Honoring the Notorious RBG

Photo Credit:: Time

We’ve lost a giant this week. A woman who, with grace, dignity, tenacity, and courage has unflinchingly pushed for women’s rights for her entire career. She showed us that you don’t have to agree with someone to have a respectful friendship with Justice Scalia. She was a mom, a trailblazer, and a relentless advocate for equality. Her accomplishments are too numerous to list and the ripple effect she's had on the lives of others is indelible. 

This week I’d like to take a moment to honor the life, work, and heart of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Thank you for everything. 

To learn more about her life and accomplishments, you can stream the following movies online: 

• RBG – the documentary about her on Hulu and Amazon

• On the Basis of Sex – biopic written by her nephew on Sling or Amazon

• And, for some levity, Stephen Colbert on RBG and trying her workout. Skip ahead to 1:10 to get to the interview, and to 3:42 get to the workout. 

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?

Words from Block Bias after working together on their anti-racism session last month:

Karina, your rendering of our event and programming is engaging and informative and provides the appropriate levels of detail in all the right places. It captures the moment beautifully. In addition, your professionalism was stellar and your creativity and enthusiasm were contagious! Our deepest and sincerest appreciation and thanks to you for your collaboration and support.

I’ve Joined ShapingEDU as the Visual Storyteller in Residence! For the next year, I’ll be supporting the Innovators in Residence and collaborators behind ShapingEDU to help tell stories and share what we’re up to. If you’re interested in EdTech or higher education, check out what we’re up to and get involved!

Technical Content? Here’s How to Turn Any Idea into a Story

If you’re a scientist, researcher, or someone who works with technical ideas, this one’s for you. 

My wheelhouse is working with scientific and technical teams working with complex ideas and systems.  And almost every single amazing, brilliant, technical client I’ve ever worked with have all struggled with the same thing: 

How to tell their story. 

And why would we expect someone who excels in their technical field to ALSO excel at communicating it to non-experts? I have faith that anyone can become a good storyteller, it just takes practice. And most researchers I’ve met want to work on their research, not figuring out how to tell a compelling story. 

However, the point of much of this research IS to help people make decisions, and those folks often aren’t experts in the technical stuff.

So what’s a scientist to do? 

In July, I had the honor of presenting a workshop to other visual practitioners at our annual (virtual) conference. The title? Talk Nerdy to Me. And it was all about how to best support and work with scientific and technical clients.  

Although we covered all sorts of things, and the participants also shared their experiences generously, I wanted to share one clear, simple strategy to help anyone practice telling their story. 

It’s called the Feynman Technique, and it goes a little something like this: 

1. Identify a subject

2. Teach it to a child

   1. Speak in plain terms

   2. Be brief (Quick like a bunny)

3. Identify your knowledge gaps (yes, yes, more research is needed…)

4. Organize + simplify + tell a story

   1. Practice reading your story out loud. Pretend to tell the story to a classroom of students. That way, you’ll hear where language stops being simple. Stumbles could indicate incomplete thoughts, or cumbersome language.

   2. Use analogies and simple sentences to strengthen your understanding of the story, like this example from F-diggity himself:

“All things are made of atoms — little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another.”

How do YOU tell good stories? Share your strategies and ideas!

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?

CSU Vet Medicine Research: Capturing the first framing class for the renowned researcher Sue VandeWoude for her Vet Med Research course. What a way to launch the semester!

Children with Medical Complexity: Continuing in the 7th virtual site visit reflecting on accomplishments, challenges, and where teams want to take their work serving these children and their families.

Strategic Planning: With a consortium of financial folks as they began planning for the future and how to better work together - but I can’t share any of the drawings.