No Travel Budget? You Can Still Have Graphic Recording

Are you planning an event that could use graphic recording, but you don’t have a budget for travel? Let’s talk about remote visuals.

I recently had the pleasure of supporting Wayne State University’s Center for Leadership in Environmental Awareness & Research (CLEAR) as they held a symposium on environmental justice for maternal and fetal health in the Detroit area.

Though most participants attended locally, I was able to join remotely to capture visuals in real-time. The team projected my work on large screens around the room in tandem with presenters’ slides so participants could see multiple ways of engaging with the information as it was being shared.

Here are some of my tips for success:

• Good sound is a must. Make sure your people have easy access to microphones so the graphic recorder can hear well.

• What’s your why for having visuals? Answer this question to decide what’s most useful for displaying the graphics. Is it important for participants to see the graphics as they emerge? Or as a reveal at the end? We can work together to design a strategy that best serves your needs.

• Before, during, after: we can work together to make the most of your investment by thinking about how to leverage the visuals to support your goals for the event.

• Practice makes everything better. Schedule a tech test to make sure sound and displays are showing up well so everything goes easy on the day of.

“The first comment about the CLEAR presentation was about how wonderful it was to see your graphic recordings and what a great idea it was to interpret the research in this way.

Thanks again for your excellent drawings that so innovatively communicate the work of CLEAR in such an easily accessible way.”

— Judith Moldenhauer, CLEAR Team

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?

Though I’m still very much easing into working as a new parent, I’ve been loving the projects I’ve gotten to support this spring:

Wayne State University: Here is one of the graphics I created for the CLEAR symposium mentioned above. I loved learning about the community-centered and interdisciplinary approaches this group is taking around maternal and fetal health!

Learner Voice Symposium: Partnering with the Attainment Network is always a treat because they center learner voices and walk the talk of including youth and non-traditional learners in conversations that matter!

WildfireSAFE App Video Series: I’m delighted to finally get to share the WildfireSAFE app videos with the world! Matt Jolly and his team at USFS have developed an incredibly sophisticated and simple-to-use app that helps fire responders and residents understand fire danger in very specific locations and times. This app can help save lives – if you live in the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI), please check it out!

Tech Leadership: Supporting a leadership team as they navigate big shifts in the organization. I was impressed by the vulnerability and authenticity with which folks showed up in a completely remote environment!

ConverSketch Returns in April

Karina holding Kai (left) and Ayla (right).

Hello!

Here are a few updates as spring flowers emerge here in the Northern Hemisphere, and I start to emerge from the cocoon of newborn twin life:

• I’ll be returning to graphic recording part-time starting in April, focusing on virtual and single day local (Colorado) on-site projects. I plan to start traveling this summer. If you have an event that could use some visual thinking, I’d love to hear from you and get you in my calendar. I’m looking forward to partnering with you all!

• Our twins, Kai and Ayla, are growing and learning more every day. It’s a joy to have them home from the NICU and off oxygen and get to see their personalities emerging. Baby coos and smiles sure are special! We’re looking forward to more walks and seeing more friends as the weather warms up and the twins get stronger.

• ConverSketch turned 11 in February! An enormous thank you to each of you for being a part of what makes ConverSketch special – it’s all about your ideas, creativity, and collaboration!

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?

While I have been fully immersed in being a new parent, here are some projects from last year that have been published in the last few months.

CoSN Driving K-12 Innovation: The Consortium for School Networking hosted another series of dialogues and ideation sessions to support educators and schools Driving K-12 Innovation across the nation last fall, and I got to create live graphics which are beautifully featured in their annual publications. Check out the full reports here.

Rangeland Ecosystem Services Publication: Another studio piece from the fall, created in collaboration with the Agricultural Research Service exploring pillars to resilient rangelands and rangeland ecosystem services.

The Wilderness Society: Last fall I had the joy of working with the TWS Community-Led Conservation team to create a vision and roadmap toward truly supporting communities and wilderness. This spring we got together to finish a summary illustration of their vision and values and how they fit into the larger TWS organization.

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.

Agreements, Ground Rules, Community Norms, Oh My!

Someone carrying on for multiple minutes, seemingly without taking a breath, about a topic unrelated to the task at hand.

A person keeps bringing up the same axe to grind…over, and over.

Two people are whispering the entire time.

80% of the group has a laptop out and a slightly glazed look in their eyes.

Any of this sound familiar?

Whether you call them ground rules, group agreements, or community norms, co-creating expectations for how a group will interact is one way to design a focused and purposeful meeting. 

