I’ve been getting a little bored with the more traditional ways to document and share information and concepts with colleagues. Tables are uninspiring and mindmaps can only take you so far. Sometimes you need a more fine-tuned mechanism to share knowledge. Along to the rescue comes The Periodic Table of Visualization Methods from Ralph Lengler and Martin Eppler at Visual Literacy (via Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools).

What’s particularly nifty is that as you hover over each element, you see the method in action. And bonus points for using the periodic tables as yet another visualization method. There are over 100 methods here so now I have no excuses for falling into an idea presentation funk again.

I’m a sucker for good visual data and the map generated by Kevin Stolarick at the Richard Florida Creativity Group is particularly interesting. Using data on where the creative class lives, county by county, he has been able to show the ‘heat’ of the creative hotspots and the spillover into neighboring areas. (Click here for the pdf containing drill-down views of different U.S. regions)

Even though Kevin provides a brief glimpse at his methodology, I’m still not sure about the data he’s using. It would be interesting to see it in its raw form.

So, the question I have as I look over this map is what this means for businesses and for creatives. For the latter, it clearly shows where to find other creatives and probably more fulfilling work options.

Some questions to ponder:

Is there a reason why Arizona, Nevada, and much of the west are relatively cool to creatives? It’s interesting that Southern California doesn’t factor into the map. New Orleans is still fairly hot. The area around Cincinnati is positively smoking. Bear in mind that I haven’t really dug into Florida’s core research so I find these trends curious.

Is geography still an important influence? We hear about creative folks ditching the big city scene for the small town or rural environment. And as long as there is a basic supportive infrastructure – I’m going to put high-speed internet/communications toward the top of that list – can’t you just move out to Santa Fe, New Mexico or Fargo, ND for a more creatively conducive environment? Will there be a point where the internet (or another future technology…like teleportation…I’m serious) will make geography an obsolete concept?

Do you see something interesting about the map? Any surprises?

Looking for some way to fire up your employees? Or maybe just thinking about setting fire to them? Well Steve Sharam (who can also be found pondering at When Reality Knocks) offers up some helpful tips based on past best practices.

Case in point:

In ancient Rome, there was a group of female priests called the Vestal Virgins whose job it was to make sure the eternal flame didn’t go out. That was it. Pretty cushy job, really. They had socialized medicine, weekly manicures and complementary bus-passes, which for the ancient world was pretty good. If they didn’t do a good job and keep the fire going, however, they would be buried alive with little food and water and lose their discount at J. C. Penny’s. Now it seems clear to me that all you’d have to do is off a couple of these vestal virgins and the rest would be really strongly motivated to keep the damned fire going already.

Yes, it’s about time we make examples of those slack jawed, adequately achieving, middle of the pack folks. Make them fight a few bears in the office kitchen. Or bring out the tar and feathers (there’s a punishment that deserves a revival).

It’ll do two things…it will scare the bejesus out of the lower performers and give the higher performers some much needed entertainment.