
This was written about visualising the opened09 Open Education conference. But it is more widely useful as an exploration of the affordances of visualisation generally as an aid to understanding. In the Institutional innovation programme I am trying to understand the basic questions underlying visualisation of the programme: people, projects, technologies, themes and how they link. Even before you ask the question, “what does it mean” you have to ask more fundamental questions. In observing that Twitter networks were interesting Tony Hirst first did a manual filter of frequency of posts over time. What are the first questions that give shape to the Institutional Innovation visualisation?