Standing for Love

I was all ready to share some insights from last week with you, as I spent five days with thousands of people from all over the world graphic recording their discussions on climate solutions. 

In the midst of this hopeful and action-oriented virtual conference, the violent insurrectionist* attack on the US Capitol unfolded. It feels heavy, and also disingenuous not to acknowledge what is happening and denounce it in no uncertain terms.

I stand for equity. 

I stand with the Earth. 

I am learning to be anti-racist. 

I am for accessibility.

I stand with science. 

I stand with Love. 

*Originally, I used the language “domestic terrorist attack” here. I’m learning about how the word “terrorist” has been used in the past referring to violence committed by White people (the Oklahoma City bombing), and the resulting policy has been used largely against marginalized communities instead. I’m still forming an opinion, but my takeaway is this: moving toward anti-racism means critical thinking about language I use.

Where in the Virtual World is ConverSketch?

NCSE + Drawdown 2021: The Global Council for Science and the Environment and Project Drawdown co-hosted a beautiful and powerful virtual conference to connect research with action for global climate solutions. Here is a snapshot of the Miro Board visual synthesis I created over the course of the five-day event distilling key ideas and actions from participants. Click here to explore the board in more detail.

Accessibility Widget on the Website: I’m excited to have discovered the User Way Accessibility Widget thanks to Drawing Change. This widget supports front and back-end accessibility for people with differing abilities to ensure any website is ADA compliant. Check it out here!

A Gentle New Year’s Reflections and Visioning Practice

Happy New Year!

In such a monumentally symbolic time of year, especially THIS year, making time to reflect and visualize feels…a little overwhelming. 

What if I don’t have time to do a deep dive? Taking 15 minutes could be exactly what you need.

What if I don’t ask myself all the right questions? The questions you do ask yourself will be exactly right.

What if I’m not creating something deserving of the gravitas of this moment as we depart from 2020? Sometimes simple is the most elegant. 

Which is why I’ve decided to ask myself the same questions I have for the past few years – and share them with you in a fresh design to fill in:

• What have I accomplished this year? 

• What am I grateful for?

• What am I letting go of? 

• What am I opening up to?

• What do I want to attract in my life this year?

For me, taking any amount of time, whether it’s a few minutes or a few hours, around each new year to reflect and focus my energy for the coming calendar year feels powerful and uplifting. Energy flows where attention goes. 

It’s an opportunity to create clarity for myself among a world of unknowns. It’s creating space to center – that center we can all return to and tap into during the moments of cray cray. 

If you’d like more ConverSketch ideas for New Years visioning, here’s the archive from 2020, 2019, and 2017. If a template feels too prescriptive, check out my favorite tips for creating your own custom vision board.

If you’re ready for a deeper dive, Sarah Firth has created a gorgeous digital download or printed workbook to fill in throughout the whole year. There are even two different covers to choose from and color!

Once again, thank you from my heart and soul for your support, great senses of humor, brilliant minds, collaboration and what you're each doing to make the world a better place.

Cheers, 

Where in the Virtual World is ConverSketch?

Resting  Happy Winter!

Getting ready for the virtual National Council on Science and the Environment + Drawdown next week. The theme is Research to Action and I’m looking forward to seeing researchers and practitioners connecting! 

Ready for 2021? Let’s explore how graphic recording can help make meetings better - even virtual ones!

Weird Holidays? Draw Happy Little Winter Trees

Hello!

As we lean into the darkest time of the year here in the Northern Hemisphere, creating space, physically or mentally, to rest can feed our souls. 

In this especially weird year, it might feel better to begin looking forward as soon each day will get a little longer. Stay tuned for one more ConverSketch newsletter before the end of the year with a template to help guide a vision board for 2021.

For now, here’s one way to draw some Happy Little Winter Trees – have fun, play, and root down to cultivate presence with a tree doodle. 

Wishing you a warm, joyful, and safe holiday season. I am SO APPRECIATIVE that you’re a part of my life and I’m looking forward to celebrating and co-creating safely together in 2021!

Cheers, 

Where in the Virtual World is ConverSketch?

Denver Housing Authority: Designing and guiding a three-part series for a team to fortify their connections after months working virtually and to explore ways to help each other and participants in a very complex system.

Virtual Facilitation Workshop for the Earth Leadership Program: Equipping researchers with best practices for virtual meeting platforms, how to design an engaging online process, and tips and tricks to plan for a successful convening in a remote world. 

Southwest Beef Knowledge Network: How can ranchers raise healthy cows in a way that supports the environment and can be adapted to a changing climate? This network shared best practices in ranching and education around their findings, a rare and delightful combination (get the beef pun?).

