I’m a project guy. As an artist, entrepreneur, educator and amateur philosopher, I always have a number of projects going, both personal and professional. Sometimes they go somewhere, sometimes I get bored and abandon them. One of the beauties of the internet is that even abandoned projects continue to exist and can be picked up or reenergized at any moment. Here’s the definitive list of projects that I am working on or have worked on in the past (A work in progress). The list is alphabetical because I don’t work on these projects in any kind of linear way. They are like a busy kitchen: there is always something simmering, something boiling, something set aside to cool for awhile, something in the deep freeze, and something being served. In fact I am still working on this list. If you see something with no explanation it’s because I haven’t finished writing the description yet.
Annotated is a project that grew out of Flickr’s notes function, which was inspired by my friend Greg Elin’s project, fotonotes. Greg’s idea began with an idea that people could use multiple photos and string them together to tell a story, kind of like a PowerPoint presentation or slide show. But when he got into the project he discovered that people were more interested in telling a story using the elements of a single photo, and so they needed a way to “point” to elements within an image. I think this is one of the more fascinating developments on the internet today and terribly underrated. I started several Flickr groups for annotated photos, including annotated work spaces, annotated notes and sketches, and annotated life.
Another new blog. Just a joke really.
The Browser and the Book is the subject of a recent talk that I gave where I looked at the history of the book as a technology and looked for insights that might help us design better web browsers. I plan to publish that soon as an unbook.
The Cafe is a sort of “Superfriends” of the consulting world. It’s a work in progress. I just noticed my picture isn’t on there. Maybe I got fired.
Catalogue of an exhibition is the working title for an art project; a novel in the form of an exhibition catalogue. I am working on it with an artist, writer and scholar named D. Edward Mosley. Here are some of the images from the project. Check out the notes!
Communication Nation is a somewhat eclectic blog that also serves as my email newsletter. You can subscribe here.
Dave’s Faves is a blog I started to post images that I found interesting. Not much there, this one is pretty inactive.
Dave Gray is a blog where I post oil paintings when I decide to sell them. You can also subscribe to an email list where I send out notifications when I decide to sell a painting (which is not very often). I usually sell them on eBay. I also sell prints of them which you can buy here.
Dave Gray’s reading list. I give a lot of talks and people often ask me if I have any book recommendations. I started this list to catalogue the books I find interesting. With each book recommendation I try to write a short summary explaining why I find the book useful or interesting.
Discovery cards. My interest in visual thinking naturally leads to an exploration of nonlinear, visual methods for thinking and communicating. I have always been interested in games and card decks — the concept of shuffling things and recombining them to spark thinking was the nature of this exploration.
Hi! streams random notes from my digital world.
Infography is a group blog dedicated to the emerging discipline of infography. Let me know if you’d like to join that one as an author.
The Infography Manifesto is a work in progress. When I finally figure out what it needs to say I will want the world to start signing it. I hope you will share your thoughts, comments and ideas for improving it here.
Listmania was an Amazon reading list that I compiled several years ago. It reflects my top reading choices at the time. Since then I have started a new list with many more books in it, which better reflects my current thinking. This one is called Dave Gray’s reading list and I think it’s a better list. You can find it here.
Marks and Meaning is kind of an ongoing notebook where I keep my ideas as they evolve. It’s a fairly loose collection of thoughts, some of which are intelligible and some of which are still being considered, honed, refined.
The Meshuggah sessions is a podcast idea that I am exploring with Thomas Crone. It will probably take the form of a series of recorded conversations at the Meshuggah coffeehouse, which is an eclectic and fascinating place you have to experience to understand.
My Flickr photostream. Flickr is an online photo-sharing website that has changed my life in may ways. I see it as a global community of people who are visually oriented. To me it’s the online equivalent of an intellectual coffeehouse, full or stimulating conversations about art, science and all kinds of other things.
Notations is my first foray into the blogosphere and comes, paradoxically, after my first talk on blogging (and one of my first public talks), which was in 2001 at Reboot 4.0 in Copenhagen. I was invited because XPLANE was one of the first companies to take blogging seriously as a business tool, and our web/blog genius, Bill Keaggy, who prefers the shadows, pushed me into the limelight. Anyway it was there that I met some of today’s blogging superstars: Justin Hall, Dave Winer, Evan Williams, Thomas Madsen-Mygdal, Douglas Rushkoff and Mark Hurst. I was blown away by the conference, and when I got home I started this blog. As an exercise I tried to write a short poem every day. It was a fun project but nobody came, which is how I learned that feedback and appreciation fuel my creative energy — without it the energy dies.
The Overlap is an example of the tribal fires concept I am thinking about. I’ve gotten somewhat involved in organizing this event.
I was originally trained as an artist and I still do a lot of oil painting, although I rarely sell them.
Quotations. When people say things that I consider pithy or interesting I write them down. These may become a book someday.
Selling to the VP of NO. My first book, self-published, which began with the idea of making business books that were brief and visually engaging — children’s books for grownups. This idea is still a passion of mine which I am continuing to explore. It was also an interesting experiment in self-publishing and outsourcing (I printed it in China), which is a story of its own.
I’m sketching out ideas all the time. In fact you’ll rarely find me without a sketchbook. My current favorite sketchbook and pen can be found on my reading list.
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