – I have really envisioned that and eschewed as a children’s book for grown-ups about how to sell and convey ideas more effectively. So it’s very, very visual and it distills a whole bunch of wisdom from a whole bunch of sources into one, very short readable book. You can read it in about an hour.

Mike McAllen: That’s great.

David Gray: One airplane flight.

Mike McAllen: Perfect for salespeople.

David Gray: Yes and it conveys all the most essential ideas that I’m aware of in that one format.

Mike McAllen: That’s great. Yes, maybe I’ll take a look at that book because I just
finished reading an interesting book called Understanding Comics …

David Gray: Oh, great book.

Mike McAllen: … by Scott McCloud and it was fantastic because I just started thumbing through it and I was just – you know, I don’t really – I’ve never been a big comic book reader but it was – it held my attention and I read the whole thing, sure it through in weekend. It’s a great book. It’s kind of a good thing …

David Gray: Yes, I have another link for you. I have a – one of the things that I do is like keep a reading list and …

Mike McAllen: That’s great.

David Gray: … so a book that might be interesting to read and I have a whole list of them that I have at squidoo.com/davegray. So if you want to put that on your list of links, I think – you know every time I come across a book like Understanding Comics is on there and Dan Roam’s books on there. So every time I come across a book, I try to add it to that list because well honestly …

Mike McAllen: Yes, yes. Well, that’s great, yes. I have …

David Gray: What exactly – what books do you recommend about this stuff and …

Mike McAllen: Yes.

David Gray: … I got to a point where I had to capture it somewhere.

Mike McAllen: Yes, I have Dan Roam’s book on my nightstand. It’s the one that I have to get to. I have …

David Gray: Have you interviewed him yet?

Mike McAllen: No, I haven’t. I’d like to eventually.

David Gray: He’s a great guy.

Mike McAllen: Yes. He – yes, it interests me because all in the past in art when we’re doing – we always have this when we talk about, you know, doing a stage for somebody. We’d sit down and always do a napkin sketch of it. Now, it’s always you know, how we started out, you know. You sit down with the client. We’d say, “How about, you know, let’s do something like this.” and toys on the napkin and that caught my eye because of that. I was like, “Hey, we used a napkin.”

David Gray: Wonderful.

Mike McAllen: You know, up to same kind of thing, I don’t think but kind of the same thing.

David Gray: Absolutely.

Mike McAllen: So, I started reading about your Marks and Meaning book that you wrote but you’re still writing which I thought it was an interesting way of having a book for sale.

David Gray: How did you find out about that?

Mike McAllen: I don’t know. I just read about you – you know, you have a lot links. I was looking through all kinds of stuff that you did and that was an interesting to …

David Gray: That something I haven’t talked too much about publicly. That sort of a …

Mike McAllen: I’m sorry.

David Gray: No, it’s okay. You doubted me, that’s fine. But that’s a book – I would caution people before I’d sent them to take a look at it and read it because it’s really not so much a book as a compendium of sketches and ideas that are just kind of loosely connected. I think it might someday be a book but where this came from was, there are these – there’s a new technology, relatively new called Print On Demand and a print on demand basically means that rather than publishing a book – you know, it used to be that if you wanted to publish a book, you needed to make a financial investment. So to publish a book required you to find a publisher or self-publish and that required you to go out and print, you know, about several thousand copies.

And then you had to worry about distribution and how you’re going to collect money and how you’re going to get those books in the bookstores and so forth. And now with this print on demand publishers and the one I’m using is called Lulu.com.

Mike McAllen: Yes.

David Gray: You can actually print, publish a book without making any financial investment which is you know, kind of interesting. You can – you basically take a PDF, portable document file and you can upload it, put it online. You can set a price for the book and there’s a cost for the book to print and ship the book and the way it works is when someone comes to that website and they buy a copy of the book, then the publisher will then print the book and then ship it.

Mike McAllen: Yes, very interesting.

David Gray: Well the implications are very fascinating because the implication is okay, you can have a book that changes everyday. You don’t have to you know, the book – you know, if a reader – you know, let’s say you have a typical you know, old school book and the reader points out you know, there something is misspelled on page 17. Well, you got to wait till the next edition, excuse me, before you can correct that error. With a print on demand book, you can correct it so that the next person who buys the book won’t have that problem.