Painting: After many months not feeling extra creativity beyond ConverSketching, recently I picked up my paintbrushes and dove into an acrylic painting project. Rivers and Canyons are special places for me, so this painting will happily hang in our home.

Your WFH Refresh

By now, you’re all WFH (Work From Home) pros, figuring out systems that work for you. Kid/dog busts in during a zoom meeting? You’ve got a virtual background for that. Video call fatigue? You’ve got a stockpile of great questions to reenergize the group in breakout rooms. 

That being said, covid is testing our limits, and it’s challenging. As the northern hemisphere is heading into winter with longer nights and more time indoors, the struggle can most definitely be real. 

Lately, I’ve been digging back into these tips to help myself stay focused when I need to, and remind myself to take breaks to maintain my sanity.

So it’s a Graphic Facilitator’s WFH Tips remix this week! The timer has been especially clutch to help me back away slowly from news websites and drop into a focused space to work on what matters – projects with you all! 

Click through the gallery to see each image larger.

What are your best tips for working from home? If you don’t see yours below, send me a note and it might make it into Part III!

And remember, most of all, no matter what, you’re doing it. You’re a bright and valued person, you are loved, and you are doing the best you can. Thank you for what you do to make this world a better place!

Cheers, 

Where in the Virtual World is ConverSketch?

Alabama-Coushatta Tribe: Mapping out the priorities, needs, and opportunities of the Tribal Council.

Denver Housing Authority: Visually facilitating the first of three virtual retreat meetings focused on creating connections and a shared vision while working remotely. We mapped the team on the Enneagram circle using Google Jamboard to work collaboratively in real-time to reflect and learn about each other!

Studio Reveal: Hiring Barriers and Biases. Over the past few weeks, I collaborated with a team at the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to visually map the challenges to BIPOC in applying for and getting hired at the agency. I’m looking forward to seeing how the shifts this team identified can create a more welcoming and inclusive environment!

Brighten your Day with an Appreciation Map

This time of year in the US many of us think about what we appreciate as the holiday season begins. Even with covid, especially with covid, I have found that cultivating a practice of appreciation boosts my mood and energy.

Appreciation helps me put things into perspective, remember my privilege, and slow down to recognize all the beautiful things happening around us every day. 

To really cement this practice, shockingly, I like to map out visually what I appreciate. 

Even if you’re not “artistic” – there are simple ways to use size, color, and layout to make your notes more visual.

Last week I gave a brief overview of these tips in my Digital Visual Notes workshop as a “watch party” from the session hosted at ShapingEDU’s LearningHuman last summer. 

Here’s the link to the free one-hour session packed with ideas and tips to make your digital and analog notes more visual!

Why take the extra visual step? To boost memory, helping manage overwhelm, create deeper understanding, and for seeing patterns.

So, I encourage you to take 5 minutes and doodle out what you appreciate. Just write or doodle what comes to mind when you ask yourself: 

What do I appreciate today? 

Not keen on grappling with a blank sheet of paper? You can use this template. And if you want to learn to draw a turkey, click right there – both links take you to more resources on appreciation and gratitude.

I APPRECIATE YOU! 

Once again, thank you from my heart and soul for your support, great senses of humor, brilliant minds, collaboration and what you're each doing to make the world a better place.

Cheers, 

Where in the Virtual World is ConverSketch?

Currently in the midst of UNICON 2020: A global Executive MBA conference hosted by Arizona State University’s Thunderbird School of Global Management. Here’s a snapshot of a Miro board I designed for an interactive session for over 400 participants!

Queer Student Panel: This intimate and authentic panel of students in the LGBTQ+ community at Regis University was by students, for students. They curated a space where new connections were made and stories were shared honestly and humbly.  

The Newest Drawing Connections illustrated video is out for the National Park Service! Take a journey through the history of Castillo de San Marcos in Florida and find out how it is affected by climate change.

Use this Tool to Feel Calmer in 30 Seconds

If you’re feeling stressed or anxious today (etc.), give yourself 30 seconds and breathe with me: 

You may have encountered the scientific benefits of breathing before. If you want to nerd out, here’s an article from Forbes and one from Harvard Health outlining how breathing intentionally does things like reducing anxiety, slowing heart rate, helping you regulate emotions, and affecting memory.

Be gentle with yourself and good to others this week. 

By the talented Charlie Mackesy.

Once again, thank you from my heart and soul for your support, great senses of humor, brilliant minds, collaboration and what you're each doing to make the world a better place.

Cheers, 

Where in the Virtual World is ConverSketch?

Indigenous Voices and Regenerative Foodscapes: Last week I graphically facilitated a session with Trees, Water, and People co-creating a vision for how we might bring more indigenous voices and stories forth to learn about food resilience and regeneration. I’m looking forward to planning and sharing what we create in the spring!

