London Calling

Next Tuesday, I will be speaking at Jeff Pulver’s #140 Conf: The State of Now , in London. Dean Landsman (@deanland on Twitter) and I will talk about “Digital Presence: Now and Beyond”, and we’re planning on presenting using a combination of  pre-made visuals while I will sketch notes over them, on screen, as we talk. How does this hybrid concept work? And why would I do something so risky as expose myself by drawing live as we speak, while people tweet about the conference in real time and I might also be potentially on camera?

My answer is that this way of presenting is truly “The State of Now” – just as much as typing in Google’s Wave, where you can currently see each key stroke and erasure, or watch a webinar with someone fumbling through notes, or speaking live; it is the antidote to the perfectly buttoned-up and mistake-free studio version; it is the energy of a live concert where you don’t know how the singer will sound, it is the excitement of the promise of reality TV (although currently it has become a situationally scripted affair to ensure a story line with an arc). It’s inherent in the rhythm of 140 characters, where the story unfolds in short and often candid bursts.

So, I will draw, sketch, and doodle in plain sight as Dean L.  and I speak. I may erase lines or even start over; there will be very few if any perfectly straight lines, or circles that close exactly where they started; that is the state of now.

I do expect interest, I hope for excitement, and even more than that, I hope that exposing the stream of visualization that emerges will offer a better definition of who I am and how I think. The efficiency of a powerful image cannot be beat, and the process of watching my thinking unfold has no parallel. Tying this to the twitter stream, adding these images to my flickr library, or streaming the video of the presentation will strengthen my unique digital presence.

A digital presence, now and beyond, whether for a brand, an organization, or an individual, will and should have a strong visual anchor, and I don’t mean a logo or just one symbol. A digital presence can be associated with a visual style, such as the Matrix movies’ association with the slow motion action scene; Dave Gray’s company, Xplane, associated with information graphics that explain processes and methods through visual storytelling; or President Obama’s visual presence,where he is commonly viewed as looking up and forward, off  towards some greater goal, or smiling through adversity. We see this image projected routinely on television or, more to his digital presence, in his weekly YouTube broadcasts. A visual digital presence is a multi-layered thing, because we see, think and remember in images and words that combine sequentially to tell stories.

Avatars, photographs,  color choices, diagrams,  symbols, typographic choices, drawings, or video displayed on your blog, your facebook page, your twitter background, your YouTube and Flickr accounts ; there are so many ways to create a strong, memorable digital presence. If you remember the dream of the picture phone made popular in the sixties, that era is here.

Returning to why talk about visual concepts at a Twitter conference; if you have used TwitPic even once you have used Twitter to add a visual component to your digital presence. No airbrushing necessary. More to the point, why did you pick whatever you have chosen to represent you as your avatar? Do you get the reaction you expect when people talk to you about how you look on twitter? Your digital presence will be discerned by others not just through your words but the visual way you present yourself as well.

So, as the Clash said back in 1979,

London calling at the top of the dial
After all this, won’t you give me a smile?

(Photos in article by Dean Meyers)