Why do group agreements work?

• They define “rules of engagement” group agrees to

• People communicate in different ways, and norms help us agree how to work with each other

• Setting expectations for how the group will interact

• Creating mechanisms for resolving tensions or conflict 

Even taking just a minute to review previously established agreements is a powerful tool to ground participants and remind them that they’re not in just any meeting, they’re in this gathering space with an intentional environment that has been co-designed by the whole group. This is subtle yet important in shifting from “why do we need to be meeting?” to “I’m fully present and ready to contribute to this process.”

Here are some of the agreements commonly used in meetings I facilitate:

• Speak from your experience and welcome others to speak from theirs

• Step up when you have something to share, step back and make space for all voices to be heard

• Listen to understand (not just waiting for your turn to talk)

• It’s okay to disagree, but do so with curiosity not hostility (thanks to the Center for Public Deliberation for my personal favorite!)

• And of course…Support the facilitator – help me help you as we move through the process

What agreements have surprised you with their effectiveness in supporting open and constructive conversations? Drop me a note – I’d love to learn from you!

If you’d like to jump deeper on designing excellent experiences, you can check out this post on why a clear purpose for a meeting supports everyone, or this one about why to design for connection.

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?

Presenting at IFVP Online Learning Series: Email Marketing for the Win! 90 minutes of interactive goodness, happening on April 20th at 9am Mountain Time. Even thought it says 2021…it’s happening in a couple of weeks. You can find out more register here.

In the Studio: Storyboarding videos, illustrating research on seabirds and archaeology in Alaska and co-conspiring for effective engagement visioning for sustainable futures at a university. Here’s a snap of the research-turned-illustration!

Do the Work in the Meeting…But How?

Right click to download and use this friendly tool!

If you’ve ever found yourself marveling at the number of meetings in your calendar and wondering “when am I actually going to get my work done?”, this newsletter is for you. 

Here’s a checklist I created for myself while planning for graphic facilitation work, to make sure I was using my time lately, adapted for y’all. When convening a meeting, try 

• Have an agenda: What is the purpose of the meeting, and what are you hoping to have done by the end? This can be as simple as weekly check in to be on the same page, or more complex, running through a few different tasks.

• Share the agenda with participants ahead of time so they know what to expect – ask for any additional items

• Option - when sending the agenda, include a focusing question for folks to bring ideas. You might consider: 

  • What’s one thing you wish we had gotten to do last meeting we didn’t?

  • What are you hearing/what are we doing that’s resonating with you right now?

  • What is the one most important thing we need to do by X date?

• Establish roles: Such as a timekeeper, notetaker, and/or Accountabili-buddy. During the meeting, ask someone to keep time so you can stay on track. This is especially helpful if you designated a specific amount of time for each agenda item, and if not, to let the group know when you’re halfway through the time. Making sure things are documented, and someone who has the social license from the group to follow up on action items (accountabili-buddy) if needed can also be helpful. 

•  Include time for Closing: Leave 5-10 minutes at the end to review action items for each person. 

If you’d like more ideas for how to make the most of your meetings, check out this post from the Before Times, which is still chock full of useful tips!

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 Headed to the Grand Canyon Next Week! A friendly reminder I’ll be in the backcountry from October 28-November 24 without access to phone or internet. Thanks in advance for your patience, and if you’re looking for a graphic recorder during that time, I’m happy to connect you with someone in my network who rocks! Photo by Spencer Branson, on our last trip in spring 2019.

CO HIV/AIDS Strategic Planning: Beginning with listening sessions, CDPHE and DEPH are convening folks from all over the state to offer insights, experience, and ideas to co-create a strategic plan for ending the HIV epidemic in Colorado. 

K-12 Innovation: We’re in the midst of a series of Discussion calls with education leaders and innovators from across the country, this week discussing Accelerators of innovation in education they’re noticing. These discussions will feed into virtual summits and reports.

Explora STEM Stories: I’ve been working with the Explora Museum in New Mexico to illustrate stories of indigenous community leaders in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math). They’re starting to post the time lapse drawings on their Instagram feed, including this one from Sam Woods. 

When is Good Enough...Good Enough?

So there you were. You just had a shockingly productive and energizing breakout conversation with a some of your team, and it was time to share back and make a decision. This wasn’t just an ordinary, run of the mill decision either – it was guiding the direction of your next several months of work. 

The ideas started rolling in. Connections sparking! The complexity and nuance energizing! You start to imagine where this is headed! 

