For the edition 2024 of the Inktober challenge, I decided to complete the task by drawing each prompt with one continuous line, then to draw and post every day despite the demanding professional commitments. I made it! I thank all my contacts, known and unknown, for their support, positive comments of appreciation and all their likes on Instagram. It’s great to be part of this sketchers community!
The Inktober 2024 prompt list and my posts on Instagram
After 6 editions organised in Europe (*), the 2024 International Sketchnote Camp (ISC) crossed the Atlantic to be held in San Antonio, Texas, and was tagged with ISC24TX. The venue and the location (the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio – Texas, close to Mexico but still in the United States), and of course the majority of participants coming from the American continent influenced the three days of the ISC with an American-Tex-Mex touch; “Howdy, Claudio! :-)”. But this was also the case at the last ISCs with their own national touch.
The group photo from the ISC24TX organisers – See my ISC24TX photo album on Flickr
It took me some time to put down on paper my deepest takeaways from the ISC24TX. Here they are.
The gratitude feeling
I have a great feeling of gratitude towards all those who allowed me to live the ISC experience. First the organisers who gave their heart and soul to welcome us and created this caring environment where sharing could take place, Prof Clayton, Mike Rohde, Steve Silbert and Ben Norris. Then to all participants, those present in the rooms of the university and those online, for the gifts they gave me (see next takeaway). I am immensely grateful to my family who helped and supported me to participate in this event far from home.
The intangible gifts
As a participant, I could already be satisfied with the goodie bag we received. It was full of items that make any sketchnoting geek crazy. What I learnt from the workshops may also have satisfied me. But the most precious gifts I’ve received are the intangible ones, the ones that participants give each other, at least to me: an incredible recharge of energy, inspiration, creating together, the care and kindness, and the joy of being there.
The precious connections
The connections I make at a sketchnote camp, and again at the ISC24TX, are precious. Whether it was:
reconnecting with old friends I hadn’t seen in real life for a long time (Mike Rohde, Prof Clayton, Rob Dimeo, Lorraine Kasyan, Ania Staśkiewicz, Peter Schmitt, Nathalie Grob, Joanna Redzimska)
connecting with new people, all interesting and beautiful persons (Alejo Porras, Emily Mills, Ben Norris, Ximena Vila Ferral, Cote Soerens, Ari Alvarez, Gabriela Borowczyk, Ola Krawczyk, Georgina Dean, Sarah Pressler, Omar Lopez, Shelaine, Raj Solanki, who else am I forgetting?),
thinking of all the visual thinkers friends who couldn’t be there but with whom I had a virtual connection in my heart (the list would be far too long to mention them all, so just Steve Silbert, Mauro Toselli, Sabine Soeder, and my Belgian friends with whom I organised ISC21BE).
I also really appreciated the connections between people and knowledge that are made through sharing skills and experience in workshops and informal conversations, such as on metaphors, mindful sketchnoting, archetypes, sketchnotes in presentations, hatching, and the business of graphic recording.
And what about the connection with San Antonio’s Tex-Mex culture? Thanks to my walks in the city, the fantastic night on a barge along the River Walk tasting typical Tex-Mex dishes, the great presentation of the city and its culture by Prof Clayton during his opening speech, the sketchnote loteria led by Ximena, and “El Marko” Neuland markers.
The sketchnoting community
This is probably my most biased takeaway because the sketchnoting community means a lot to me. At the European Commission, I work on building communities of practice. Therefore, I see the potential of our community and the great challenges we face. That gives me a mixture of feelings. On the one hand, it was a real joy to see our global community of sketchnoters come alive during the three days of ISC24TX, with a multicultural group of diverse backgrounds and practices in the room, with new members meeting the old, and everyone sharing, caring and learning from others. That’s what a community of practice is all about. But at the same time, I can’t help but feel that our community is still in its early stages, and there’s much more to do to make it strong and sustainable.
