API Evangelist

CMALT Core Principles

API Evangelist

The thing I love about this sort of work, is that there is so much to be learned from other people. Kin Lane (aka API Evangelist) knows what he’s talking about when it comes to APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). Not just how they work, or how to build them, but how they’ve evolved and the impact they can have.

Kin asked if I would help evolve the visual identity for API Evangelist.

Dialogue

We arranged a remote video session (Kin was in Los Angeles, whilst I’m based in London) and to make sure that I caught as much of what Kin was saying as possible, I recorded our video conversation for good measure. That way, I can go back through the conversation and let it dribble over my creative brain during the sketching phase of the process. I didn’t want our ideas to be restricted by my lack of API knowledge, and being a former software engineer, I’m very interested in this domain too…

Here are a few sketches the session:

A credential is more than just a credential
The story of APIs
Menu and burger
Get to know your digital self
 

Artwork

Finding a visual identity is not easy. Like a new pair of shoes, how you see them changes as they become part of you. There’s much “stepping into it” required. Also, we’re trying to create something bigger than the person behind it, as its purpose will be to provide a stage not just to speak from, but to build other scenes on top of.

reduce everything to a transaction_tr
API Evangelist Logo

…and finally

Humour is often a great indicator of something worth creating. So when a thought tickles me, I try to capture it before it escapes. The artwork below came out of the conversation with Kin, and as a mash-up also allowed be to explore and understand some of Roy Lichtenstein’s work. This artwork ended up as a sticker and can be found on the back of my laptop. 🙂

Making an impact on the world. I enjoy seeing my ideas fluttering around, adding color, adding motion, and presence around the API community. At the moment where I couldn’t imagine any image to represent API Evangelist, Bryan was able to extract a single image that I think couldn’t better represent what it is I do. #VisualThinkery
Kin Lane

API Evangelist, Excerpt taken from this blogpost.

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CMALT Principles

CMALT Core Principles

CMALT Principles – a visual language

I always love working with ALT members. Openness is baked into whatever they do, so if I’m trying to capture ideas from dialogue, there is no shortage of members to get involved.

ALT asked if I would help them create a visual language for their CMALT programme, starting with the CMALT core principles.

Dialogue

ALT helpfully organised two remote dialogue sessions (using Google Hangouts), in order to involve a range of people in the collaborative process. Taking each of principles in turn, we discussed members’ understanding of each principle’s meaning and captured it using a live drawing method.

Here are the outputs of both sessions:

session 1 - principles of CMALT
session 2 - principles of CMALT

As you might spot, different voices produce a different conversation. Principles tend to have a degree of constructive ambiguity, resulting in multiple aligned but varied personal meanings. Of course, the more angles you can view an abstract principle from, the more chance of finding a visual metaphor that might fit.

Distill

The next step is to take those rough ideas and create a number of distilled ideas. This process culminated in the following three routes:

 

CMALT ideas - direction
CMALT ideas - shoes
CMALT ideas - cakes

 

Artwork

The rough sketches allow us to see which of the ideas resonate, and how we can take them further.  In the end, we settled on a mash-up of two of the routes. Here’s the final artwork:

Using a visual language to articulate the core principles of our professional accreditation scheme has had real impact: candidates are now much clearer about what the principles are, more advocates have been able to use the artwork to promote the scheme and there is a stronger visual and strategic connections between this and the overall vision of the Association.

Maren Deepwell

CEO, ALT

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Library of Things conversational thinkery

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I originally met the founders of the Library of Things at a Platform Co-ops conference a few months ago, and was really inspired by the enterprise they had set up. For me it’s in the sweet spot of my interests: community oriented, a mashup of physical/digital, technology for good, and of course a social enterprise solving real problems.

Their social start-up had generated (and still does) a significant amount of interest from organisations and individuals wishing to do the same or similar. In response, the team decided to organise a boot camp, inviting those serious with the concept to work though their ideas amongst friends and experts. As the bootcamp was conversationally oriented, the team asked if I would help capture some of the thinking that emerged.

The bootcamp looked at different lending models, and the ideation of a back-end platform, as well as looking at the similarities and differences of each interested party’s circumstance, environment and available resources.

Thngr
Thing Central
The future of the LoT platform
Open Project Night
Member Power
A node on the Network

As always, I came away having learned a thing or two. Here’s a selection of the final artwork:

Principles
A year in the life
Comms Channels
The Actors
Opening conversations
Reflections

If you’re interested in finding out more, then check out the Library of Things website, or subscribe to their podcast for a more personal perspective.

