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.

Creating a Proactive Roadmap, Especially into Uncertainty

You know when you hear a word once, then all of a sudden keep hearing it a few more times in the next few days? And it feels like a sign you maybe want to pay attention to that idea? 

I’ve been hearing the word “proactive” quite a bit lately. As we begin to see the light at the end of the covid tunnel, the way our future will unfold continues to feel uncertain. Will we fall back into comfortable patterns of the Before Times? Will we use this time of disruption as a window of opportunity to evolve and innovate? What will the After Times look and feel like? 

As clients I partner with are shifting their eyes to the horizon of the future, approaching in a proactive way sounds good. Doesn’t it? But what does that mean? How can we be proactive if we have no idea how things will look?

I don’t have the answer, but I do have a suggestion: Imagine different scenarios.

Working through a Scenario Planning session doesn’t give us 100% certainty — it DOES provide space to:

• Think about our deepest fears for the future and get them down on paper to then let go

• Imagine different potential futures and brainstorm how we might move forward in each

• Create a foundation from which to adapt with agility as the actual future emerges

Sounds good, yes? But how do you actually DO scenario planning? 

Working with a professional facilitator to design the process, hold space, and push your group deeper can be a great idea. If you don’t have capacity for that, or want to give scenario planning a try on your own first, here are my tips to get started.

• Make four quadrants and label them with elements that are important, something like this: Best/Worst, Lots of XYZ/Very little XYZ

• Fill in your initial thoughts on each scenario — don’t stress, but DO give yourself time to return to this with different perspectives.

Potential questions to think about in each quadrant:

• What do you have control over? What is outside of your control?

• What do you feel like in this scenario?

• Who’s “on your team”/what resources already exist?

• How likely is this scenario to occur?

• How would this scenario impact your organization/life? 

• Are these impacts acceptable?

• What might you/the organization do to build resilience?

Tips:

• Allow yourself space to feel and sit in the discomfort of the worst case scenario (lower left in my image above)

• Then allow yourself to be relentlessly optimistic for the best case scenario (upper right in my image above)

• If you don’t know what would go in the other two quadrants, that’s okay – this is a starting point

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?

Urban Ecology for Positive Futures: Supporting a new, global, and transdisciplinary network of researchers and practitioners exploring urban ecology in different ways. As they begin their journey, defining HOW to work together, and what they might explore for a positive impact.

University of New Mexico Tech Days: We covered topics from pro cybersecurity tips and suggestions, to creating a positive environment for women in technology, to a reflection from the CIO of the past year and how the organization adapted.

Visual Storytelling for Impact

Have you ever worked on a project for multiple weeks, months, years, even? Then when it’s time to report on your work, or a friend asks you what you’ve been up to, you have no idea where to start explaining? 

For the past year, I’ve had the pleasure of working with a team at Boston University convening a network across the country to change health care systems to better support families and children with complex medical needs. 

As you can imagine, this project is complex, full of nuance…and the core team needs to be able to show how they’ve used the funding. A multi-year pilot working with teams across the US…systems and culture change…collaborative innovation…

Yeah. It’s complicated. And it’s a story that needs to be told.

So, we sat down for 90 minutes and the core team told me their story. They told me about what they heard from families, from care providers, from partners. They shared data in the form of lived experience and from tools they developed.  

The result was messy, but the main messages had become clear. Add in a few rounds of revisions, and we had a one-page illustration that could be used to tell their unique story to funders, families, and so others could learn and improve on what they started.

What did the team have to say?

“I could cry with pride and happiness seeing our family engagement work laid out so beautifully and clearly by Karina. Well done…and many, many thanks!”

— Meg Comeau, MHA; Boston University School of Social Work

What’s the story you want to share? How might you map it out visually to illuminate the impact you’re making?  

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?

TREETIME: In May, I got to co-create with a brilliant group of ecologists, biologists, and other researchers preparing for a large grant proposal. The goal of the workshop was to build a network across fields of study that will explore environmental changes over different time and phenological scales. We created a massive Miro board that the group fully leveraged!

On the River: Yes, again! Last year we got lucky and pulled a permit to raft through Dinosaur National Monument, but the trip was postponed due to the ‘rona. So we got to go this year instead! Unplugged, refreshed, and ready for June! Here’s a watercolor I made on the river a few years ago - looking forward to making some more!

Have You Seen this Button? How to Create a Custom Background in Jamboard

Have you hosted a virtual meeting and felt like you knew people had really good ideas, they just weren’t speaking up? 

