Visual Magic for your Meeting

Engage Attendees

The EMS Today Conference wanted to engage with its 5,000+ attendees in a fun, as well as meaningful way, so we designed a 8’ by 20’ graphic wall that told the story of the conference, built anticipation for the final JEMS Games winners and also engaged in a large-scale interactive dialogue with attendees about important subjects like industry challenges and the mental and emotional health of EMS workers. Each day of the 3-day conference, we invited participants to answer one of the questions on post-it notes which we then synthesized into a graphic depiction of the community’s responses. We also designed two interactive satellite stations, deployed in other areas of the conference to highlight the Conference’s 35th Anniversary and International scope.

Inspire Collaboration

At the Child Poverty Collaborative Community Summit in Cincinnati, the secret mission was to galvanize participants into action by instilling hope and sparking collaboration–while avoiding overwhelm about a large, complex emotionally-charged problem. We collaborated with other graphic recorders to co-design a 24’ “puzzle wall” to organize the large volume of content into three overarching color-coded visual metaphors. Six different graphic recorders were positioned around the conference hall to simultaneously capture content from the discussion tables onto pre-cut “puzzle piece” boards. As the group completed discussion of each question, the completed “puzzle pieces” were placed back into the puzzle wall to create a concise, inspiring and deeply meaningful reflection of the community’s work that day. (It was later deconstructed and re-assembled in the foyer of their offices.)

Harvest Market Research

At the 2015 RAPS convention in Austin Texas, the Regulatory Affairs Organization wanted to find out why membership was lagging and how they could offer more value to their members. We worked with their market research team to create a “Board Room” and “Wisdom Wall” to engage attendees in large-scale interactive conversations to answer these questions. This is a great example of how graphic recording can be as impactful outside of conference sessions as it can be inside them.

Pledge Support

The simple act of signing your name or placing your ideas on an interactive board can have a powerful effect on your sense of involvement in and ownership of a change initiative. For the Cincinnati Child Poverty Summit we collaborated on an 8’ tall pledge board to galvanize the group to take on poverty together. For the new Dell Medical School in Austin Texas, we designed a board to elicit donors ideas and strengthen their commitment to support the Scholarship fund. For the Tennant Company, we designed a special pledge board where upper-level management literally signed up to be leaders of digital transformation!

Celebrate the Past, Envision the Future

Custom Vision & History Charts are a powerful way to both reflect on the past and create the future together. We often pre-design a history chart that can then be drawn in real time during an event.  

 The Tennant Company wanted to put their future growth in the context of their past accomplishments.

For an HR Department, we used an existing strategic visioning template (from the Grove in San Francisco) to illustrate their vision, mission and values.