These are my takeaways from the 2024 International Sketchnote Camp. The next post is a follow-up to this one with my thoughts on how we could evolve as a community of sketchnoters. I am very interested in your opinion, please feel free to share it.
(*) Previous ISC editions
ISC24TX – 7th International Sketchnote Camp, San Antonio, Texas [Learn more]
ISC23NL – 6th International Sketchnote Camp, Leiden, the Netherlands [Learn more]
ISC22PL – 5th International Sketchnote Camp, Szczecin, Poland [Learn more]
ISC21BE – 4th International Sketchnote Camp, Brussels, Belgium (full online due to the Covid pandemic) [Learn more]
ISC20BE – No ISC in Brussels, Belgium, as planned due to the Covid pandemic
ISC19FR – 3th International Sketchnote Camp, Paris, France
ISC18LX – 2nd International Sketchnote Camp, Lisboa, Portugal [Learn more]
ISC17HH – The first International Sketchnote Camp, Hamburg, Germany
As I sorted through my collection of event badges, dating back to 2005, I noticed an interesting pattern.
About half of these badges are from events where I was involved in the organisation – unsurprising, given my 20+ years in communication units at the European Commission. The other half, however, are from events where I served as a graphic recorder, harvester, facilitator, or sketchnoter – in essence, as a visual thinker.
Despite the evident demand for visual thinking skills, this role has never been officially recognised within the institution. Each time I transition to a new position or hierarchy, I advocate for this competence to be formally acknowledged in my job description. The necessity and utility of visual thinking in the EU institutions are clear, and I believe it should be developed and recognised across all EU institutions.
This conviction led me to create, with a couple of friends visual thinkers like me, a course on visual thinking for my colleagues, sharing the basics of sketchnoting to empower others with these essential skills. I dream of a future where the role of visual thinker is officially recognised within the EU institutions, enabling us to better serve our colleagues, European citizens and meet the growing demand for these capabilities.
I recently had the opportunity to bring together three diverse groups of people for a workshop, and the experience was truly inspiring. Mario Scharfbillig, a colleague at the Joint Research Centre EU Science, Research and Innovation of the EC, reached out to me for assistance with a workshop on the ValuesML project he was organising.
The workshop brought together experts on values from universities and research centres around the world (the first group) to brainstorm research project ideas that would contribute to a future algorithm identifying values in datasets. The ultimate goal of the ValuesML project is to provide policymakers in the EC (the second group) with a deeper understanding of citizens’ values, identities, and aspirations in order to better shape policies. To facilitate the workshop, I enlisted the help of my facilitator friends in Art of Hosting (the third group), Myrto Tsoukia and Maria Samuel Madureira Pinto. We did an outstanding job offering a ProAction Café and adapted the script live during the workshop.
My main role was to take visual notes, capturing the outcomes of the participants’ conversations through graphic harvesting. What I noticed beyond the tangible outcomes of the workshop was the impact it had on all of us.
Mario gained a better understanding of participatory methods for facilitating meaningful conversations
My fellow facilitators working within European institutions recognised the importance of considering citizens’ values and identities in policy design
Additionally, the researchers in the room had the opportunity to experiment with a participatory method for discussing their ideas.
Researchers’ curiosity and eagerness to see my graphic recording filled me with joy. For many, it was the first time they had seen visual notes taken live. What they saw were just the rough sketches on paper of their conversations. I sometimes had difficulty understanding their scientific jargon and I had to confirm with them my correct understanding or correct my approximations. The final result arrived a few hours later with a digital version reproducing my raw sketches on the iPad. I like to share here both versions in order to show that the live capture is not very far from the final version, certainly more beautiful and colorful, but the ideas are the same.
I hope that these visual notes will serve as a reminder of the richness of the conversations and the power of summarising complexity in a simple and elegant way.
It was a truly rewarding experience, and I look forward to future opportunities to facilitate and bring diverse groups of people together for meaningful conversations. And of course…to capture visually their conversations.
To better understand the ValuesML initiative and the purpose of the workshop you may read Mario’s post on Linkedin.
