Watershed Perspectives

September brought fascinating work with clients across the country and across sectors, but one theme kept emerging organically. This is one of my favorite things about being a graphic facilitator – we get to listen, learn and make connections.

This month I keep hearing a similar idea from a team working on resilient coasts and watersheds, to social and ecological scientists working in mountain systems around the world, to community-led conservation practitioners:  

The same small perspective just doesn’t cut it. To really solve problems for our environment and people, we need to look at challenges from a larger perspective, like a watershed. If we’re only looking to solve problems for one community or piece of the ecosystem, there are bound to be repercussions or solutions that don’t last. Looking for system connections

Is there a way for you to take a “watershed” approach to a problem or challenge to look for a solution in a place you may not have thought of?

Once again, thank you from my heart and soul for your support, great senses of humor, brilliant minds, collaboration and what you're each doing to make the world a better place.

Cheers,

Where in the World is ConverSketch?

Seattle, WA: Facilitating with the Wilderness Society’s Community-Led Conservation team as they explore what it would take to create a supportive, inclusive, and effective community of practice.

Basalt, CO: With mountain researchers from around the world exploring the potential of creating a new alliance to elevate indigenous and mountain community voices for better climate policy.

Denver, CO: With the Attainment Network learning and sharing about different career pathways to support students who may not choose to or think they can attend university.

Virginia Beach, VA: With the Environmental Defense Fund kicking off a series of systems thinking workshops for the Resilient Coasts and Watersheds team – the rest of the workshops are virtual throughout the fall.

Three Reasons to Put It on Paper

Have you ever been in the middle of a conversation, a book, or a brainstorm and felt like you needed to grab a pencil and paper to start writing things down? If so, you’re not alone! Here are three reasons to grab a notebook or scrap of paper and get your ideas on paper:

• Kinesthetic connection sparks memory. The act of physically writing rather than typing has been shown to improve memory through the movement of putting a pen to paper. Read more here.

• Take a (cognitive) load off. Our brains can only keep track of a finite amount of information at once, so writing or drawing your ideas out allows you to let go of some of the load while continuing what you’re doing. Getting it on paper allows you to look for connections, which also reduces cognitive load.

• Words and pictures are powerful. Writing things down with intention can be a powerful practice to focus your energy, thoughts, and emotions to let go of or bring in more of what you want. I enjoy creating vision boards during the new year or times of change to help me organize and focus my intentions.

For more science about why writing things down works for your brain, check out this one on complexity.

Once again, thank you from my heart and soul for your support, great senses of humor, brilliant minds, collaboration and what you're each doing to make the world a better place.

Cheers,

Where in the World is ConverSketch?

In Case You Missed It: We’re expecting twins in December! For more on what this means for ConverSketch over the coming months, check out this post.

In the Studio: Working on a series of videos about wildfire safety, and a series of illustrations of local food gatherings around the state of Colorado. Here’s a snippet:

Collectively & Creatively Reinventing Expectations

Have you felt it?

During and as the pandemic has evolved, I’ve heard and felt the same thing you probably have.

“I’m so busy…”

“It’s crazy these days.”

“Parenting and working is just…a lot right now.” (Understatement)

The burnout is real. So is the creative reinvention.

What can we do to dial the intensity of expectations down together, collectively and creatively?

If you work with people, here are some suggestions I’ve see and heard lately:

• Establish communication norms. Is there a platform where instant replies are/aren’t expected? One group I recently graphic facilitated articulated that a Teams message could be sent any time, and the recipient would respond when they were able. More urgent matters were direct phone calls.

• Practice a monthly Deepening Day. This team also imagined a once-a-month day dedicated to any sort of personal or professional development the person felt would best serve them. Ideas ranged from attending events to making time for extended lunches with partners or colleagues to setting an away message from email to focus on deep work.

• Live the values: Whether you’re a leader or a co-worker, shifting culture starts with each person on the team. Demonstrating by not responding immediately to every email, or sharing insights from your Deepening Day, or taking those vacation days can all contribute to shifting the pace and expectations we hold each other to.