ShapingEDU Black Swan Thinking: ShapingEDU is back at it again with a series of online workshops around how to use systems thinking to predict, or at least be slightly less off-kilter when black swan events emerge. There are two more in the coming months – find out more here.

Boosting Women Leaders: How can companies support women leaders internally? Here’s a few tips from the McGuckin Group on boosting women leaders!

Live…in Greeley! I did my first on-site job for a strategic planning session for a local municipality. It felt great to be on the wall for the first time in seven months, and also strange with the realities of covid. I hope you are keeping well and taking care of yourselves!

Three Ways to Create an Engaging Visual Summary of Your Virtual Event

One of the most valuable aspects of having a graphic recorder in the room during an event is the opportunity to host a Gallery Walk. 

Karina in the midst of a Gallery Walk for Broto, 2019 (aka The Before Times). Photo: Michael & Suz Karchmer

What is a Gallery Walk? When a group takes time to intentionally reflect on graphic recordings, flip charts, posters, or other visuals around the room in a meeting. They can be guided by a facilitator walking the group through a high-level summary, or can be less structured with a time for people to wander around and observe. 

Gallery Walks serve as an opportunity to:

• Look for connections across sessions, presentations, small group conversations

• Review ideas to be able to build consensus, move toward convergence, or look for gaps

• Create space for reflection and integration of content 

• See the amount of thinking and work the group has accomplished – it feels good!

We all know working in virtual spaces is challenging for a lot of reasons – and translating engaging process design to a virtual space using tools like a Gallery Walk is no exception. 

Today, I’d like to share three ways I’ve seen Gallery Walks leveraged to support virtual groups. 

Create an Adobe Spark Page

-        Spark makes it fast, easy, and fun to build your own custom web page in minutes! Drag and drop, and before you know it you’ve got key images, written highlights, and links to other resources all in one place to share right into that chat box!

Make a Google JamBoard Gallery 

-        Participants can collaborate in real-time adding sticky notes or text with ideas or reactions 

-        Other tools that are similar to JamBoard include Mural and Miro, which both require paid subscriptions while JamBoard is free, however not everyone can access Google platforms

Share a Google Doc

-        As with JamBoard, participants can collaborate on the same page at the same time

-        Also, free, again – not all organizations allow access to Google platforms

Once again, thank you from my heart and soul for your support, great senses of humor, brilliant minds, collaboration and what you're each doing to make the world a better place.

Cheers, 

Where in the Virtual World is ConverSketch?

Adobe EduMAX 2020: If you didn’t click on the Adobe Spark link above, check it out here to see the images and time-lapse videos of real-time graphics I captured digitally last week for Adobe. AdobeMAX is happening this week and it’s free – check it out and get creative!

In the Studio: This month is full of studio illustration and video sketches, revisions, and refinements. A few of the topics getting the visual treatment: hiring barriers and biases for a national agency, strategic mapping for a wealth management company explaining their vision to a client, creating illustrations for a white paper on wildfire planning and mitigation at multiple scales, facilitating a workshop on regenerative foodscapes in the Americas, and more!

Ready to take a (Gallery) Walk on the Wild Side?

Chaos Clarified: Visualizing Systems Cycles

As I was floating in a river canyon last week, thinking those sorts of nebulous thoughts, a memory clicked into place while gazing at the ancient stone and water around us. 

Way back in 2018 (that was at least 15 years ago, right?), I partnered with the Environmental Defense Fund and Colorado State University to graphic record a series of systems thinking workshops looking at pollinator habitat in midwestern agricultural lands. Over several months, this thoughtful team took a deep dive into systems thinking and I visually mapped out the process and ideas as we went. 

With so many moving parts, mental models, things we can/cannot control, emotions, perspectives, and information to sort through, it felt overwhelming to make decisions or know what we could do to make a positive change.

As we leaned into the systems thinking tools, we began to practice and see how they were one way to help us clarify complexity, map out relationships, and illuminate patterns or points of leverage that had previously gone unrecognized.

So, this last week as I was wondering why it felt like so many complex and difficult things are colliding right now in my country, and why the heck can’t we think long-term and collaboratively to solve problems, a sketch from 2018 popped into my mind: 

This drawing shows the time cycles of different elements of the pollinator/ag system we were mapping, and how each element’s cycle is quite different than the others. 

For example – our political cycle is four years, while many ecological cycles are much longer (100+ years). And the agricultural cycle is much shorter – just one year. So, if each of these cycles is driven by a different time constraint, the patterns of misalignment start to become clear. And the motivation to create policy or strategies that wouldn’t come to fruition until 10, 20, 100 years later…those are less persuasive in an election year. 

Systems mapping also created a framework to being understanding where changes could be made, and where ripple effects might begin. 

