Representing data in a unique and compelling way

This brief presentation by Hans Rosling revolutionized the way I understand statistical data. He gave this presentation at the TED Conference in February 2006. The TED Website explains:

Rosling is professor of global health at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute, his current work focuses on dispelling common myths about the so-called developing world, which (he points out) is no longer worlds away from the west. In fact, most of the third world is on the same trajectory toward health and prosperity, and many countries are moving twice as fast as the west did.

What sets Rosling apart isn’t just his apt observations of broad social and economic trends, but the stunning way he presents them. Guaranteed: You’ve never seen data presented like this. By any logic, a presentation that tracks global health and poverty trends should be, in a word: boring. But in Rosling’s hands, data sings. Trends come to life. And the big picture — usually hazy at best — snaps into sharp focus.

Rosling’s presentations are grounded in solid statistics (often drawn from United Nations data), illustrated by the visualization software he developed. The animations transform development statistics into moving bubbles and flowing curves that make global trends clear, intuitive and even playful. During his legendary presentations, Rosling takes this one step farther, narrating the animations with a sportscaster’s flair.

The good news is that since Google bought the rights to Professor Rosling’s Gapminder software, anyone can create these animated demonstrations of their own statistical data and use them in presentations. What’s not to like about that?

It’s worth downloading the Hi-Res version to get the impact of the charts on a full screen, or click on the icon below to watch the low-res version.

Thanks to a posting by Chris, I’ve just enjoyed watching an excellent speech delivered by Sir Ken Robinson at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) called Changing Paradigms.

Sir Ken Robinson is an internationally recognized leader in the development of creativity, innovation and human resources.

His speech (almost an hour long) has a quirky, academic quality to it, but without the dry-as-dust content many insecure PhD’s include when trying to impress with their command of the facts.

He uses self-depreciating humor to win over the British audience. Some of the humor sounds weird to those of us who live in the US. He gets appreciative chuckles when he tells them “I live in California, and you don’t…”. He speaks with sincerity and passion about challenges in education and the mis-diagnosis of kids today as ADHD.

I especially like the graphics he uses around 43:00 minutes into the talk showing the relative size of the Earth to the vastness of interstellar space. A great way to represent statistical data in a presentation.

A speech worth watching as an example of an informative and persuasive argument supported by data.

There’s just one thing I can’t get over – it looks like he & Michael Cain were separated at birth. I’m sure no-one has ever told him that…

“Everything we do is around Social Networking.”
- John Chambers, CEO, Cisco

Building the Next Generation Company: Innovation, Talent, Excellence

MIT World Lecture, Oct 15, 2008

Cisco CEO John Chambers gets Social Networking.

MIT reports:

In the 1990s, he predicted that networks would transform the way the world works, becoming platforms for communications and other IT, and Chambers placed Cisco at the center of that transformation. Today, he envisions a Web 2.0 premised on collaboration and social networking that will similarly transfigure all business life. Since 2001, he’s been positioning Cisco to catch this massive market transition, and indeed, is “betting the company’s future on it.”

In “phase two of the Internet,” says Chambers, “Content will find me; I will not search for it.” Any device, anywhere, will be able to receive any kind of content. We will be dealing with licenses for things like music, rather than worrying about compatibility issues between our digital tools and what’s streaming through them. Web 2.0 will also bring “effective collaboration,” by which Chambers means network-enabled visual tools, which will make “working together for a common goal truly possible.” Expect much faster business processes and revved up productivity, says Chambers.

Based on Cisco’s own experience in the past several years, organizations will completely restructure around these new capabilities. Indeed, he offers up his company as a paradigm of this vision. Once a hierarchical, command and control-based organization, Cisco is now much flatter, a company running “off of social networking groups.” Councils with cross-functional responsibilities suggest and take on many more projects (from emerging markets, to video, and smart grid boards); from one to two major ventures per year, to this year’s 26 launches. The next generation company is “built around the visual.” Cisco employees do non-stop teleconferencing with collaborators around the world. The company hosts 2500 such virtual meetings per week. It also employs Webex, Wikis and blogging to move work along.

With this kind of communication and carefully managed process to match, “operations can be turned on a head,” says Chambers. It’s the recipe for market-dominating speed and scale. Chambers is “loading the pipeline” with projects that assume other companies will want what Cisco has and makes. “If we’re right, we’re developing a huge wave of revenue opportunity.” Perhaps this is one reason why he’s “an optimist on global productivity, global economy and our ability to handle the challenges.”

This video supports the December 2008 Fast Company profile painting Cisco as a Revolutionary San Jose company – a socialist enterprise at the level of a democratized style of decision making; probably less so with compensation packages or an iron rice bowl.

Highlights of the video are when Chambers describes upper- and mid-level management resistance to the new culture of collaboration (17:40) and reveals that 20% of upper management left because they could not let go of the command and control mindset they learned in B-School (43:00).

Chambers reveals how the company used to be run by the top 10 executives who reported to him. Now it is the top 500 who make the decisions, soon to be the top 2,500 (24:00).

His evaluation of the effect of the radical introduction of Social(ized) Networking is that after a period of initial resistance, a balance has been achieved between command and control and self-managed boards and councils using collaborative technology (54:23).

The question, as Fast Company asked, is if Cisco-style collaboration really works elsewhere? They used to ask that about web pages and email when Web 1.0 was taking off in Silicon Valley. Would it play in Peoria? I’m not betting against Web 2.0. It’ll just take a little longer to catch on.

See Chambers in action and decide if these innovations are right for you.