And really, take that time off to breathe.

Once again, thank you from my heart and soul for your support, great senses of humor, brilliant minds, collaboration and what you're each doing to make the world a better place.

Cheers,

Where in the World is ConverSketch?

In the Studio: Working on video storyboards, synthesis illustrations, and preparing to facilitate a workshop here in Fort Collins next week. Here’s a close-up of one of 11 regional local food gatherings around the state of Colorado I’m visually distilling for display at a Summit happening this winter.

Back from the River: There’s nothing like six days completely offline to refresh and reset. Here’s a painting of the stunning canyon created from camp one evening.

Dark Times Require Deep Imagination

This post by @cleowade simultaneously validated the heaviness underlying current events, while also sparking hope and empowerment in my heart.

If you’ve been feeling like things are just extra difficult or heavy right now, please be gentle with yourself and each other. Rest, love, and ignite the imagination deep within you.

I’m heading off for a week on the river tomorrow and will be back to phone and email after July 7th.

Once again, thank you from my heart and soul for your support, great senses of humor, brilliant minds, collaboration and what you're each doing to make the world a better place.

Cheers,

Where in the World is ConverSketch?

Boulder, CO: Graphically facilitating a workshop for a team of education and outreach stars who tell stories and collaborate with climate and atmospheric scientists to better communicate the work and research. Here is the visual agenda for the day.

Global Council for Science and the Environment: Attending a 4-day, virtual, global conference for GCSE. Many organizations talk about how to be inclusive, equitable, and just. GCSE is walking the talk – the speakers included Indigenous peoples, Black and Brown people, women, and people representing the global south and north. I am immensely proud to get to support this organization!

Colorado HIV/AIDS Strategic Planning: Both remote and in-person listening sessions with populations affected by and vulnerable to HIV as they share with the State how strategic investments can truly provide support and services they need.

POP It!

Having a clear purpose in a meeting is something you’ve heard from me before – whether it’s a 15-minute check in or a 2-day off-site, when the organizers and the participants are extremely clear on the purpose of why they’re being asked to be there, engagement and the ability to measure if the outcomes were successful follow.

And, thanks to this excellent blog from Drawing Change, I just learned about a super handy, straightforward tool to make the meeting planning even better. It’s called POP, which stands for: 

Purpose, Outcome, Process

Developed by the Rockwood Institute, beyond defining the Purpose, or your why for convening the meeting, you add two more simple ideas. Your Outcome “speaks to what – the vision of what success will look and feel like when you “arrive.” And finally, your Process outlines the “how – the specific steps involved in getting there.”

It’s easy to jump straight to the process design, but if you’re clear on why you’re there and what it will look and feel like to be successful, that enormous investment of time, energy, resources, thinking, good food, and space together will be easier to measure and follow through on. 

So, here’s a graphic facilitator style worksheet you can use to help your group work through your POP for your next meeting – I hope you enjoy it!

Once again, thank you from my heart and soul for your support, great senses of humor, brilliant minds, collaboration and what you're each doing to make the world a better place.

Cheers, 

Where in the Virtual World is ConverSketch?

River Investigators Action Guide is Out in the World! I’ve had the joy of collaborating with watershed researchers at Colorado State University to illustrate an activity guide for children to explore our local river, the Cache la Poudre. Here’s a snapshot, and you can see a video of me flipping through pages on Instagram.

ShapingEDU Mini-Summit: Emerging Credentials Standards: Convening educators, industry professionals, and folks in K-12 education to discuss the future, power, and challenges of badges and credentials in addition to or in place of a traditional 4-year college degree. 

Learner Perspectives on Career-Connected Education Symposium: In another event focused on students, this symposium centered learners as speakers and panelists to guide the conversation and offer suggestions to make it easier to navigate the higher education system for successful career paths.

Here’s How to Channel That Inner Creative Kid

Do you ever feel like you can’t draw? I felt that way too. In fact, I dropped my art degree in college because I didn’t think I was “good enough”. 

