Visual Recording at UC Davis

Here are the Visual Records Nancy White and I created during the Inaugural National Symposium on Food Systems & Sustainability: http://www.asi.ucdavis.edu/conferences/fss2009/graphic_recordings/

A New Way To Present Meeting Agendas

The Visual Records below were created as a way to share the 3 day agenda of Serve Wisconsin's North Central Cluster Meetings, affiliated with the wonderful AmeriCorps volunteer programs.

World Cafe Community Article: Youth Dialog Project at NCDD

Please take the time to read this article on The World Cafe Community Blog, written by Deborah Goldblatt and co-authored by yours truly. The article chronicals the Youth Dialog Project sessions that took place at last years NCDD conference (National Colition for Dilaog and Deliberation) in Austin, Texas. We learned a great deal about intergenerational work and how to create a space where voices can be heard.

Visual Recording on a Big and Small Scale

In my Visual Recording work I get to listen to and graphically capture a variety of events, conferences, and meetings. Not only is the content unique to each event, the scale of the conversations taking place also varies from job to job. Sometimes I record conversations between teams of people within a large organizations and other times I'm charting the ideas of hundreds of people at a national conference. When the number of participants in a conversation is small, I can record on paper while sitting at a table and blend in pretty seamlessly with the group. When meetings take place in conference centers, I'm Visually Recording in front of hundreds of people, capturing the content in large murals that are projected onto screens so the whole audience can watch the murals taking shape. While the size and scale of the conversation changes, the practice of listening to the core ideas and visually depicting the key points always remains the same.
Most recently, I had the opportunity to work on a very large scale with a fellow Visual Recorder, the lovely and extremely talented Michelle Boos Stone. Michelle and I worked together to capture the conversations of a manufacturing company interested in taking a new and empowered stance in their business. We created fifteen 4x8 murals while working on a stage in front of the audience of almost 750 people, seen below.

Here's a template I created that provides a space for
people to write in their visionary ideas and thoughts.
Instead of providing a linear document with
blank _____ spaces for clients to fill in, why not use a
template where they can write and draw in a drawing?

Mandalas

For many years now I've enjoyed drawing mandalas, as they portray relationships in a unique way; all the symbols, curves and lines are interconnected just as humans connected to one another and to nature. Creating mandalas is an organic process that develops as the conversation or my own thoughts emerge, most often using symbols and shapes instead of written words. I begin by making a small dot near the center of page, then I slowly draw other dots in a circular pattern that relates to the first dot. I continute to draw without a design in mind or the aid of a ruler. This drawing style came to me early one morning when I was visiting the holy city of Safed, Israel. While wandering around with my sketch book, I noticed a unusually artistic light fixture. I did my best to copy the fixture's intricate design and next thing I knew, a mandala took shape. I haven't been able to stop creating mandalas since that day, almost sixteen years ago. On several occasions I've drawn mandalas for corporate and non-profit organizations as way to represent their conversations, but most of the time, the mandalas live in my sketch books. Feel free to leave me a comment about what you see in the images or tell me how they speak to you.

Tailor-Made Visual Recording Workshops

A Google employee prepares a map for a World Cafe harvest.

Visual Recording workshops help you develop a new creative skill to use at work and home:

• You can offer a Visual Recording workshop that is designed just for your organization:
  
• I offer a one or two day workshop that teaches the basic skills of Visual Recording that can be directly applied to your work: everyone can learn to take notes in Visual Record form, and we can even teach you to Record the ideas and conversations of others.
• A Visual Recording workshop will highlight the creativity and ingenuity of your co-workers as they learn to Visually Record your next meeting or conversation.
• Bringing Visual Recording skills into your workplace supports the many different learning styles in your company; over %65 percent of people are visual learners, so make sure you're reaching your whole audience at work.
• At the end of the day, each person will have created posters, Visual Records, and icons that can be used right away at work or home.
  
• After a Visual Recording workshop, you'll think even better as a team, because now you can see your collective ideas all in the same place.
  
• A Visual Record you created on your office wall is a great way to keep inspired and engaged.
  
• Create a personalized Visual Record during a workshop that you can give as a individual gift or seasons greetings card.

Students at SCAD University in a Visual Recording workshop.


Employees at Google learning to Visually Record a live conversation.

Latino Roundtable, Chicago IL

A poster I created for a presentation on "Forging the Tools for Unity: A Report on Metro Chicago’s Mayor’s Roundtables on Latino Integration."

Systems Challenge Mural: NCDD '08

The first of many images to come from our work at the National Conference on Dialog and Deliberation in Austin Texas. This mural is a compilation of comments left by participants over the three day gathering. 5 challenge areas related to D&D were chosen as themes of the conference and I mapped the issue concerning integrating D&D into our systems.

A recent Visual Record I created for a consumer products company
during a retreat facilitated by Dawna Markova and her team of
Professional Thinking Partners.