Collaborative Visualization for Collective, Connective and Distributed Intelligence

Bonnie DeVarco, co-founder of NextNowNetwork and one of the NextNow Collaboratory’s info viz gurus is facilitating the first Stanford University’s Media X Vanguard Visualization Collaboratory, “Collaborative Visualization for Collective, Connective and Distributed Intelligence:  Structured Data, Synthetic Minds–Visualizing the Dynamics of Knowledge” at Stanford this week.

Below is a description of the event.  We plan to post some key insights from the meeting after its conclusion. You can also visit Bonnie’s blog, Scale Independent Thought, for her deep reflections on the topic, and the Spaces and Places exhibit, created to inspire cross-disciplinary discussion on how best to track and communicate human activity and scientific progress on a global scale, at Stanford’s Wallenberg Hall until December 31, 2009.

“I agree with Nobel Laureate Murray Gell-Mann that the synthesizing mind will be the most valued mind in our century.”
Howard Gardner, Five Minds for the Future

Jeffrey Heer, Bonnie DeVarco, Katy Borner

The communication technologies we are creating today will be driven by a new generation of multidisciplinary thinkers, knowledge workers, global problem solvers and a more mobile, distributed workforce than ever before.  Our new generation has been raised on the Internet, game technologies, mobile landscapes, and new forms of social media as we progress into a knowledge economy that is altering our institutional and organizational practices.  The profusion of data and digital information at our fingertips requires new ways to support communication and collaborative sensemaking. In this emergent landscape, the role of visualization technologies to support synthetic perspectives is becoming increasingly valuable. Deep mapping of emergent science paradigms offer satellite views of humanity’s knowledge.  Lightweight visual knowledge systems for public data sharing have evolved to support access to the broader range of information we need to collectively address the world’s most pressing problems.  Open data hubs now support the social construction of knowledge in our digital and physical environments. At the same time, cyberinfrastructures offer us new tools for policy making and decision support in the academic, business and public sector.

This experience will bring together visualization vanguards from the leading edge of science mapping, collaborative visual sensemaking, social network analysis and the emerging semantic web.  Surrounded by the Places & Spaces: Mapping Science Exhibition at Wallenberg Hall and dynamic maps from Stanford’s Spatial History Project and the Human-Computer Interaction Lab, visual thinkers from four departments on campus, designers and special guests will share a series of case studies of their work to gain a synthetic perspective on the future of visualization for connective intelligence. New cyberinfrastructures of scholarly data, network analysis and visualization tools will be presented along with novel approaches to data sharing from the social semantic web. The Shape of Thought mural process will support visual brainstorming and documentation throughout the workshop to create a realtime “map” to the new territories presented.  Discussions will center around:

• the optimum user interface design approaches for collaboration and access between institutions, disciplines, academia and the general public
• richer visualization approaches to navigate and synthesize large bodies of networked data

The goal is to catalyze multi-institutional research projects that activate the convergence of new visualization approaches and design tools for distributed knowledge sharing and collaboration.

Facilitated by Jeffrey Heer, Bonnie DeVarco, Katy Borner and assisted by others.

State of the World Forum Launches in Brazil: 2020 By 2050

SEE END OF POST FOR EVENT LIVE BROADCAST LINKS

NextNow Collaboratory is an organizational partner of State of the World Forum, launching the global 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign today in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.  This Forum marks the first time people will be coming together from around the world at this scale to strategize plans of action to reduce carbon emissions globally by 80% by 2020 (instead of 2050, widely accepted by governments but acknowledged by scientists as “too late”) not just through a change in behavior (which can be difficult to sustain) but by re-aligning our relationship to ourselves and to our values, to each other, to Earth and to Life itself.  It also marks the first time a major media company launches a national public education campaign on global warming intended to mobilize a nation to take action– from stopping clear-cutting of the Amazon to creating sustainable lifestyles.