And so what occurred to me and this came out of a conversation with a friend of mine, Jay Cross who’s calling this term, unbook and he was describing some of these ideas to me but you know, one of the things that came out of this was – one of the thoughts that came out of this was well, you know, you don’t have to have the book finished before you publish it nowadays. You can start with a single page or a couple of pages and you have a few thoughts and put them down and then you can basically evolve the book with the readers in a conversation and this book that I’m working on – I’m not even really going to call it a book but the thing that’s quite interesting about this one is, there’s a whole community of people. There’s about 50 people who are reading the book and also really helping to write the book. And this whole – we have, you know, if you buy the book, you get invited to this e-mail discussion group and we’ve just got all kinds of really interesting conversation evolving.

So the book ends up really being kind of a centerpiece for conversation but it continues to evolve based on this idea so, it’s a – so I’m …

Mike McAllen: A great idea.

David Gray: … really talking too much about it publicly because I wouldn’t – if you just picked it up and looked at it, you wouldn’t really think of it as – it doesn’t really work like a book because of this – you know, you have to understand the whole system around it to understand what it is.

Mike McAllen: But you kind of explain it there on the site.

David Gray: Well, I …

Mike McAllen: Lulu.

David Gray: … yes, I mean, if you’ll …

Mike McAllen: If you got to say, “Hey, you’ll buy this but it’s not done.” that’s why it
caught my eye and so what is this all about?

David Gray: If you do go to the website where I sell the book, it pretty much tells you not to buy the book.

Mike McAllen: Yes, it does. It was not the best marketing, I have to say it. Wow. But it is interesting and I mean, that’s what – you know, I just read the new set, Godan book.

David Gray: Yes.

Mike McAllen: And he was talking about you know the whole communities and tribes, in the book it’s called tribes. I don’t know if you’ve read it yet.

David Gray: I have not. I have not.

Mike McAllen: But it’s about communities, putting communities around whatever you’re doing and that’s exactly what you’re doing. I mean …

David Gray: Absolutely.

Mike McAllen: … to make fans that are raving fans is to get them involved and in fact this morning as I was slog in a way on my [traded 00:33:08] climbers thing that we have, I was watching the Heroes from last night, the show Heroes and they have a whole – they did a whole thing on their website where they have – they’re doing shows that a community is picking the characters and …

David Gray: Oh, wow. Cool.

Mike McAllen: Yes pretty interesting but same thing that they’ve kind of like you know, who would you like to see as the main character and then they have like actual like shows on the website, same kind of thing. I mean, it’s interesting how it’s all evolving but that’s great with the Marks and Meaning.

David Gray: Yes, it is evolving. I mean, in it’s hard to stay on top of sometimes.

Mike McAllen: Oh, like that. Yes.

David Gray: This changing world, I mean and I think it’s changing faster and faster seems to be.

Mike McAllen: Oh yes. Everything is, yes and there’s this everything so out there to communities like you’re saying about like Twitter and Flickr and those things. It’s you know, it’s sometimes – it’s overwhelming like I’ve seen their piddling around on Twitter having this conversation and I’m like, “Wait a minute, I have work to do.”

David Gray: Yes, that’s so true.

Mike McAllen: Yes. So what’s up next for you? There’s something here, a whole bunch of stuff going on but …

David Gray: Well, I’ve been traveling and speaking at a lot of conferences and every time I go to one of these conferences, I meet the other speakers and the people who come into these conferences. So I’ve met all kinds of really interesting, fascinating people. I’ve met all kinds of just wonderful connections and now over the holidays, I think I’m just going to spend some time getting all those – just meet those ideas as possible into this unbook thing that I’m working on. So I’m …

Mike McAllen: That’s great.

David Gray: … yes, I’ve got them sort of like scribbled notes and so forth and sketch books and everything and I think I’m going to try in – now I’m trying to get that stuff into the book. It’s been – I put it out there in the middle of the summer and the conversation has been flying around it in this little community. And – but I haven’t really updated it in a while so, I’m going to …

Mike McAllen: How was it – how do you do that? Is it just by e-mail? Basically? If you are reading it and then e-mailing or do you have a set up?

David Gray: It’s kind of a combination of things but we’ve got – we have – just e-mail discussion group and then there’s sort of a social community site where people can post images and PowerPoint presentations just like that kind of thing.

Mike McAllen: Oh, great.

David Gray: And there’s also a Flickr group where we’re sharing photographs and people, anyone who wants to submit any kind of work of visual work for possibly publication in the book then a possible publication and that’s where they do it.

Mike McAllen: Wow.

David Gray: And people are posting you know, one of the things that’s the most interesting is that the book has got a lot of sort of blank open space in it and I left that space intentionally for people to write in the book and people are posting pages that they’ve modified and that’s quite interesting too.

Mike McAllen: Oh, that’s great. It’s like just a wide open brainstorm.