But it’s not quite right. The ideas the facilitator is forcing you to capture in virtual sticky notes don’t quite encapsulate the depth and detail of the work you do. Before you know it, the idea is all of a sudden a cluster of sticky notes and you’re glazing over as the group picks apart the idea trying to get it exactly perfect…

How is it possible to maintain the momentum and move forward in a way that feels authentic to the process, yet doesn’t send you into a never-ending spiral of wordsmithing in a virtual meeting? 

As a facilitator, I bring in the 5 Fingers Consensus tool and ask:

Is this good enough?

Can we, as a group, agree this is the general direction we want to focus on?

Most of the time the group agrees with a tweak or two that the idea has the gist, and wordsmithing can happen offline or in a subcommittee. 

It can be easy to come up with and explore possibilities but getting a group to make a decision about where to focus and what to prioritize can be difficult.  Asking if the idea is good enough to move forward with can help you move through the quagmire of virtual meeting decisions and onward to doing the good work. 

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?

Wildfire Risk Social Science: Facilitating the first of three strategic planning workshops to help a diverse team of researchers as they seek to support communities as they build resilience to wildfire. From local partnerships to helping make good policy, this team is working to change the way fire is managed across boundaries for the better. Here’s a screenshot of the Miro board we used over the two day workshop.

Driving K-12 Innovation: What are our biggest hurdles to support K-12 learners? That was the question we addressed in the first of six K-12 Innovation discussions with leaders and educators from around the world. Stay tuned as an advisory board continues to meet to discuss and focus on solutions! Another project, another Miro!

A New Decision-Making Tool for Your Team

This week’s newsletter is a quick tool I learned of from the Civic Canopy and I’m curious to try – perhaps while graphic facilitating a retreat next week. 

It’s called The Decider App and uses a series of straightforward questions to help you and your team select a decision-making model that best suits your needs. 

Whether you need support from the entire group but don’t have a lot of time, or you’re not even sure you need to make a decision, this tool helps you weigh your options and offers a quick snapshot of how to go about the decision-making process. 

Try it here.

Here are a few other thoughts about good decision-making with groups:

• Be extremely clear about what’s being decided

• As a leader, cultivate an environment where people can disagree to invite different perspectives and avoid blind spots

• And a list of four useful decision-making processes 

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?

Friendly Reminder – On the Grand Canyon October 28-November 24: If you missed it, in August we won a follow-up permit to raft the Grand Canyon! I will be out of the office and completely disconnected during this time, so thanks for your patience! If you need a visual practitioner during that time, let me know and I’ll be happy to connect you with someone in my network.

Photo: Spencer Branson.

UC Davis Orientation: This session on cultivating an inclusive, just, and equitable learning environment at Davis was nourishing and inspiring. The student voices I heard were poised, thoughtful, and supportive, and the resources on campus are top-notch.

North Texas Local Food Summit: In preparation for the UN Global Food Summit, local community leaders from across public and private sectors came together to discuss and brainstorm how to create a more robust and healthy network of local food for those who are often underserved. 

Attention Spans for Online Meetings are Getting Shorter. Here are the Questions I’m Asking to Make Sure Groups are Engaged

How do you hold the space for groups to do deep, meaningful work while tolerance for long virtual meetings wanes? Taking time before the meeting to craft the questions that are imperative for the group to explore together means they will feel deeply that this couldn’t have just been an email. 

I’ve been doing quite a bit of virtual graphic facilitation lately – from microbiologists to educators to socio-agro ecosystem researchers.

Inspired by my friend and colleague Janine at idea-360, who asks the best questions, here are some questions you can use to facilitate intentional time together, whether it’s 20 minutes or four hours. 

Before the meeting:

• What does success look like walking out of this meeting?

• Knowing this, what do we need to design/plan to do? 

During – This varies depending on your purpose – here are a few to spark your creativity:

• What is the unique value we provide? To whom?

• What is our grand challenge? 

• What demands our attention?

• How might we…in order to…

After:

• Plus - What did we like?

• Delta - What would we do differently next 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?

Head’s Up! I’ll be out of the office October 28 through November 22 without phone or email. With a 1 in 2,500 chance, we got a follow-up lottery permit to raft the Grand Canyon! Sound familiar? This will be our third time rafting the canyon - here’s a shot of me rowing Upset Rapid in 2019. Thanks for your patience, and if you want to explore the Grand, you can click through Google’s “street view” down the river. 

