Dave Gray is the founder and CEO of XPLANE, the visual thinking company. He runs the Visual Thinking School lens on Squidoo. He runs the Communication Nation blog as well.

And, he managed to take an hour out of his schedule to talk to me a couple of weeks ago. We talked about Temple Grandin and her self-evalution in the arena of thinking in pictures and autism. We talked about whiteboard meetings and capturing the results for future annotation and discussion. And, we talked about some of his nearly 5000 Flickr photos, stick figures in peril and how visual imagery affects business communication.

Then, I spent far too long editing the conversation down to 30 minutes. This is the first episode I did using the split tracks in PowerGramo, with me in one channel and him in the other. This meant I could edit each individual, which helped cut down on some of the overlap that cellphone conversations have. I hope the results are worth the extra time spent editing.

Runtime: 30 minutes
Size: 14MB
Recording Environment: Cellphone

 Episode 7 - Dave Gray - XPLANE Visual Thinking [30:08m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Just thought I’d post a quick text update on what’s going on with the show. It’s been a few weeks since episode 6 came out and I’m itching to get some more shows into the feed. Alas, painting my house, running for mayor and just retreating from 100 degree heat (hey, I live in MN where we’re not supposed to get this kind of heat) have left the recording booth vacant.

I have been slowly editing the conversation I had with my wife’s grandfather about WWII, but it’s proving hard to edit into something worth publishing. There were other family members in the room and their side conversations bleed over more often than I thought they would. Overall, I like listening to him talk about the past and this conversation was very representational. It is, however, different from the other stuff so far on this show. I’ll keep plugging away on it and maybe put it out as episode 8 or 9.

Speaking of episode 8, it should be out in a few days. Today I’ll be interviewing Dave Gray again (Powergramo ate the first one a couple of months ago). He’s big into visual thinking and an interesting guy.

I’m also scouting around for other guests to book in and keep some momentum. When the interviews are scheduled out, it’s much easier to keep putting out shows. I have also been making a concerted effort to get some women on the show as guests, but have not had good luck getting responses from the women I’ve contacted. I want this show to reflect the full range of interesting people and interesting surely doesn’t have a gender bias. I, unfortunately, travel in pretty technical circles which does carry with it a bias toward men. Just know that I am not unaware of the fact that all of the guests so far have been men. Please feel free to send in nominations of women you think I should talk to.

Ed Batista is the Executive Director of AttentionTrust, an organization that promotes the rights of individuals to control the data that’s collected about them. One of the ways that the AttentionTrust is doing this is by providing an extension to Firefox that lets you record a trail of the websites you visit. Ed and I talk about AttentionTrust, that extension, the implications of recording your attention and why you might want to do this.

Runtime: 33 minutes
Size: 25MB
Recording Environment: Skype conference

Notes:

• AttentionTrust.org
• Ed Batista
• My posting on dissecting the Attention Recorder

 Ed Batista, Director of AttentionTrust [33:43m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

J talks to Dave Seah, information designer and author of the Printable CEO, a productivity management tool. Dave and I had a 2 hour conversation that ranged from his Printable CEO work to motivations in doing free stuff to philosophical discussion of how short life is. I pulled about a half hour out of it and that’s what you get today.

Runtime: 26 minutes
Size: 25MB
Recording Environment: Skype conference

Notes

• Dave’s Site - DavidSeah.com
• The Printable CEO, Dave’s productivity management tools
• 9Rules, the blog network Dave’s site belongs to.

 Episode 5 - Dave Seah, Printable CEO [26:44m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

J talks to Tim Decker, a professional animator who has worked on the Simpsons, for Disney and on a variety of computer games. He’s a strong advocate of paper and pencil animation and learning to draw properly as training for a professional animation career. Listen to how he found himself in the Air Force, drawing propaganda cartoons to drop on the Soviet Union after having his portfolio stolen by a drill sergeant.

Runtime: 56 minutes
Size: 26MB
Recording Environment: Skype conference and cellphone

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

J talks with Mark Kistler from PBS’s Imagination Station TV show about drawing in 3d, teaching children and how learning to draw improves the lives of children and adults alike.

Runtime: 20 minutes
Size: 9 MB
Recording Environment: Skype conference and cellphone

Show Notes:
The Kistler books mentioned that I like

You can read the post that sparked this conversation on Wynia.org.

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

J and Garrick discuss how a more flexible approach to making money while doing what you love can lead to a much better setup. This is the same audio that Garrick posted a few weeks ago on First Crack, but I wanted to complete the conversation over here as well.

Runtime: 38 minutes
Size: 18 MB
Recording Environment: Skype conference

Inspiring our Conversation
• Gillmor Gang
• Hugh MacLeod
• Jonathan Coulton’s Thing a Week
• 37Signals’ Getting Real eBook

 Digital Content and Business Models: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

J and Garrick discuss how “convergence” in digital devices is a red herring and the transparent cooperation between devices that we’d both prefer to see instead.

Runtime: 18 minutes
Size: 8 MB
Recording Environment: Skype conference

[Edit: Sorry to those who had problems getting the MP3 due to the Podpress individual URL’s. That feature has been turned off and the real URL should now be showing in the feeds.]

 The Glass is Too Big - Episode 1 [18:25m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is the home of The Glass is Too Big, a geeky podcast from some 30-something geeks.