More pix

What joy: in a few days I'll be heading off on vacation – long overdue, and (if I do say so myself) well-deserved! I'm going to San Francisco where, among other things, I'm looking forward to a day of fun & inspiration with a group of lovely colleagues, and hopefully a visit to The Grove, which is kind of like Mecca for graphic facilitators.

Meanwhile, in my ongoing (and possibly futile) attempt to catch up with myself, I'm posting a few more pieces of work I've produced in the past few months. The first 3 are from the Community Foundations of Canada conference held in Montreal last November.

There are several more where these came from, and you can see them on the CFC website if you're really keen, but these are the ones I like best.

The next couple of images were for Gaaysiigang – An Oceans Forum for Haida Gwaii, which was held in January in (no surprise here) Haida Gwaii, aka the Queen Charlotte Islands. This was a source of great excitement for me, because I've long wanted to visit Haida Gwaii, which I envisioned (correctly, as it turns out) as a rather magical place. So when my pal John Talbot told me he'd lined me up for this gig, which he was moderating, I was over the moon!

I learned a lot about the state of our oceans at this forum, almost all of it truly depressing. I was subsequently contracted to map several other oceans forums, and what I've learned since is even more depressing. From what I can understand, we're rapidly killing most of the life in the world's oceans, with predictably catastrophic results. But I don't know enough to comment intelligently, and anyway that's not what this blog is about.

What was different and fun about this job was that I trained a couple of volunteers to help with the mapping, and we often worked on the same charts together! It was wonderful to see the newbies jump into the fray with such enthusiasm – and fascinating to see what came out, and how our styles meshed on the page. Here are 3 charts from the Haida Gwaii forum – see if you can figure out where my work stops and the others' stuff start!

A couple of days ago I mapped another big oceans forum. This time I had seven (7!!) volunteer graphic assistants! They were to record the breakout sessions while I did the plenaries, but we wound up joining forces on a few of the charts – to great effect, in my humble opinion. Between us we generated some 24 charts, so it'll be awhile before I get them cleaned up and post-worthy. But stay tuned....!

A different kind of job

Last October (yeah, I know – it's taken me this long to post this) I had the rare privilege of heading up a whole team of graphic recorders at the National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation (NCDD). In Austin, Texas, no less, which was a kick in itself! But the gig would have been great even if we'd been in Podunk, because (a) I had such an amazing team to work (and play) with, and (b) I felt that we integrated graphic recording into the program more tightly than ever before, and that it was a high-water mark in terms of people's awareness and appreciation of the process.

In addition to real-time mapping of plenary presentations and panels, we were presented with 5 'challenge' areas for the field of Dialogue and Deliberation. Since there were 5 graphic recorders (what luxury!), we were each responsible for one of the challenges. I chose 'framing' – i.e. how to present D+D in a way that is accessible and attractive to different interest groups and audiences. The night before the conference started, we each stretched out our paper on the wall and put in the title and a couple of pertinent comments and images. Then we spent the next 3 days building our charts, with input from conference participants throughout. My finished chart is above.

One of the most interesting talks at NCDD, in my view anyway, was a panel of conservatives whose conversation I mapped. My politics are not conservative, so it was quite a mind-expanding experience for me – and especially interesting to find myself agreeing with the speakers as often as I disagreed with them! I was particularly taken with Joseph McCormick, who heads up an organization called the Transpartisan Alliance, which seeks to de-polarize politics and find ways of cooperating across political divides. Hey, sign me up! I'm soooo over partisan politics and blaming the "bad guys" on the other side of the room. But that's a discussion for a whole different blog, so let's get back to the graphics.

Here is the graphic from the Conservatives Panel:


Visually it's not the best chart I've ever done – I think it's too wordy and it doesn't flow as well as I'd have liked. But I'm including it here just because I was so intrigued by the conversation and I think it deserves posterity.

Speaking of posterity, I can't close this item without a shout-out to my fabulous teammates: Mariah Howard, Julie Gieseke, Sunni Brown and Marilyn Martin. They are all kickass graphic recorders and wonderful women, and I would work with any and all of them again in a heartbeat!

Springing forward...

It's March 1st, and at least in Vancouver, March brings with it intimations of spring – YAY! I've always felt a bit of a Bad Canadian in my dislike of winter. Our literature, our icons, supposedly our very identity, are bound up with cold and snow and ice.... But I grew up in Vancouver, which is more about chilly and rain, and... more rain. And early springs that start in February and stretch gloriously through to June.

So today I was walking along in the rain, and was pleased to note lovely clumps of crocuses, snowdrops and purple heather, and despite the rain I realized spring is just around the corner. And I say again: YAY!

And on that note, I'm going to spring into action by updating my blog with a few images I should have posted a long time ago.

Here is one I did some time ago for a session for the Burnaby Understanding the Early Years Project. The team members were invited to celebrate their accomplishments, and this is what they looked like (click on images to see larger):

This is still one of my favourite charts – I just like the way the words and images flow. It feels celebratory to me even when the words are too small to read!

Fast forward several months, and I'm co-facilitating a session with a group of youth workers who were charting the journey they had taken as individuals and as a team. To help me choose a resonant image for their map, I asked them to think about what the journey looked like to them. A river? A winding road? Climbing a mountain? They thought for a few minutes and then one of them said, "To me it looks like ... a rainforest!" And he proceeded to explain exactly why. And everyone on the team agreed that yes, a rainforest was the very image to describe their journey!

Well, who knew? Of all the images I might have come up with myself, a rainforest would not have been among them! Which just goes to show the value of asking people what things look like to them. Here is their rainforest journey:


(The blue-rimmed boxes contained names, which I removed for confidentiality's sake.)

What was especially fun was that once they had chosen the visual metaphor themselves, they really owned it. They used the imagery in talking about their journey, and situated their accomplishments and challenges within the framework of the rainforest. And it was on the group's instruction that I included the giraffe in the corner!

Here is one last one for today. This one was done for a visioning day for the staff of Maple Creek Middle School, who were looking to explore their vision, what their school represents, and their "true north". I can feel their pride in their school as I look at the image we created.