[ChuckMcM]

That was too bad. I know many people who have been to the seminars (myself included) and from that I concluded that they are "uneven" which is to say sometimes they are better than other times. I didn't pursue finding the correlations which might illuminate why they varied, some suggestions were how tired Tufte was, or how rushed.

The one I went to was held at Stanford and we had a lunch afterwards where questions and discussions were entertained. The questions definitely broke down into the three classes of 'fan', 'learner', and 'skeptic'. I was fairly put off by the treatment of skeptics, in that the answers or discussion they received were of the form, "hey you paid to be here, if you don't like it just leave." Which doesn't really help.

Personally I got a lot of out both the seminar and the books. I certainly approach the development of infographics in my presentations differently than I did before being exposed to his material. I try to have graphics that convey the primary point easily (for people skimming), supporting data (for people who are trying to understand the point), and other related correlations (for skeptics who want to dispute the point). It takes more time, but it gives you something much more substantive to have up on the screen while you are discussing the point in a group.