Reflecting on my past, I once believed multitasking was the key to productivity and efficiency. It took a burnout to realise the harmful effects of multitasking on my mental health. Asana’s enlightening article delves into the neuroscience behind multitasking myths, revealing how it drains our mental resources and hinders efficiency. Embracing single-tasking has been a game changer for me. By focusing on one task at a time I’ve unlocked higher productivity and improved concentration.
Dive into the Asana article for six actionable tips on mastering the “art of single-tasking”, empowering you to stay focused and achieving your daily goals. Plus, check out my attached sketchnotes capturing the essence of the article.
As member of the JRC and as visual thinker, I was invited to capture visually the main insights of the JRC senior management seminar. During two days, I listened to a few hundred managers taking stock after one year of the launch of an innovative way of working in transversal modes in our organisation, the so-called JRC portfolios. The program was a fair balance between keynotes, informative presentations, exchanges, and conversations in world café mode. My challenge was to create the graphic recording of all this in order to provide a visual but also emotional memory that would be useful to the participants and those who were not present.
On the substance
Overall, the results after one year are positive. There is a deeper understanding among the managers of the benefits of collaborating and working together on cross-cutting themes to “do even better science to support EU policies”. There are of course issues to resolve, while navigating a complex organisation and world, but by working together, everyone agreed that we would be able to overcome it all.
How I worked
Aware that I would not have been able to capture the essence of extremely technical, dense and tense conversations over two days, I put together a small team of volunteers to help me. They were instructed to write down points and insights that were important to them on post-its (when they wanted and if they could) and bring them to me. This is how dozens of post-its arrived at me at the end of each intervention. Thanks to them I was able to refine my live visual notes by confirming or correcting my own notes, or by covering what I had missed.
Personal take-aways
The intensity of the program spread over three days, and the exhausting trips to and from the hotel which was very far away, should not have impacted my concentration and my ability to listen. So I relied on a few small moments of meditation during the days, whether it’s a walk outside the conference center or stacking stones in balance inside. This is really what allowed me to keep my concentration and manage my mental fatigue.
I was moved when some of the colleagues who helped me with the harvesting said at the end that they had listened to the speeches with much deeper attention than usual. They experienced the basics of harvesting, this technique in the art of hosting which first consists of listening at different levels. Without them I would not have been able to create such rich and deep visual notes. Harvesting important events can only be done correctly with and as a team.
I want to express them my gratitude and to the other colleagues with whom I had the privilege of working closely, for their support, their help, their kindness, for the coffees brought, their smiles, for their comforting looks, for who they are. Beautiful people.
The importance of harnessing the power and benefits of visual thinking has never been more evident. It’s a valuable skill for enhancing our listening abilities, concentration, memory retention, and visually reimagining information processing by summarising and filtering it. As a colleague told me recently, “you do knowledge synthesis in its most practical form!“. Moreover, visual thinking is a critical tool for gaining clarity in the face of complexity, helping us tackle intricate subjects.
It had been over a decade since Catherine Focant and I rekindled our discussion on introducing visual thinking and sketchnoting within the European institutions. In October 2023, we achieved a significant milestone by delivering the first-ever internally offered course on sketchnoting and visual thinking at the European Commission. The initial 20 spots filled up rapidly, and we were pleasantly surprised to find the waiting list for future sessions grow daily, eventually reaching over 350 eager colleagues.
For the enthusiastic participants, it was a transformative journey. Many of them began with the misconception that “I cannot draw“, but they left the course with newfound confidence, now able to create simple visuals combined with lettering. They also discovered that drawing skills are closely linked to active and deep listening.
The overwhelmingly positive feedback and their commitment to practicing visual thinking were the most cherished gifts for us. Starting tomorrow, we invite them to join a newly established community of practice on Sketchnoting within the European institutions, and we encourage them to explore the global community of practitioners worldwide. If our motto is “Draw and share,” I genuinely believe that I received far more from them than what I imparted during the course.
