23 Aug 2004 | Darrel said...

And if you are coming form out of town, remember that driving out of downtown during rush hour is impossible. (But it's still worth attending his show.)

24 Aug 2004 | Al Abut said...

I went to one of his day-long gigs in LA last year, drove up from San Diego - highly worth it. Got a sneak preview of his rant against Powerpoint before he went live with that, just that alone was a great investment in how to make great presentations and I've used the advice since.

And he also happened to be debuting some of his art at a nearby gallery that many of us walked over to see, a very interesting day to say the least. I started talking to one of the volunteers at the museum about the sculptures, an interesting old lady - I found out later it was his mom! What a day...

24 Aug 2004 | graph it! said...

You make out with her?

24 Aug 2004 | qwerty said...

I can only second what others have said: Tufte's presentation are great in every aspect. They are both entertaining and insightful. And you can take home three beautiful books. I believe Tufte's advice is most important for people who present a lot of data, especially from experiments or empirical research.

24 Aug 2004 | Greg said...

I don't know what's so great about Tufte live, he pretty much reads from his books. That said for the price it's a great way to get the entire collection and get out of the office for the day.

24 Aug 2004 | Sharif said...

I don't know... I read a lot of Tufte in school, and enjoyed him immensely.

So, I went to a presentation in DC a couple years ago, and found his delivery terribly off-putting. He was very hurried and rather condescending. He repeatedly referred to "people like me" (intellectuals?, gurus?) and "people like you" (laymen?, peons?).

Since most of the presentation is directly from his texts, I'd buy the books (and poster) themselves, and spend the extra couple hundred bucks on something else.

24 Aug 2004 | Al Abut said...

Whoa, not to sound like an apologist but I didn't get any of that at all. It was a great lecture, well timed and effective. Maybe he didn't have his coffee or something for those other parts of the tour...

What did throw me off (maybe this was an LA thing) was the number of people I talked to during the breaks that had no idea who he was or had any kind of related jobs, they were just a bunch of people from the financial industry whose giant corporations had bought batches of tickets and asked if anyone was interested in going. There I was, web designer seeking to hone my craft and sapping up every word, surrounded by yawning clock punchers. Yuck. At least I got a lot out of it.

25 Aug 2004 | Greg said...

Sounds like Sharif and I had a very similar experience. Tufte makes great books but I've never seen someone stroke himself so much in front of a live audience.

25 Aug 2004 | SJ said...

Sorry to say, but I've got to weigh in with Greg & Sharif. Love Tufte's stuff in the books, and the seminar (I was at Chicago 2002) was a good intro to the texts, but that's the best I can say for the live gig.

30 Jan 2005 | compatelius said...

bocigalingus must be something funny.