Would like to see them put on a conference following the Welsh Entrepreneurs 2012 model, bringing all the different creatives together in one place.

Spent most of today at the inspiring – and hopefully first of many – Welsh Entrepreneurs Conference at City Hall in Cardiff with approx. 399 people. I’ve been looking forward to it since being part of the initial Linkedin discussion thread and it exceeded expectations.

Not surprisingly it was oversubscribed, Julie Meyers is the ideal keynote, with Bruce Dickenson and Edwina Hart (with surprise guest!) providing different perspectives. No signs of first event ‘hiccups’, seamless throughout from the world class speakers and workshops, to the venue and sticky pastries. I created some snapshot visual minutes and made interesting new connections.

The agenda shows the sections which I created the visual minutes from, these were sketched on my lap rather than usual boards so in a little looser style than usual:

Agenda, 14/11/2012
09.00 Female Entrepreneurs table discussion (ours was packed…)
10:00 Welcome Sarah Dickins, BBC Wales presenter and economic correspondent
10:10 Key Note Speaker Julie Meyer MBE, founder and CEO of Ariadne Capital, will provide a UK perspective on entrepreneurship.
10:50 Inspiring Entrepreneurship in Wales, Bruce Dickinson, founder of Cardiff aviation and lead singer with rock band Iron Maiden will provide the story behind his Welsh based business.
11:10 Edwina Hart, The Minister to address the conference outlining the importance of  entrepreneurial activity to the Welsh economy.
13:30 Second Interactive Session Dan Sodergen

Graphic recording on my trusty board, very high up - not for those with vertigo

OCTOBER 1: CARDIFF
Last week I started with visual minutes for the amazing Camila Batmanghelidjh, at the General Teaching Council for Wales’ 2012 Wales Education Lecture. Camila Batmanghelidjh, the founder of the charity Kids Company

Classic lecture theatre venue, steeply-angled wooden seats

Camilla delivered a 1 hour lecture entitled ‘Neurosis, Numeracy and Neurons: the challenges of delivering education to vulnerable children and young people’. She explored the challenges faced by school staff when trying to reach out to vulnerable children in their care, and questioned if the time has come for a paradigm shift in the management of vulnerable children within educational settings.

I created 3 visual minutes maps and a record of the Q&A (click to download), scribing in the classic lecture theatre at the National Museum – the maps will be online next week. Thanks to Isabel Vander for volunteer support and photos.

“Delighted with the results; whenever I get the opportunity to do this type of thing again, I’ll certainly give you a shout!” Helen Lowcock James, General Teaching Council for Wales

Large scale mapping of keynotes, then displayed on conference walls

OCTOBER 2 – 4: ROME
Next Rome… My third WIN Global Leadership Conference, this time round I created visual minutes from the inspiring WIN founder Kristin Envig, keynotes and two forums: the Corporate Forum and the Unilever, Diversity & Inclusion expert forum. Then straight onto a classic Italian Palace hotel restaurant for more visual recording of their team dinner.

This is what 950 women looks like

This year there was 950 women, which in itself is an unusual experience to be part of! Set up to for women to share, connect, network and learn, I always come away refreshed, inspired and with new skills for the workplace.

This year felt lucky to share it with Jane Horan who flew in from Singapore, a former Disney Colleague, Author, Collaborator, D&I guru, Friend and all-round amazing woman. These maps are on a lorry with 100s of drums driving back to Lausanne, then will be returned to me and shared.

Leading the World Café & Scribing to show it can be done by one person

OCTOBER 5 – 7: GENEVA
Onto Geneva on the 8.25am flight… My first IAF Europe Conference, very gentle with a HUGE amount of expert knowledge, these people had facilitated some really out-there stuff. The Peace Core, Afghanistan, Somali Pirates, Africa, Kosovo, a challenge to lead sessions with a group this experienced. Created visual minutes from a couple of sessions, also lead a visual facilitation and engagement workshop with 27 people Engage & Excite Training.

27 people at my 'Engage & Excite' workshop

Lovely space to teach in and a knowledgeable and energetic group, I learnt nearly as much as they did! Last day I led an adapted version with 120 people of the World Cafe process as part of the closing session. Again, opened the floor for the experts to share their experiences back and discovered some useful new tried and tested methods. Definitely going to Stockholm next year! Completing these maps early next week and will be posted on my site and IAFEurope Facebook.

NEXT…
Sleep and relax with the family. Working on an RSA Animate style video on Diversity & Inclusion and getting all the maps completed.

Such a HUGE positive response to the visual minutes maps, graphic facilitation and World Café that I’m planning to run training sessions in London, Cardiff/North Wales, Geneva, Amsterdam and Singapore either later this year or early 2013. Please email if you wish to be added to the updates list.

Lastly, the joys of travel, seeing sights of beauty and wonder, meeting old and new friends and learning so much that makes life richer.

Pilots doing 360 degree turn above Mount Blanc "for their and our pleasure" - stunningly beautiful. And slightly scary when the world tilted over.

Client: Tower Fund & Good Relations Wales

Brief: The Tower Fund had launched their new identity and wanted to run a series of consultation events to ask the people in the 4 communities how they would like to spend the fund. Our main aim was to create a space where everyone’s views could be captured and they could meet the team, as Tower Fund wanted each community to lead how their money would be spent.

Action: Working with the client teams Scarlet Design created a Community Consultation Toolkit, characters, printed materials – everything they would need to communicate the event and engage with the local communities. We co-planned and led the launch events, using a mix of drawing materials, postcards, giant floor maps and wall posters to capture people’s views.