On a recent graphic recording job, someone remarked “I wish I could draw like that!” and I replied, as I almost always do, “anyone can draw!”. You might roll your eyes at me, but roll with me for a sentence or two.

When you were a kid and someone gave you paper and markers and said “go for it”, that’s exactly what you’d do, right? Those papers would be covered in stories, made up worlds, families! Then…something changes along the way and you start to doubt. And draw less. And less. 

You (probably) wouldn’t run a marathon without training, right?

Why on earth would we expect ourselves to be excellent at something we don’t allow ourselves to practice?

The generous and talented late Howard Ikemoto put it better:

“When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at the college- that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared back at me, incredulous, and said, ‘You mean they forget?’”

— Howard Ikemoto

So give yourself a chance. A blank piece of paper can be intimidating. To get over that, you can cut straight to the chase and make a title in the center of the page, or start with making some marks in the corners, playfully, that loosen you up. Here’s a blog post where I show another fun way to get used to making marks on blank pieces of paper.

Once again, thank you from my heart and soul for your support, great senses of humor, brilliant minds, collaboration and what you're each doing to make the world a better place.

Cheers, 

Where in the Virtual World is ConverSketch?

I’m teaching a workshop…today! This morning (CO time) I’m sharing my insights and practices for email marketing with my colleagues for the International Forum of Visual Practitioners - here’s a snippet of the outline I’m going to be working through with participants.

Adobe Creative Campus: Not only did I get to illustrate the presentations and key ideas from the Creative Campus Collaboration, I also got to design some swag for the participants – check out this tote and tumbler! The team at Adobe also crushed it and had this page highlighting the graphics and sound bites put together by the end of the day.

Denver: An in-person job – hooray! Working on paper and with chalks to support higher education executives and CIOs discussing how to support students in a digital age.

10 Things about Creativity that Are Still True 10 Years Later

ConverSketch is officially 10 years old today! 

Thank you. You’re the reason I get to write this!

Anniversaries are a great excuse to celebrate and taking time to recognize milestones feels especially important right now as time is simultaneously flying, blurring, interpretive dancing - whatever it’s doing - during covid. 

Every year I like to share things that have resonated or I’ve learned as a self-employed creative. My hope is that you find something useful to try, or that validates what feels true to you, or might push your comfort zone a little bit, in the best way possible. 

10 is a nice number and feels like a big deal! So, here is my list of 10 Things about Creativity that Are Still True 10 Years Later:

1. Creativity is Not a Talent... I often come back to this quote from Hugh Mcleod: “Creativity is not a talent. Creativity is a drive,” because it moves creativity from the pedestal of Something Only Some People Have to a Skill Anyone Can Cultivate. Do the work, do it to the best of your ability, ask how to get better, embrace the practice of what you get to do every day.

2. Creativity Requires Rest. Sometimes it’s important to do “nothing”, to move in your body and integrate information, make connections, to disconnect, to rest well, to be kind and gentle with yourself. 

3. Creativity is Authentic. Be yourself, your unique way of being and perceiving in the world is incredibly valuable and may inspire or make sense to someone in a way nothing else has. 

4. Appreciation Feeds the Creative Soul. When I’m frustrated or drained, taking a minute to brainstorm what I appreciate in that moment is an energy reset. I remind myself that I have the great privilege of doing this work with people who are making the world better.

5. Intuition Guides Creativity. In moments when I have felt something deep within, no matter how illogical it might seem, in those moments when I do listen to that inner feeling and go with it, I know in my bones it is the path to take in that time. Maybe not the easiest, but often ease emerges in ways I don’t expect.

6. Creativity is Fun! Playing, experimenting, laughing, imagining, dropping into flow state, sharing an idea you’re proud of, drawing something silly to tell a story. Creating and holding space for fun sows seeds of creativity.

7. Creativity is Curious. The more willing we are to ask questions and truly listen to the answer, the more delightfully rich an experience or conversation has the space to grow. What might happen if we say yes? What if I’m…not right? What might emerge if we let go of what we thought we knew and leaned into another way of thinking?