Over 200 scientists, political leaders, business executives, academics, civil society activists and artists from 20 nations and across Brazil are in attendance.  But this initiative is about everyone becoming a climate leader, because that’s what it will take. We’re all part of this movement to build a future in alignment with our most deeply-held values, with the natural systems of Earth and all Life.  Increase your awareness by visiting the State of the World Forum 2020 Climate Leadership Media and Resources page, and join us for the next Forum in Washington D.C. February 28 – March 3, 2010.

Below is the press release for this historic meeting in Belo Horizonte:

PRESS RELEASE
August 4, 2009

Globo TV launches unprecedented national public education ads on global warming to support the 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign

The Globo Organization, the largest media company in Brazil and the fourth largest in the world, will premiere its national public education ads to support the 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign at the State of the World Forum in Belo Horizonte, Brazil August 4 – 7, 2009. The aim is to educate the public about the escalating dangers of global warming and to encourage “climate leadership” in reducing carbon emissions and developing sustainable lifestyles.

This action is unprecedented and marks the first time anywhere in the world when a major media company has taken up the issue of global warming and begun a sustained public educational effort in support of a national mobilization on global warming. “We are delighted at this demonstration of climate leadership,” said Jim Garrison, President of the State of the World Forum. “ We believe it will serve as a model for other major companies to join Globo and begin to educate their constituencies about the escalating crisis of global warming.”

Albert Alcouloumbre, Director of Planning and Social Programs at Globo, said, “We consider our support for the 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign to be part of our responsibility to our viewers. Globo has a long history of social responsibility going back to the founder Roberto Marinho, and we are proud of this tradition.”

Ricardo Young, President of the Ethos Institute, said, “Brazil is ready for a national 2020 mobilization on this critical issue.”

The Globo ads support the launch of a global 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign and a Brazil 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign in Belo Horizonte August 4 – 7, when scientists, government leaders, business executives and civil society activists from around the world and Brazil will meet to begin planning 2020 campaigns.

Says Garrison: “The urgency of global warming mandates that each and every one of us become climate leaders. For the first time in our lives, indeed for the first time in history, all of us must take responsibility for our climate, whether at the individual, community, company, institution, state, or national level. We are all responsible for global warming. We must all share in the leadership required to solve it, for nothing less than the fate of human civilization is at stake. The crisis is that stark, the choice is that clear, the leadership required is that urgent.”

At the heart of the Climate Leadership Campaign and the purpose of the Belo Horizonte conference is resolving the contradiction between what our governments are negotiating and what our scientists are asserting about the accelerating pace of global warming. Our governments are negotiating as if the world has another forty years to solve global warming. The Copenhagen negotiations call for an 80% reduction of CO2 by 2050.  But the more our scientists know, the more urgent the crisis becomes and the more urgently we must act. The current world situation with regard to climate change is worse than the worst cast scenario of the IPCC in its 2007 Report.

It is for these reasons that when he accepted the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the IPCC, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri said “If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.” Thousands of scientists around the world agree. Lester Brown, who will keynote the Belo Horizonte Forum, states “The situation is so urgent it has come down to mobilizing to save civilization.”

Says Garrison:  “Climate leadership must be based on what is scientifically urgent, not on what is politically expedient. Thus our strategic intention and call is a very simple one: ‘2050 by 2020.’ What our governments are negotiating for 2050 must be accomplished by 2020 and we must all be prepared to demonstrate the climate leadership required to accomplish this.”

For further information: Leandro Grandi at FSB Communications at leandro.grandi@fsb.com.br or Jim Garrison at jgarrison@worldforum.org

For further information on the State of the World Forum in Belo Horizonte:
http://brasil2020.com.br

For further information on the State of the World Forum:
http://worldforum.org

TO WATCH LIVE BROADCASTS OF THE BELO HORIZONTE STATE OF THE WORLD FORUM:

6:00- 8:00 PM EST ON TUESDAY, AUGUST 4

9:00 AM- 5:00 PM EST ON WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 5