One of the coolest things I’ve ever seen at a conference is a “Visual Practitioner” summarizing the event via large scale drawings. I talked to Jackie Forbes at the recent MAX 2015 conference. She is with Drawn to Learn (www.drawntolearn.co.uk). Her background is in meeting facilitation, so she has good skills around picking out the important points of the day.

Here’s a picture of the drawings she did for two days of the conference. Click to enlarge.

Drawn to Learn

 

I didn’t realize that this is now an official profession with meetings and titles. Even while we were talking, someone came up to ask Jackie about illustrations like this for video projects. She specializes in meeting artwork like this, but she gave him a referral to someone who specializes in the video side of the business.

If you were not at the conference, a lot of the components here won’t make sense. But to those who sat through presentations, these are great reminders of what we saw and heard from the screen. (Did you know the unicorn is the official animal of Scotland?)

Jackie Forbes, Drawn to Learn

 

Jackie says you don’t have to have a lot of artistic skill to be a Visual Practitioner, but I’m not sure I buy that. My unicorn would look like a blob with a stick. Clearly, you need t understand what’s going on at the meeting and be able to pick out the juicy good information that’s important to the attendees. That I can do. Scribbling it into a picture . . . that’s out of my skill set.

Check out Jackie’s web site. Obviously, she’s from the UK, so you probably won’t have her at one of your events in the U.S., but you’ll get a sense of what the industry is about. And she’s very friendly, so if you need a referral, I’m sure she can help.

 

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