David Gray: It is, yes. It’s like in space clear, you know, it’s like a white board book.

Mike McAllen: So cool. Yes, I just finished doing a thing, I wrote a chapter for this age of conversation.

David Gray: Yes.

Mike McAllen: I don’t if you’ve heard of that. Have you heard of that?

David Gray: Yes. Yes, absolutely.

Mike McAllen: Yes. I did a chapter in that. That was kind of a good experience. It’s
interesting to be involved in it but it could be kind of part of that community all of a sudden. It was fun where they – everybody writes a chapter and brings it in and send it to these guys who drew McClellan and – I can’t remember really the guy’s name, off top of my head. But they put it together and they said, they do it for charity like – that’s a book that’s done though. I don’t think they redo it but they used a [little O2 00:36:56] which is interesting.

David Gray: Yes, I think you know, more and more – well, I mean you know, when you go to talk to the publisher and I have done this before about you know, publishing a book …

Mike McAllen: Yes.

David Gray: … they will you know, they need to know that you have the ability to promote the book and more and more if you the ability to promote the book, the question starts to come up – you know, what you need a publisher for. So if everyone – if most people are comfortable going online and buying things and more and more people are getting comfortable with that then, it’s not necessarily imperative that your book be in all the bookstores and all the other stuff …

Mike McAllen: Yes.

David Gray: … in order to sell it. And so you – you know, the bar is getting higher and higher for what publishers need to offer to attract a writer.

Mike McAllen: All right.

David Gray: If you’re Stephen King, people are going to buy your book.

Mike McAllen: Yes.

David Gray: You know, no matter where it is if you have a fan base and I think you’ll seem – you’re going to see more and more people putting books together and publishing them in that way, I believe.

Mike McAllen: Yes. Did you use a publisher for the Selling of the VP of No?

David Gray: Well, that’s a whole other story but well, I started it out proposing it to publishers and the process of going through a publisher was so onerous that I finally realized it’s just easier – it could have been easier to just publish these ourselves than this to go through a publisher.

Mike McAllen: Right.

David Gray: And that’s what we did. Yes, it’s a cool idea. I mean, at this weekend too I just spent doing – I don’t think anyone in my family is listening to this show which is always good but first of our pick, we went on a trip through Yellowstone and it’s a place or national parks and we brought our cameras and took pictures of everything and we did a picture book for everybody.

David Gray: Oh, wonderful.

Mike McAllen: Yes and none of them listens to the show so it’s …

David Gray: Well, that’s a perfect you know, weddings I mean, there’s …

Mike McAllen: Yes.

David Gray: … a lot of areas where this stuff makes a lot of sense.

Mike McAllen: Yes. We used the Blurb, Blurb.com.

David Gray: Okay. Yes, that’s another one.

Mike McAllen: Yes. It was great. It was – you end their pictures so we’re not you know, listen – we weren’t – we didn’t – there’s not a lot of tax. So it’s not like a book, book. It’s just a coffee table book. So, it’s kind of fun though. I mean, it was really a fun time. So …

David Gray: Absolutely.

Mike McAllen: So how can – I was going to say, how can people get a hold of you to learn more about you but there’s going to be 6,000 links but what’s …

David Gray: Yes, there’s a lot of links and …

Mike McAllen: … the main way to get a hold of you and I’ll put all these – all your links on our site and …

David Gray: Well, the easiest place to find me is Davegrayinfo.com. So that’s where I kind of sort of point to everything that’s out there that I do and just kind of a website that talks about me and my company and those stuff that I am working on.

Mike McAllen: I see. And it’s Gray? Not …

David Gray: Yes, it’s DaveGrayinfo.com.

Mike McAllen: Great. Okay, Dave. Thank you so much and hopefully maybe we can talk again and you know, a few months and see what’s going on with Marks and Meaning and all …

David Gray: Sure.

Mike McAllen: … all of VizThink stuff. It would be fun to talk to you again and hopefully, I’ll get to see you at the one in San Jose.

David Gray: Okay. Well, it sounds great, Michael.

Mike McAllen: Yes and thank you so much and I’ll talk to you later.

David Gray: Okay. Thank you. Take care. Bye.

Female: We appreciate and thank you for listening to the Meetings Podcast. You can find Mike McAllen at grassshackroad.com, Jon Trask at alliantevents.com and Tom Hillmer at creativegroupinc.com. The Meetings Podcast theme music comes from the Delgado Brothers which can be found at delgadobrothers.com. Special thanks to riptidegraphics.com for the audio editing of this podcast.

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