Saturday January 29, 2005
Saturday January 29, 2005 A few weeks ago, Danese, Andy and I flew up to Oregon for a meeting. Contrary to usual habit, we flew out of the Oakland airport, which one of my friends used to call "his favorite toy airport." If you ever flew through Oakland in those days, you'd understand - it used to be so small!
I was so impressed with the new screens in the Oakland terminal that listed arriving and departing flights that I begged Danese to take a picture. Here it is. Alternating colors on the rows, recognizable logos that your eye is drawn to, use of color for cancelled flights... Edward Tufte might even be impressed, especially in comparison to the black and white monitors of years past, with line after line of flight information that looked the same to weary, travelling eyes. I found the old flight lists particularly frustrating when trying to make a connection with just minutes to spare - ugh!
For those of you unfamilar with Tufte, I recommend you check out Tufte's class on "Presenting Data and Information". If you live near Atlanta, Knoxville, Nashville, Boston or Arlington, Virginia, then you're in luck - Tufte will be teaching in those cities this spring. He is a charismatic teacher, and his beautiful books are included in the price of the class. I'm so enamored with this class that I encouraged 8 people on my team to attend the Palo Alto class last December. And even with all the hype I generated beforehand, they all came back with good things to say.
One more comment about the trip - the Portland airport now has free wifi in 70% of its terminal. Beautiful. Although it did contribute to some antisocial behavior over dinner as Andy, Danese and I tried to catch up quickly on everything we'd missed that day...
(2005-01-29 16:22:00.0) Permalink
