Chris Brogan has a great post on “How to Start Speaking at Events”.

One day, I wasn’t a speaker at conferences, and then I was. And then a little while later, I was a paid speaker.

Grâce au légendaire Serial Mapper, Claude Aschenbrenner, et à l’excellente liste Cartographie d’informations [Carto-infos], j’apprends la sortie d’un tout nouvel ouvrage, qui me semble d’un grand intérêt. Il s’agit de:

Sophie Chauvin (sous la direction de), Information & visualisation: enjeux, recherches et applications, Éditions Cépaduès 2008, 322 pages.

ISBN: 9782854288568.

26 euros.

La nécessité contemporaine d’interagir avec l’information numérique sous toutes ses formes rend prégnant tout questionnement lié à la visualisation d’information. Information & Visualisation rassemble des approches disciplinaires différentes autour de la visualisation de données interactives afin d’entrevoir les perspectives dont elle est porteuse. Cet ouvrage fait non seulement appel à un ensemble de courants de recherche actuels mais aussi aux applications professionnelles et industrielles de la visualisation d’information. Les éléments complémentaires de bibliographie proposés permettront de prolonger la réflexion.

Cette publication est un signe fort que la cartographie de l’information abandonne son statut de domaine en émergence pour tendre à se constituer en discipline dans l’espace hexagonal.

En d’autres termes nous allons probablement voir dans tous les prochaines années ce qui a déjà eu lieu aux États-Unis à savoir un véritable foisonnement intellectuel. Et croyez moi le pays de Jacques Bertin (auteur de La sémiologie Graphique) a bien des atouts à faire valoir !

Table des matières:

Avant-propos

Sophie Chauvin

1. Visualisation de la Science et Science de la Visualisation
Jean François COLONNA

2. Lecture et exploration oculaire: intégration du texte et de l’image
Alan CHAUVIN, Laurent SPARROW

3. La visualisation dynamique et interactive : aspects perceptifs et cognitifs
Mireille BETRANCOURT

4. Réseaux sociaux, espaces collaboratifs et visualisation d’information
Guy MELANçON

5. Visualiser les textes et les mots : approches numériques, approches par les graphes
Alain LELU

6. Visualisation cohérente 2D-3D de pyramides de documents
Christian JACQUEMIN, Adrien MAZAUD, Rémi DURAND, Camille MAURICE, Frédéric VERNIER

7. Visualisation en recherche d’information
Nicolas BONNEL, Max CHEVALIER, Bernard DOUSSET, Gilles HUBERT

8. Les « hypercartes » : des schèmes de signification
David BIHANIC

9. L’image mise au Net. Dilemmes de la visualisation interactive
Jean-Paul FOURMENTRAUX

10. Navigation et composition dans un univers graphique 3D de grains sonores
Roland CAHEN, Christian JACQUEMIN, Diemo SCHWARZ

11. La mise en scène d’une cartographie de l’information : modèles et perspectives
Claude ASCHENBRENNER

12. Evolution de conception de 4 interfaces de moteurs de recherche cartographiques
Laurent BALEYDIER

13. Quelques repères bibliographiques sur la notion de visualisation d’information
Jessica CUPELLI, Valérie FRIEDRICH

Pour plus d’informations, voir:

• http://www.cepadues.com/livre_details.asp?l=856
• http://www.serialmapper.com/archive/2008/12/04/le-serial-mapper-publie.html

In response to a question by Sandy Santra on Twitter: How to create tags in the new beta version of PersonalBrain, PB5 beta?

A few screenshots will be clearer than a long explanation.

Once the list of tags has been set up, which can be extended as required, it is just a matter of selection the relevant tag for each node, by clicking on “Thought” in the top menu, and then selecting “Tag”. Voilà!

In my in-box yesterday, a great quote from Tom Peters:

Democracy does not demand economic equality — but it does demand, front and center, a widespread perception of fairness!

Tom Peters

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Howdy!

I have 10 licences codes for 3 free Premium months for MindMeister to give away. First come, first serve.

1.Open a MindMeister account if you do not already have one
2. Email me a pascal.venier [[[[at]]]]] gmail.com

Update: all gone.

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One of the more exciting aspects of lecturing in a university, is when you are forced to think on your feet and improvise. This can be when technology fail, when you have forgotten your lectures notes, or when students are asking you a smart question. During one of my lectures last week, a student asked me about smart ways to revise for an examination. I tried to stress the need to be involved in active learning.

British students seem to always use the term revise for studying. This is in itself an issue as, and it is not only me being pedantic – now, I am an academic and this should give me a license to be pedantic! ) – you can only revise when you have already been involved in a genuine learning process. Approaching studying as revising, understood as a form of cramming, is plain silly and extremely counter productive. Furthermore, it is not an effective use of one’s time.

As simple yet, effective, ways of being involved in active learning I suggested on the day, things like:
1) preparing a mind-map for each of the theme studied
2) preparing a very short text (500 words max) summarizing the material studied on a specific theme
3) Rewriting this short text as a story (… once upon a time …)
4) Preparing a series of essay questions, which could come up for the examination, and preparing a plan for the essay (Remember, I am French and the French are obsessed with the art of writing essay plans!)

A final idea, which technology-enhanced, came to me on the spot and might be worth exploring further, as a little experiment. The idea was to use PersonnalBrain as a revision tool, and in that instance, I do mean revision. More specifically, I mean active revision.

Stage 1. Study the material you are interested in, by preraring a mind-map. This can be done, one paper, on a whiteboard (or a blackboard – remember the time when you used a good old blackboard and chalk?), a mindmapping software like FreeMind, MindManager or MindMeister (disclosure: I am a MindMeister affiliate), or directly into PersonalBrain.
Stage 2. Unless you have created your mind-map using PersonalBrain, copy your mind-map into PersonalBrain.
Stage 3. Use PersonalBrain’s wander function to activate your mind-map and focus your attention on the screen.

Do you think this could be an effective way of reviewing the material studied as part of a revision strategy?

Update:

The different versions available are PB free, PB core and PB pro.

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I have decided to redesign this blog over the week-end. Therefore expect things to be slightly messy.

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The BBC News website has an interesting piece on Her Majesty’s Government new Pet Owners code of practice.

“Cat and dog owners are to be told to provide “entertainment” and “mental stimulation” for their pets under new government advice.”

This sounds most fascinating. I shall need to investigate whether it applied to our pets. We are very proud of the frogs in the garden and of the House Martins who have elected to nest under our roof.

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I have come accross this great quotation from Pragmatist Philosopher Richard Rorty, on the blog of Cognitive Edge’s David Snowden:

“Knowledge is not a matter of getting reality right but rather … a matter of acquiring habits of action for coping with reality”.

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