8. Creativity is Human. We are delightfully imperfect and are fed by connection with others. When designing graphics or the process or questions, remembering that above all else we are humans. Despite the tech, the pace, the everything else around us, we all share this humanness. 

9. Creativity can be Collaborative. Whether in person or remote, centering opportunities for meaningful connections and relationships and connections opens the way for sparks to ignite. 

10. Creativity is Generous. There is no limit to our creativity or how we use it. The more we give, the more we get. When I am working in a mindset of abundance and generosity, that often inspires more of the same, creating ripples and waves out into the world.

Thank you for being the reason for this reflection, the Why behind ConverSketch. It’s an honor to partner with you to bring more creativity into the world together! 

For even more reflections and some tips for how to implement them, here are my reflections throwing all the way back to 2016:

• 2016

• 2017

• 2018

• 2019

• 2020

• 2021

Once again, thank you from my heart and soul for your support, great senses of humor, brilliant minds, collaboration and what you're each doing to make the world a better place.

Cheers, 

Where in the Virtual World is ConverSketch?

Filming the Latest NPS Drawing Connections to Climate Video: This video is all about Fort Matanzas National Monument in Florida, and how resilience to climate change is imperative for the unique habitat and wildlife species that call the area home. Stay tuned for the finished video later this year, and watch the  award-winning series here!

RespiraCon: How might we ensure everyone has access to important medical equipment, like ventilators, around the world? Experts explored the challenges and opportunities to leverage open-source technology and practice for more equitable, high-quality equipment on a global scale.

How to Train Your Brain to Be Just Fine when Things go “Wrong”

Well…that water doesn’t look like I wanted it to…

Can you remember a time that something went “wrong”? Trying a new recipe turned out…meh. A difficult conversation with a loved one. A creative project didn’t turn out perfectly on the first try.

How did you react? 

The sheer volume of curated feeds can make it easy to fall into a thought pattern that if something didn’t go perfectly right the first time, it failed. 

This is crazy talk. How can we expect ourselves to instantly be experts without practicing, experimenting, failing, pushing, learning, expanding, playing, falling…and getting back up? 

We’re human. We’re going to do things “wrong”. It’s beautiful! And, with practice, we can shift how we feel when things go sideways. Here are a few of my tried-and-true favorites:

• Bring the humor. Try not to take yourself so seriously – it’s okay to laugh at how ridiculous mistakes can be.

• Check your expectations. It’s fantastic to push yourself, and to expect that it will probably take a few tries to improve consistently. 

• Practice kind self-talk. Imagine a friend is telling you about whatever it is that happened – what would you tell them? Now, bring that same compassion to yourself. 

• Be curious. What can you learn from the situation if you let go of feeling like you need to defend what happened?  

• Take five. Give yourself the space and time to take a break – do something you love to reset yourself.

Ahhhh, yes. That’s what I was going for. Why don’t things turn out perfectly the first time?

Once again, thank you from my heart and soul for your support, great senses of humor, brilliant minds, collaboration and what you're each doing to make the world a better place.

Cheers, 

Where in the Virtual World is ConverSketch?

An agenda slide designed for a remote graphic facilitation process.

Special Education System Improvement: Remote graphic facilitation with leaders of education systems to improve systems to better support students with differing abilities state-wide. 

A scene from a storyboard work in progress.

Videos: From invasive species to more (award winning!) Drawing Connections to vets and climate change, the ConverSketch studio is humming along in 2022. These videos are still in various stages but I’m excited to share them with you in the coming months!

You DID That – Visual New Year’s Reflection for 2021

If you’re like me, taking time to reflect on the year and set intentions for the next one can be a powerful practice. A few reasons I love it: 

• Revisiting and celebrating accomplishments – work and personal

• The opportunity to focus energy on what’s important for the future

• It creates space to acknowledge and mark the passing of time (especially needed when during covid it can often feel like a “Blursday”)

But taking the time to “do reflection” also feels like it takes some effort. Where to start? Do I really have time for this? Have I even done anything worth reflecting on? 