Regardless of whether the meeting is virtual or in person, not everyone feels comfortable speaking in front of a group. Add unmuting, raising hand, distractions, etc. in virtual spaces…and it’s easy to just not say anything.

One of the simplest ways I’ve seen engagement and energy skyrocket in a virtual meeting is to create space for people to add their ideas to the conversation in a virtual whiteboard. ­

Google Jamboard is free and doesn’t require folks to log in to access it, however I was really frustrated with Jamboard because I couldn’t “lock” anything down.

Until I noticed a button and discovered a simple solution.

Now I can create custom visual templates for breakout groups and embed them as the background so participants don’t accidentally move it around and confuse the group:

Here’s how you can embed your own image to create a branded, beautiful, or curated experience in Jamboard:

Step 1: Find the Set Background button.

Step 2: Select your own image. 

It’s. That. Easy! 

Okay, but maybe you’re thinking “Yeah, great Karina, you can draw up a template and embed it. What about someone who doesn’t want to/have that skill?”

I’m so glad you asked! You can embed any image as your background – your logo in the corner or an inspiring scene. It’s easy to do a Google image search right in the Set background tool. Then, once your background image is set, you can create shapes as boxes for text, and add a fill color to make them pop over the image, like this: 

Once you’ve created the shape from the toolbar on the left, click on it so it’s highlighted. Then, this toolbar will appear at the top, and you can choose a fill color, like so:

And, of course, if you DO want a custom visual experience for your next virtual meeting, you know where to find me. 

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?

iMasons Global Member Summit: This year the iMasons focused on gender parity in the datacenter field, exploring equity vs. equality, how to foster inclusive spaces, and how having a more diverse workforce is better for your business.

Client Spotlight: Check out how the National Parks Conservation Association leveraged the graphics created during a Zero Landfill Initiative retreat a few weeks ago! Major round of applause to Karen at NPCA for her creative communication for “the best meeting notes I’ve ever seen!” according to one participant. See the entire report here. 

Zoom, obvi: March 20th is International Day of Happiness, and Zoom asked me to illustrate what their employees (they call themselves Zoomies, which I love), said makes them happy. Here’s the image I created, and you can see the time-lapse on Zoom’s Insta and Twitter feeds!

Pacific Northwest Fire Science Symposium: I’m currently in the midst of co-facilitating a three-day workshop with training sessions and building a deeper network in this community working on resilient landscapes across the region.

3 Tips for Getting the Most out of Your Virtual Whiteboard

By now, most of us have experienced more video conferences than we can count (why, in the name of all that is holy, would we ever have the desire to count?). 

Which means over the past year, as a graphic facilitator in the digital sphere, I’ve collaborated with clients to create custom templates for virtual whiteboard platforms for events where participants say things like: 

This was the best zoom meeting I’ve been to!

- Participant at the 2021 Zero Landfill Initiative Retreat

And…

I had the Miro board up throughout the entire 3-day conference!

- Participant at the 2021 Zusman Neuroregeneration Symposium

So, how can we get these same exclamations at your virtual event? 

Let’s go ahead and take some work right off your plate and share what I’ve learned through trial, error, and following discoveries of others experimenting in this space. 

Hot tips: 

• Include important logistics such as the agenda, zoom links, survey links, etc. I create a custom layout with visual elements for specific sessions or for general feedback. In addition, I’ve learned it’s helpful for participants to be able to easily navigate the multiple links, web pages, and documents if they’re all linked into the board you’re using.

• Build time to engage with it into your agenda. This is KEY to successfully using a virtual whiteboard. To make the most of this tool you’ve invested in using, BE SURE to include time(s) each day to engage with the whiteboard. Whether it’s an activity, or just time to network, 10 minute blocks of time can make a huge difference to help participants connect. BONUS: Remind people where to find it – drop the link in to the chat box regularly.

• Add a new element each day. In a multi-day virtual event, once participants start to get the hang of navigating your whiteboard space, create new elements for them to interact with each day. Make them delightful and useful – asking specific questions about content or simply providing a space for a morning/afternoon reflection creates a reason to draw people back in, and more opportunities to connect with each other.

Curious which virtual collaboration platform is right for you? This post contains a brief pros and cons of a few popular ones here. Have a tool you love? Please share it with me, I always enjoy learning from the Brain Trust (all y’all).  

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?

Houston Methodist Neuroregeneration Symposium: Capturing key ideas from heady talks about how to repair neural function after spinal cord injury. My favorite thing about this workshop is how focused it is on creating space for collaborations between labs and fields of study!