Aspen Colorado: For the Tech Policy Institute’s annual Forum. It was amazing to get to work on paper with people in the room, and I applaud the TPI for their intentional and rigorous safety measures for an in-person gathering. 

Upcoming Announcement: I have some very exciting news to share, but not quite ready yet! Stay tuned – I’ll be announcing this mystery in the newsletter on September 8th!

How to Co-Create a High Engagement Virtual Event: Best Practices from the ShapingEDU Community

Every time I get to work with the ShapingEDU community, I’m blown away by the creativity and passion of the team at ASU to positively “shape the future of learning in the digital age” as they say. 

Even in a world of remote meetings, ShapingEDU walks the talk to convene for meaningful work driven by the community, which means it’s then carried on afterward? 

So, what best practices can be transferred to YOUR organization? 

For highly engaged virtual or in-person events, let participants guide content. This was done through crowd-sourcing then voting on nine wicked problems facing education in the weeks leading up to the Unconference. 

Minimize talking at, maximize talking with. Most of the three days was spent in working groups focused on the content participants upvoted. There was a framing plenary panel, then off folks went to share their insights and cross-pollinate ideas. 

Provide some structure. These hours-long working groups were guided by community members who volunteered to facilitate them ahead of time, who had knowledge, expertise, and the ability to step back to let the group do the work when it made sense. Each had their own zoom meeting, and participants were encouraged to work together across Slack.

Infuse creativity and play. The opening reception was a ridiculously well-curated Wicked Mystery Party where participants discovered there were self-guided and team-oriented mysteries to solve by talking with characters in different breakouts, exploring clues in different settings online, and working together. Not to mention a graphic recording “ghost” who floated around to capture snippets of the process and offer sometimes helpful hints. 

The base map for the Wicked Mystery Party opening reception. Participants could click on yellow buttons to explore different rooms, looking for clues!

Finally, each day was facilitated with reconvening the groups to share ideas and look for connections, patterns, and insights together. These report outs were graphically recorded in real-time and reflected back to the participants visually and verbally for comprehension, memory boosting, and looking for new ideas together. 

Cheers ShapingEDU – you all are truly remarkable and I’m proud to be part of the community!

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?

ASU ShapingEDU Unconference: As you may have read above, the Unconference is a lively event. This year, we created quite a few materials ahead of time, including this explainer video on what Black Swan Events are and why we should care!

Communication and Symbioses Workshop: I’m in the midst of graphic facilitating a two-day workshop for a team of researchers exploring connections between microbial symbioses and signaling and communication.

How I Prepare for Live Graphic Recording: Visual Notetaking Tips You Can Start Using Today

If you and I have met and had a conversation about visual thinking, there’s a good chance I’ve enthusiastically shared that I believe anyone can draw, and anyone can take visual notes. 

Aside from the fact that we are innately visual creatures and a few tips can spark creativity, I’ve learned through the years that there are things I can do that help me feel more confident and consistently help me produce my favorite work. 

One secret is that taking time to prepare before live graphic recording really helps me set myself up for success. These are strategies I use all the time that you’ll be able to implement at your next meeting to infuse your own notes with some visual flair. 

Each tip is followed by a snippet from my sketchbooks as an example. Here we go! 

Look through an agenda and practice sketching ideas for how to visualize concepts that will almost certainly come up – specific animals, equipment, or activities.

Play with potential layouts – even if I don’t know how the conversation will emerge, if I have some ideas sketched out I’ve found I’m more confident and it’s easier to adapt or add more detail if I’ve already spent some time thinking about it. 

Pick your colors – as Brandy Agerbeck says, use color MORE, rather than using more color! Pick colors for very important ideas, or to add patterns in the background. This is especially helpful when working digitally and you can use literally any color – paring down up front helps make decisions quickly in the moment. 

Draw out session titles and key names/affiliations if you know them, that way you’re not trying to spell someone’s name correctly while listening to their brilliant ideas and trying to get it all down.

Keep scratch paper nearby for taking notes. I do this less working digitally as it’s easy to move or erase ideas, but it’s still helpful to have a sketchbook nearby to jot down a great quote or statistics to incorporate later. 

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?

Back from Idaho: Where we spent two weeks unplugging and whitewater rafting! Here’s a shot from the South Fork of the Salmon River. Photo: Josh Metten

Procinorte: Even though I was offline most of the time, I was still able to jump back into Zoom for two days of agriculture and climate researchers from Canada, Mexico, and the United States discussing how to improve collaboration across borders for food and climate security.