Training | marketingQED

Information Visualisation Workshops - London - 6th July 2011 to 8th July 2011

In July 2011, marketingQED is delighted once again to present the three courses covering topics in information visualisation at the Royal College of Physicians building in London. All courses are taught by Stephen Few, founder of Perceptual Edge, a leading consultancy that was established to help organizations like yours learn to design simple information displays for effective analysis and communication. The courses on offer are:

Show Me the Numbers: Table and Graph Design - 6th July 2011

This full-day course will teach you how to effectively communicate quantitative business data using tables and graphs. You will learn how to select the appropriate medium of communication (table vs. graph, and which type) and how to visually design each component to express your message clearly and compellingly.

Dashboard Design for at-a-Glance Monitoring - 7th July 2011

Dashboards offer an exciting new way to provide people at a glance with the critical information they must monitor to do their jobs. This full-day course reaches past the hype to give you the unique design skills required to build dashboards that really work.

Now You See It: Visual Data Analysis - 8th July 2011

Most business data analysis requires skills and practices involving the use of graphs that can be easily learned, but resources that teach them are almost impossible to find. Almost all books and courses on data analysis teach sophisticated statistical and financial analysis techniques, but only about 10% of business data analysis requires them. This full-day course is for those responsible for the remaining 90%.

To download a brochure giving further details of these workshops, simply complete this form and a link to a brochure will be sent to you. If you have any issues completing the form please email qed@marketingqed.com.

Information Visualisation Workshops - Vienna - 5th October 2011 to 7th October 2011

Due to conflicting dates the "Information Visualisation Workshops" in Vienna with Stephen Few had to be rescheduled from March 16th-18th to October 5th-7th, 2011. Many thanks for your understanding.

In October 2011, marketingQED is delighted to present three courses covering topics in information visualisation at the Architekturzentrum Wien (Az W) in Vienna. All courses are taught by Stephen Few, founder of Perceptual Edge, a leading consultancy that was established to help organizations like yours learn to design simple information displays for effective analysis and communication. The courses on offer are:

Show Me the Numbers: Table and Graph Design - 5th October 2011

This full-day course will teach you how to effectively communicate quantitative business data using tables and graphs. You will learn how to select the appropriate medium of communication (table vs. graph, and which type) and how to visually design each component to express your message clearly and compellingly.

Dashboard Design for at-a-Glance Monitoring - 6th October 2011

Dashboards offer an exciting new way to provide people at a glance with the critical information they must monitor to do their jobs. This full-day course reaches past the hype to give you the unique design skills required to build dashboards that really work.

Now You See It: Visual Data Analysis - 7th October 2011

Most business data analysis requires skills and practices involving the use of graphs that can be easily learned, but resources that teach them are almost impossible to find. Almost all books and courses on data analysis teach sophisticated statistical and financial analysis techniques, but only about 10% of business data analysis requires them. This full-day course is for those responsible for the remaining 90%.

To download a brochure giving further details of these workshops, simply complete this form and a link to a brochure will be sent to you. If you have any issues completing the form please email qed@marketingqed.com.

Details of London courses being run by Stephen Few. Might be interesting for someone from MS to go. If you agree with this, who do you think should go. Me or you (or someone else?).

Visual Business Intelligence

I’ve just returned from a week in Pamplona, Spain. No, I didn’t run with the bulls, but I did something equally exciting: I deliberated with the judges at Malofiej 19, an international competition and summit dedicated to journalistic infographics. I and 9 other judges worked hard for 3½ days to review over 1,000 print entries and 300 online entries, resulting in 7 gold medals, plus around 25 silver and 70 bronze medals for infographic excellence.

(Pictured from left to right: Ryan Sparrow of Ball State University, Stephen Few of Perceptual Edge, Joe Ward of the New York Times, and Matt Perry of the San Diego Union Tribune.)

I learned a great deal during the week and made several new friends. I was deeply impressed with several extraordinary examples of infographics that demonstrated visual eloquence both through superb storytelling and graphical design. Infographics can be extraordinarily powerful when used appropriately (that is, when pictures work better than words) and well designed by combining beauty (appealing and engaging form) and usability (spot on functionality), without compromising either.

This year’s top prizes:

Best of Show (print): National Geographic, for “Gulf of Mexico: A Geography of Offshore Oil,” the story of oil drilling and drilling rights, primarily along the coast of Louisiana.

Best of Show (online): New York Times, for its demonstration of Mariano Rivera’s unique pitching style, titled “How Mariano Rivera Dominates Hitters.” Take the time to watch this amazing combination of narration and motion graphics.

Best Map: National Geographic, for “Rivers of the World,” a gorgeous map of the world’s rivers and lakes.

These infographics are exquisite examples of how well words and pictures can be combined to inform clearly and beautifully to engage and enlighten.

In addition to working as a judge, I also spoke at the summit. The title of my presentation was “Infographics and the Brain: Designing Graphics to Inform.”

Take care,

One of the other 'superstars' in the world of DV. Have a few more links etc to follow. Safe to say he is not a fan of Mr McAndless. He is availble for consulting (@$4k/day eek)...

Zipcar’s IPO: A $1B Subscription Economy Success Story | Zuora, Inc.

« Jimdo, a German-Based B2C Juggernaut Goes Global | Main

April 15, 2011

Zipcar’s IPO: A $1B Subscription Economy Success Story

by Kyle Christensen, Senior Director of Product Marketing


It started in the technology sector, as new business models often do. Salesforce.com offered a completely different approach to buying software. Why throw down millions of dollars for servers and CD’s when you could subscribe to software, delivered as a service, over the internet?


This week we saw yet another proof point that the Subscription Economy is taking over. No, not with news of another SaaS company assuming leadership in a technology sector (although SaaS will be 85% of all new software by next year.) Not with an old guard media company transitioning to a new digital subscription strategy (that was last month.) We see it in an industry that’s not exactly known as “bleeding edge”: The automotive industry.


This week Zipcar announced an IPO at $18 per share to raise a total of $174.3 million to expand the company’s network (currently over half a million subscribers.) And the market promptly drove the share price up to $30. That's a $1 billion valuation. It’s no wonder. Why drop $30,000 on a single car that you’re stuck with for the next 5-10 years? Leasing was the next step in the evolution...you pay only for the value of the car that you use for 2-3 years. But that still doesn’t deliver the true value of the Subscription Economy. You're still locked into one vehicle, with no room to ramp your usage up or down. Then Zipcar came along and figured it out, fully embracing the concept of cars delivered as a service. Take a station wagon to get groceries on Thursday, grab a convertible to cruse the coast on Friday, then pick up an SUV to shoot up to the mountains on Saturday. Plus you’ve got gas-as-a-service and insurance-as-a-service bundled in. You pay more when you need to ramp up your millage and time, or you can throttle it back if you need to. Not a bad option with gas prices being what they are today.


It’s that subscription flexibility that’s tied to both the service you get and the price you pay that has customers demanding new subscription services across technology, media, communications, and now transportation. Congratulations on your success in the Subscription Economy, Zipcar! We can’t wait to see who’s next.

Posted at 01:04 PM | Permalink |

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