I recently learned the term productivity dysmorphia: the inability to see our own successes or to acknowledge the volume of our own output. It can be easy to constantly be looking to the next thing without properly taking time to acknowledge the energy, creativity, critical thinking, and genius that went into what you’ve already done. We don’t need stats to know that the past two years have been hard. Burnout is real, especially for working moms: I salute you. 

To balance the societal current that is pushing us to do more, right now…I’ve realized I want to offer an opportunity to celebrate your wins! Right click on that worksheet at the top to download and fill in your own reflections.

If you want to do some future-focused work, I updated a visioning worksheet for 2022 – right click the image below to download it. I’ll also be participating in this Intention Setting Workshop on January 6th, co-facilitated by my wildly talented friend Abby Van Muijen. 

More New Year, New Practices from the Archives:

A Gentle New Year’s Reflection - 2021

Reflect & Envision - 2017

Tips for creating a Vision Board - 2016

Once again, thank you from my heart and soul for your support, great senses of humor, brilliant minds, collaboration and what you're each doing to make the world a better place.

Cheers, 

River Reflections

Reflections on a side hike.

Hello everyone!

I hope you had a relaxing long weekend with loved ones and are refreshed to finish this year with your unique and spectacular style.

As for me, after 24 stunning days on the Colorado River, we’re back home and getting used to things like email. And ceilings. 

Spending so much time offline in a wild place lends itself to reflections on life, the universe, and everything. I hope you’ll excuse me while I share some of the things sticking in my brain and heart that I hope stay with me for a while. At least until the next river trip reminds me all over again*.   

Presenting: Some things I learned in the Grand Canyon

• Disconnecting for any amount of time is really great. Yeah, yeah, I know…but seriously. 

• When scouting a challenging situation -- let’s use a massive rapid as our metaphor, shall we? -- sometimes the route that looks scary is actually easier. Picking a smart, solid path into the big waves and going for it might be easier than fighting the current to get where it looks safer. 

• It’s okay to not always be doing, or helping, or working. It’s okay to just be. 

• This slowing down may require practice. For me, starting by just taking 5 minutes after a meal to sit and digest helped develop a habit of pausing, appreciating, and taking a moment to look around to be present.

• Trusting ourselves and listening to gut feelings are handy skills for navigating most situations – challenging and otherwise.

• We cannot expect others to read our minds. It helps to approach a disagreement with curiosity, not hostility.

• I recognize the immense privileges I enjoy to be able to do a trip like this: the indigenous lands we were on, taking time off from work, my physical and mental abilities, and the equipment, knowledge, and skills to get ourselves through 280 miles of remote desert river corridor.

• There are powerful forces in the world, like big rivers. Sometimes we don’t need to, or simply can’t, muscle through. A successful route may require thoughtful observation, looking for what’s not necessarily apparent on the surface or at first glance, then working with the forces at play. Get the right amount of momentum and angle to move through. Then make adjustments – not fighting – but pivots to square up to the big waves. Then, remember to plant your oars and enjoy the ride.

Scouting Lava Falls, the biggest rapid we rowed.

*If you’re thinking “Wait a minute Karina, weren’t you rafting the Grand Canyon, like, last year?” Close – our most recent trip was just a couple of years ago, and we spent a few weeks on river trips this past spring. This was our third trip rafting down the Grand, and we felt wildly appreciative to win a last-minute permit this year and had to say yes to the opportunity.

Once again, thank you from my heart and soul for your support, great senses of humor, brilliant minds, collaboration and what you're each doing to make the world a better place.

Cheers, 

Watercolor in a side canyon.

Where in the Virtual World is ConverSketch?

This week I’m getting back in the studio working on video projects and strategic planning process design. For now, I’ll leave you with some photos from the trip.

Sunrise at a river camp.

The boat I rowed with Apollo’s temple in the background.

River selfie!