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Made with Creative Commons

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Made with Creative Commons

“So tell me what this book is all about…”

I had pinned down Paul Stacey and Sarah Pearson, authors of the Made with Creative Commons book, for a transatlantic online meeting. I was playing the role of the grand inquisitor (well – a friendly, enthusiastic, grand inquisitor maybe…)

And they talked. And I listened; and asked some questions. I was recording our 2-hour conversation so that I could go back through it hunting for clues to an idea: a turn of phrase; a metaphor used; or something that resonated with my own journeys in business.

The name of the game is to sketch up as many ideas as possible – to see which ideas resonate. Having listened to Ed Sheeran on Desert Island Discs recently, he talks about a similar approach to making his music – he picks up his guitar and gets on with writing 4-5 songs in a day, and maybe 100 for an album – selecting the best ten for the album itself and putting the other ninety on the shelf. Go wide; see what resonates.

Speed of Dissemination
Have your cake and eat it
Who pointed you towards the commons
Transaction vs Sharing
Old sharing vs New sharing
Why would you ever do that?
Transaction & Interaction
To everyone...
The bridge of the commons
Stepping out into the commons
Inspiring Reciprocity
A sense of Community
A Creative Commons relationship

The more I learn about the Commons, the more I see myself as a commoner. With software businesses, I’d grown up with only one way to do business: start-up, get investment, scale up, exit. Of course, an Open Source model turns this on it’s head. Try to explain this to business executives, and they’ll look at you like you’re speaking a foreign language…

Here’s some of the final artwork created for the book:

Pre-industrialised - Market, Commons, State
State takeover - Market, State, Commons
Today - Market, State, Commons
Enterprise - Market, State, Commons
4 Aspects of Resource Managment
Goods - Market, State, Commons
Driven by social good
CC latte
Business 2 point 0
An unusual invitation

You can order a print copy or download a free digital copy of the book by going to the Made with Creative Commons page.

As for me, I couldn’t resist bringing the cover to life…

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ALT – A visual strategy

CTRL-ALT-CREATE

No-one would set out to create a visual strategy. But now that I’ve facilitated the creation of one, it seems such an obvious way of engaging the troops and gathering alignment, creating something that is both of the people and for the people.

Values
Maren Deepwell, CEO of ALT invited me along to a meeting of the trustees in order to visually explore the organisation’s values. Now, many of us have been exposed to values in the corporate sense – culture targets inflicted from above intended to gel an organisation together. It’s of little surprise that such a values manifesto is treated with scorn by those who are supposed to live it out, even if they hold those very values in spades.

As is the way with charities, the trustees of ALT are not paid, so each trustee has a bunch of reasons why they give of their precious time. Some perhaps are obvious, but some are much less so, regardless of which, once a trustee, no-one ever asks. So in this case, the values we explored were more character alignments – and so where better to start than asking: why are you a trustee of ALT?

The Thinkathon
Capturing this facilitated discussion live using pen, paper, document camera and projector, allowed us to see the gems as each was uncovered, some of which resonated deeply with the group. Being external, I could contain the extroverted voices and bring out the introverted ones, as well as sidestepping any politics in the room. And as people talked, they got excited…

 

ALT Participants - sketch
ALT Thinkathon - sketch

 

The Ideas Dark Room
Capturing a conversation leaves no time for taking ideas further – so I am always keen to drag the remnants from a Thinkathon into the Ideas Dark Room (my shed) and progress them further. The richer the conversation, the easier this part of the process is – but ideas can come from anywhere: a funny thing you notice, a subconscious metaphor with a hand gesture, an off-the-cuff comment after the session… There are questions to ask the page, and puzzles that are asking to be solved.

ALT Visual Strategy - sketch
ALT Values - sketch
ALT Trainers - sketch
ALT if your job involves this
ALT Greater than - sketch
ALT Bikechain - sketch

 

Bringing it to Life

I gathered up the sketches and sent them through to Maren and later we talked them through with some of her team. The ALT team had been working with their membership on the organisation’s draft 3-year strategy. Maren asked whether we could use the visuals from the Trustee conversations to give the strategy a feel – an aesthetic. What’s the format that will engage most members? It’s probably the same format that will engage the most yet-to-be members too…

 

ALT Strategy: What we value
ALT Strategy: If your job involves this
ALT Strategy: Greater than the sum of our parts
ALT Strategy: AIM #1
ALT Strategy: AIM #2
ALT Strategy: AIM #3
Where do we go from here
Sticker proof

Telling a Story
And so, this becomes the primary challenge for visual thinkery; can we:

  1. ENGAGE: create something that people can get the gist of quickly
  2. SHARE: create something that people can make some noise with
  3. OWN: create something that people will tattoo on their laptop…

What we ended up creating really resonated with both members and non-members alike – but if you ask me, it was always going to. This is not magic – it’s artwork and aesthetic that’s rooted in a collaborative conversation.

If you want to have a closer look, here’s the published version in a presentation format designed to be delivered by any member.

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