Results: The new Tower Fund identity we created was everywhere – great to see! Posters, leaflets, wall sheets, the website, mobile unit and also on TV: Tower Fund on ITV.  In addition to the information captured at the events – hundreds of postcards and the wallmaps – Fran also created an on-the-spot strategic map to clearly explain how, when and by whom the ‘pot of money’ could be spent, this map is now being using to communicate the project with communities, business partners and stakeholders.

If you’d like us to graphic facilitate a similar event, or a copy of the full case study report in Adobe pdf format please contact us.

Action: Chaired by Dr Neil Wooding, with Dr Edgar Cahn and Dr Chris Gray as keynote speakers – an action-packed day with a series of activities designed to engage everyone in a ‘big conversation’. And talk we did… Assisted by Eleanor Beer, we worked to capture all the rich responses and speeches, through visual minutes, quote and cloud shaped cards and table sheets – powerful stuff!

Results: I have been part of the working group and designed the conference materials, from the name right through to the logo, leaflets and visual-led sessions on the day – including a World Café with 4 zones and different conversations. Pam stayed true to her vision and we designed a custom cafe with 24 tables, 4 coloured zones and two rounds of conversations. All the materials are shared on the site – thanks to everyone for an experience which created powerful insights and connections to help change futures and make some of the dreams become a reality. communitiescan2012.wordpress.com

If you’d like us to graphic facilitate an event, or or a copy of the full ‘Communities Can 2012′ report in Adobe pdf format please contact us.

Making the Complex Clear
Text-heavy report but does provide robust grounding on the top, neat ‘cut out and keep’ memory cards on page 65 and reader checklist for feedback on page 66.

‘Sketching at Work’

This resource in particular provides non-designers with simple actions and templates they can use to clarify their thinking. It’s presented in a highly readable way, and the issuu format makes page ‘flicking’ very simple. The brevity of the document and use of white space and simple sketching is refreshing and will make people with low confidence in their drawing skills feel the outcomes are more attainable.

A Periodic Table of Visualisation Methods

Wow. Invaluable table showing what’s available, with colour coding and scope.

Note on Issuu

issuu is a free site where you can upload pdfs, so ideal for sharing large documents making them more accessible and readable – always a good priority. Highly recommended.

View from Movenpick Hotel window at 6am

At IMD Executive Business School in Lausanne for first trip of 2012 and its a beautiful day. In 2011 came on 5 trips to work with Prof Preston Bottger, as a visual communications coach developing his materials.

We working on a ‘deck’ of PowerPoint slides that will translate into custom presentations across the areas of IMD he works in. Part of these will evolve into infographics with click to animation and video features – very exciting to start getting some of the tools online. ipads are standard here, so tools have to translate into an interactive file which adds to the dimensions you can communicate the materials in.

As we’re still at development stage today was another really stimulating day of strategic development, discussing the topcis and honing the content and graphics to deliver an engaging and consistent story. Some graphic facilitation is involved, always good to get some large sheet drawing in the mix! Plus a full range of post-its and a ton of bluetack so we can move idea sheets around easily – such fun!

Preston is a Professor of Leadership so whilst developing the materials i learnt a ‘bunch of stuff’ as my old boss Phil Buerk at Disney used to say. Mainly its a unique chance to set up a brainstorming room, cover the walls with printouts and really develop some ideas. Offices come equipped with pretty much everything, so the flow keeps going. Each trip is usually 3 days and we work in between via email and the phone – progress is rapid, if you have a client who knows their topic ti can really work well.

I bring my portable office kit, laptop, digital tablet, camera and a huge box of graphic facilitation tools. By the end of this trip we’ll have his next major piece completed and I’ll design a workbook and online materials to support. Its an ideal consultancy project… and we laugh loads too – what more can you say?

Tonight managed to get out and jog along Lake Geneva and nearly fell in when a group of swans came round the corner, jogging down the steps through the fountains had shades of Rocky!

This will be the third year Fran has delivered these sessions, they are always lively with good student feedback. The aim of the sessions is for the students to think about how they approach the professional workplace – with a focus on the students themselves without their work.

o  Practising as a design professional – Fran O’Hara career presentation
o  ‘Finding your 20%’ – Identifying your skills and strengths
o  ‘Maximising your 15 minutes’ – Interviews and portfolios
o  ‘Working in the real world’ – demystifying the placement experience
o  ‘Identifying YOUR design process’ – evaluating the brief and ideas generation

Fran spent most of last week at IMD Executive Business School in Lausanne, facilitating strategic planning sessions with Professor of Leadership Preston Bottger. This was her 4th trip and the sessions proved as dynamic and stimulating as always. Professor Bottger works across several key areas at IMD, Fran uses her communications and design skills to develop innovative presentation materials – with clarity and innovative thinking at their core – which really capture and communicate his thought leadership.

Its an honour and a pleasure to work with Preston. Intense intellectually stimulating working sessions interspersed with laughter whilst we cover the walls with sheets and sheets of ideas and graphics.

With a compact 10-2pm event time schedule, the team and participants all worked energetically to achieve 2 rounds of discussions on each of 3 questions, plus lunch and a feedback session. By the end of this inspiring event 10 large scale visual minutes maps and 27 table sheets covered the walls and windows of the Venue Cymru room – so we were sitting inside words from the event. A great example of how effective and powerful visual-led facilitation and the World Café process is.

Thanks to Judy for seeing the potential in our Sell2Wales tender, my great team and all the participants for trusting the process, which was new to most, on the day. I was proud to be part of it, and hope the positive energy continues to build.

Please contact us for a copy of the more comprehensive overview with photostory.

Feedback included:

“Thank you so much for such an exciting day… Lots of energy, enjoyment, problem-solving, information and opinion.”

“WOW – what a brilliant workshop. The energy from the facilitators, and their overall approach was really stimulating and enthusing.  I came away totally exhausted and inspired”.

“I thoroughly enjoyed today – well done”.