I hope your May was as sweet and lush as ours was in Nashville, my family's home for the last 18 months.

My wife and our two little girls just moved from the countryside, 30 miles south of the city, to a leafy neighborhood where we are rediscovering the joys of sidewalks, porches and waving to neighbors we barely know.

(Dog names are so much easier to remember!)

Below are the eclectic articles and information graphics that caught my eye over the last month, beginning with the best advice ever, brought to us by the Heath brothers, Chip and Dan. Thanks to everyone who continues to make stuff and make stuff happen in spite of all the gloom and doom pulsing through the airwaves.

Myself, I cope by eliminating television from my life and helping my daughter color with markers, which, to her, is a full-time job!

Wishing you warm regards and long walks,

Your Boss Is a Monkey

This Fast Company article was inspired by a woman who studied animal trainers who could teach whales not to spit, dolphins to jump through hoops, and monkeys to ride skateboards. She asked herself: "What if I used those techniques on my husband?!" The Heath brothers, authors of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die apply this approach to another irritable mammal: your boss. http://www.alphachimp.com/clients/2008/04/your-boss-is-monkey.html

MUTO: An Ambiguous Animation Painted on Public Walls
Imagine creating a 7 minute short animated film using hand drawn black-and-white line drawings. At 12 frames per second, you would have to create 5040 individual drawings. Now image creating the same number of sequential images but with spray paint on public buildings.
http://www.alphachimp.com/clients/2008/05/muto-ambiguous-animation-painted-on.html

Meeting on the Right Side of the Brain
We've been preaching it for years. I guess it it now news: Creative work environments improve creative thinking! Congrats to Leslie Marquard on leading the piece. Thanks for bringing "right-brained thinking" to a "left-brained" world.
http://www.alphachimp.com/clients/2008/05/meeting-on-right-side-of-brain.html

Australia 2020
Graphic facilitator Gavin Blake writes us of his exciting collaboration with other facilitators and scribes at a national summit in Australia's capital, Canberra. Attendees included Hugh Jackman,
http://graphicfacilitation.blogs.com/pages/2008/05/australia-2020.html

Design and the Elastic Mind clipped from www.coolhunting.com.
To document MoMA's wonderful, monumental exhibit spanning design, science and technology, "Design and the Elastic Mind," we enlisted the help of the show's esteemed curator, Paola Antonelli.
http://www.alphachimp.com/clients/2008/04/design-and-elastic-mind.html

Elephant Scribe
This video speaks of the power of visual language to communicate across cultures... and species! In it, an elephant paints a self-portrait (no joke).
http://graphicfacilitation.blogs.com/pages/2008/04/elephant-scribe.html

Once Again, Moustache Madness sweeps Germany
clipped from www.reuters.com. German beard and moustache championship draws more than 100 men from various countries to compete for most extravagant look. Organized by the Eastern Bavarian Beard and Moustache Club, the event drew ...
http://www.alphachimp.com/clients/2008/04/once-again-moustache-madness-sweeps.html

From Idea Sandbox: The Prioritizer
I have wasted so many man hours (or monkeyman hours!) researching GTD and Zen Habits and Flylady techniques. In the end. All I need to know is what to do next, based on what is most important. Paul Williams' simple on-line tool helps ...
http://www.alphachimp.com/clients/2008/04/from-idea-sandbox-prioritizer.html

The Point: Web 2.0 tool for creating your own change
The Point brings together problems, people, and the pressure of collective action. The site allows users to create campaigns and encourage other people to join anonymously. Once the number of members reaches a certain critical mass action is triggered on a mass scale.
http://graphicfacilitation.blogs.com/pages/2008/04/the-point-web-2.html

Fiefdoms & Freakonomics
Hosted by Carlos Gasca Yanez on the Social Edge, this on-line discussion addresses what is the oldest, most intractable problem facing any group of people trying to do anything: fragmentation. You see it in religion, politics, and art.
http://www.alphachimp.com/clients/2008/04/fiefdoms-freakonomics.html

Better Mental Health, Down on the Farm
Since moving to a little farmhouse in middle Tennessee, my mental health has improved tremendously. I find it difficult to feel anxious or depressed when outside or working with animals (be they bovine, equine or human!).
http://www.alphachimp.com/clients/2008/04/better-mental-health-down-on-farm.html

Quieting the Demons and Giving Art a Voice
clipped from www.nytimes.com
Two new books highlight the writing of authors with mental illness. In "Madness: A Bipolar Life", Marya Hornbacher brings to the discussion more than the usual pairing of disturbed brain and talented mind. "Poets on Prozac: Mental Illness, Treatment, and the Creative Process" is a collection of essays solicited from published poets with psychiatric illness.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/29/health/29book.html?_r=1&nl=8hlth&emc=hltha1&oref=slogin

Food for Oil
While the Developed World frets over the current crises [plural for crisis] which have sucked the value out of most of America's larger financial assets, the rest of the developing world is again struggling to afford the basics, namely, ...
http://www.alphachimp.com/clients/2008/04/food-for-oil.html

Storytelling and Social Change clipped from www.socialedge.org.
Recent years have seen a number of effective projects using storytelling and marketing techniques to turn the needle on important social issues.
http://www.alphachimp.com/clients/2008/04/storytelling-and-social-change.html

Consensus on Colors clipped from www.kk.org
Extremely useful when shopping for ties, or arguing with your spouse about what color to paint the kitchen. The folks at Dolores Blog "showed thousands of random colors to people on Mechanical Turk and asked what ...
http://graphicfacilitation.blogs.com/pages/2008/04/consensus-on-co.html

Governing Sovereign Wealth Flows
A wonderful New York Times graphic showing the global flows of sovereign wealth. A sovereign wealth fund is a huge heap of money that is controlled by a nation -- say Singapore or Saudi Arabia -- rather than by a private transnational company--known as private equity funds--and their investments have been prime movers in global finance for decades.
http://www.alphachimp.com/clients/2008/04/governing-sovereign-wealth-flows.html

Nihilistic Neighborliness
The folks at Worldchanging.com are seriously challenging me, and our communities, by pushing against the greenest of our most well-intentioned green-consumerism, by declaring: "But there is a danger in thinking that all we have to do is design better substitutes for the products we already consume, and then convince people to buy them."
http://www.alphachimp.com/clients/2008/04/nihilistic-neighborliness.html