I’m sitting in SFO with a few hours to kill. A little while ago, I concluded the last gig on my San Francisco tour for The Visual Organization. By all accounts, it was a very successful four days. All in all, I gave nine talks at the following places:

1. Autodesk – I saw my first 3D printer in person and generally speaking geeked out on the second floor. What amazing designs!
2. Netflix – Two words: Tech Emmy. See selfie in slideshow below. The hosts also gave me some very cool swag.
3. Tableau –  Right before speaking, I received without question the best news of the tour: Tableau purchased quite a few books. It was the second largest order of books of my writing career. Bulk sales rule.
4. eBay – Before going on, I was able to speak to some folks making the magic happen at eBay. Theory is fine, but being able to learn from people putting ideas into practice never disappoints.
5. CMU Silicon Valley Campus – Fantastic campus and very smart cookies. I like to say that if you’re the smartest one in the room, you’re in the wrong room.
6. CollabWorks – By this point, I was really warmed up. This might have been my best talk of the tour.  I finally met CMU alumni Terri Griffith and Andrew Karpie in person.
7. Trifacta – Excellent new digs. We set some type of record for number of Apple doohickeys required to make a presentation work.
8. Platfora – Fantastic Q&A and a slew of copies of the book to sign. Very hip workplace with amazing data visualizations on the walls. While most startups sport the obligatory ping pong table, Platfora one-ups them with an actual gong.

Data

Here are a few numbers from the tour:

• Total events: 9
• Lectures: 7
• Interviews: 2
• Books signed: 132
• Number of talks in which I mentioned Breaking Bad: 7
• Tomatoes thrown: 0 (always a good sign)

Misc.

I also got to meet up with Datahero founder Chris Neumann for drinks and an interesting talk about, well, data stuff. Finally, my hotel sported a #Rush door sign (see slideshow). I, er, borrowed that for home.

Here are some pics:

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  Yeah, I worked Katy Perry in to the Netflix talk.

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  Speaking at Autodesk about The Visual Organization: San Fran

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  Autodesk talk

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  Speaking at Trifacta

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  Keynoting Collabworks conference in San Francisco

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  Carnegie Mellon SV Campus

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  Books at Platfora

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  Talking with Platfora VP Pete Shlampp.

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  Hotel door sign. Nice.

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  Tech Selfie at Netflix HQ

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  3D printer at Autodesk

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  Output from Autodesk 3D printer

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  Netflix HQ Lobby

To watch the Netflix talk, click below:

This was an unexpected highlight:

Click image to embiggen it.

Finally, thank you to all of the companies and people who helped make the tour happen.