Most members of CMG are very comfortable working with numbers. Otherwise we would have found a different profession. But there are a couple of reasons to look beyond the numbers, to ways to present information visually. It’s not merely a bow to the old saw about a picture being worth a thousand words.
First off, we need to communicate with managers and others who may be less comfortable with numbers than we are. Many of us do this by making graphs of the numbers we have, but there is a lot more we could do.
Secondly, as good as we are with numbers, it is worth considering that the human brain has a lot more years of working to detect patterns in visual data. That skill, after all, was what kept our ancestors alive. When we can generate pictures for our own use, we can find that the patterns we would eventually recognize in the raw numbers simply leap out at us.
For both these reasons, Visualization is one of the Hot Topics that we are focusing on at CMG’08. We have two Sunday workshops on Visualization topics: in the morning, Dr. James Bouhana presents “Visualizing SLA Compliance and Risk Management” and in the afternoon, Jim Holtman presents “Visualization and Analysis of Performance Data using R”. Also, in addition to several sessions during the week, on Wednesday morning, Dr. Jeff Buzen will moderate a panel of previous Michelson Award winners discussing Visualization. Don’t miss it!
How do you find all of the Visualization sessions? Just check the Off-the-Shelf Agenda for Visualization in the online Conference Scheduler: http://www.cmg.org/cgi-bin/conf_sched.pl
So now is the time. Come to CMG’08 and learn how you can expand your tool kit and do your job faster and better. Get your CMG’08 Registration information on-line at http://www.cmg.org/conference/cmg2008/reg.html and don’t forget to book your hotel: http://www.cmg.org/conference/cmg2008/hotel.html
I look forward to seeing you in Las Vegas!
Bill Jouris
Program Chair
CMG ‘08