Friends of Refuges Annual Meeting: For the Suwannee and Cedar Key Friends of Refuges, covid didn’t keep these folks from sharing updates and anthropological research from the area in a virtual setting! Did you know that Swallow-Tailed Kites migrate 5,000 miles over 2 months to get to Brazil each winter? 

Ready to create a unique and engaging virtual whiteboard for your event?

Research to Action: What Any Sector Can Learn from GCSE+Drawdown

Why, yes, you CAN have an interactive and participatory virtual conference with over 3,000 participants from all over the world!

Earlier this month, the Global Council for Science and the Environment (GCSE), and Project Drawdown brought together researchers, leaders, and community members to learn, share, and create solutions for people and planet.  

Some of the most powerful insights can be translated to any sector, so no matter who you are, here are a few snapshots from graphics showing what resonated most with the participants over the course of the week: 

Effective communication is more important than ever. To do so, we need to meet people where they are. 

Listening to and elevating diverse voices we haven’t in the past. At GCSE+Drawdown, there were several Indigenous presenters who openly shared their research and perspectives.

Networks and partnerships are needed do the incredible things we are called to do. Working together we can fill in one another’s gaps, offer new perspectives, and share resources.

Complex challenges require creative solutions, which means looking for systems and across disciplines.

GCSE always does an excellent job leveraging the graphics I create with them. Last year they created a stunning Global Sights and Sounds page to share the graphics and highlights from the conference. This year we collaborated to create visuals for social media posts before, during, and after the conference. I also made a massive Conference Synthesis map created over the course of the five-day conference. Scroll to the right and zoom out to see the entire thing! 

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?

Middle School: Facilitating a series of professional development sessions on using Adobe Fresco with their students as a creative thinking tool. 

US Fish and Wildlife Service:  Graphically facilitating a session with regional leaders to analyze how to create an internship system that is inclusive and supports hiring a more diverse and representative workforce. The outcomes will be refined into a strategic illustration which can be used in tandem with the Hiring Barriers and Biases illustration I created last year. 

Strategic Planning:  With a non-profit focused on supporting our democratic process through data-driven approaches. I can’t share the whole graphic, but here’s a snapshot of the title of a session that really elevated the energy levels during a remote retreat. Remember to celebrate accomplishments and share kudos for your team! 

Three Ways to Create an Engaging Visual Summary of Your Virtual Event

One of the most valuable aspects of having a graphic recorder in the room during an event is the opportunity to host a Gallery Walk. 

Karina in the midst of a Gallery Walk for Broto, 2019 (aka The Before Times). Photo: Michael & Suz Karchmer

What is a Gallery Walk? When a group takes time to intentionally reflect on graphic recordings, flip charts, posters, or other visuals around the room in a meeting. They can be guided by a facilitator walking the group through a high-level summary, or can be less structured with a time for people to wander around and observe. 

Gallery Walks serve as an opportunity to:

• Look for connections across sessions, presentations, small group conversations

• Review ideas to be able to build consensus, move toward convergence, or look for gaps

• Create space for reflection and integration of content 

• See the amount of thinking and work the group has accomplished – it feels good!

We all know working in virtual spaces is challenging for a lot of reasons – and translating engaging process design to a virtual space using tools like a Gallery Walk is no exception. 

Today, I’d like to share three ways I’ve seen Gallery Walks leveraged to support virtual groups. 

Create an Adobe Spark Page

-        Spark makes it fast, easy, and fun to build your own custom web page in minutes! Drag and drop, and before you know it you’ve got key images, written highlights, and links to other resources all in one place to share right into that chat box!

Make a Google JamBoard Gallery 

-        Participants can collaborate in real-time adding sticky notes or text with ideas or reactions 

-        Other tools that are similar to JamBoard include Mural and Miro, which both require paid subscriptions while JamBoard is free, however not everyone can access Google platforms

Share a Google Doc

-        As with JamBoard, participants can collaborate on the same page at the same time

-        Also, free, again – not all organizations allow access to Google platforms

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?

Adobe EduMAX 2020: If you didn’t click on the Adobe Spark link above, check it out here to see the images and time-lapse videos of real-time graphics I captured digitally last week for Adobe. AdobeMAX is happening this week and it’s free – check it out and get creative!

In the Studio: This month is full of studio illustration and video sketches, revisions, and refinements. A few of the topics getting the visual treatment: hiring barriers and biases for a national agency, strategic mapping for a wealth management company explaining their vision to a client, creating illustrations for a white paper on wildfire planning and mitigation at multiple scales, facilitating a workshop on regenerative foodscapes in the Americas, and more!

Ready to take a (Gallery) Walk on the Wild Side?