I love this question from Hugh McLeod: Where can the smallest change make the biggest difference?

So, in times where challenges seem enormous, pick up a pencil and make a few marks – you might be surprised at what becomes clear and where YOU can make a difference.

I am delighted to get to share some Very Exciting News!

When I first found out about graphic recording back in 2010, I took a training in the Bay Area which shaped how I approach the work and gave me a strong foundation to build my practice on. Since then, I’ve had the delight to become friends with one of the instructors, Emily Shepard of The Graphic Distillery. Em is kind, funny, compassionate, extremely talented, and an exceptional teacher. 

Why am I telling you all this? Because she just launched her new online course, Draw It Out! If you’ve ever wondered if YOU could take better visual notes or become a graphic recorder, this is your moment. She created this course to help equip people with tools to better understand each other and communicate more easily. Check out her course overview and outcomes here!*

And if you want a MASSIVE discount of $100 off, be sure to register before Friday, October 9th at 8 pm Pacific using the code birdflightdio. 

This is an affiliate link, so if you register I get a kickback because that’s how Emily rolls. For the record, I’d promote the sh*t out of this class regardless because she’s amazing.

Once again, thank you from my heart and soul for your support, great senses of humor, brilliant minds, collaboration and what you're each doing to make the world a better place.

Cheers, 

Where in the Virtual World is ConverSketch?

Children with Medical Complexity: In the last of a series of virtual reflections with universities and health campuses across the country, the graphics summarize lessons learned, accomplishments, and where these teams can focus in the future to support families and children in their health.

On Trails and the River: We snuck out for a small rafting trip in Western Colorado/Eastern Utah last week. Here’s a plein air watercolor I sketched at camp one evening. Spending time in nature fuels my creativity and soul, and I am feeling particularly privileged to have access to public lands, equipment, and time away. 

Water Research Vision 2050: Phase one of this project is also coming to a close this fall, and we are gearing up for the final Writing Workshop later this month to refine a framework for the Agricultural Research Service’s vision for water research in the coming decades.

Honoring the Notorious RBG

Photo Credit:: Time

We’ve lost a giant this week. A woman who, with grace, dignity, tenacity, and courage has unflinchingly pushed for women’s rights for her entire career. She showed us that you don’t have to agree with someone to have a respectful friendship with Justice Scalia. She was a mom, a trailblazer, and a relentless advocate for equality. Her accomplishments are too numerous to list and the ripple effect she's had on the lives of others is indelible. 

This week I’d like to take a moment to honor the life, work, and heart of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Thank you for everything. 

To learn more about her life and accomplishments, you can stream the following movies online: 

• RBG – the documentary about her on Hulu and Amazon

• On the Basis of Sex – biopic written by her nephew on Sling or Amazon

• And, for some levity, Stephen Colbert on RBG and trying her workout. Skip ahead to 1:10 to get to the interview, and to 3:42 get to the workout. 

Once again, thank you from my heart and soul for your support, great senses of humor, brilliant minds, collaboration and what you're each doing to make the world a better place.

Cheers, 

Where in the Virtual World is ConverSketch?

Words from Block Bias after working together on their anti-racism session last month:

Karina, your rendering of our event and programming is engaging and informative and provides the appropriate levels of detail in all the right places. It captures the moment beautifully. In addition, your professionalism was stellar and your creativity and enthusiasm were contagious! Our deepest and sincerest appreciation and thanks to you for your collaboration and support.

I’ve Joined ShapingEDU as the Visual Storyteller in Residence! For the next year, I’ll be supporting the Innovators in Residence and collaborators behind ShapingEDU to help tell stories and share what we’re up to. If you’re interested in EdTech or higher education, check out what we’re up to and get involved!

Technical Content? Here’s How to Turn Any Idea into a Story

If you’re a scientist, researcher, or someone who works with technical ideas, this one’s for you. 

My wheelhouse is working with scientific and technical teams working with complex ideas and systems.  And almost every single amazing, brilliant, technical client I’ve ever worked with have all struggled with the same thing: 

How to tell their story. 

And why would we expect someone who excels in their technical field to ALSO excel at communicating it to non-experts? I have faith that anyone can become a good storyteller, it just takes practice. And most researchers I’ve met want to work on their research, not figuring out how to tell a compelling story. 

However, the point of much of this research IS to help people make decisions, and those folks often aren’t experts in the technical stuff.

So what’s a scientist to do? 

In July, I had the honor of presenting a workshop to other visual practitioners at our annual (virtual) conference. The title? Talk Nerdy to Me. And it was all about how to best support and work with scientific and technical clients.  

Although we covered all sorts of things, and the participants also shared their experiences generously, I wanted to share one clear, simple strategy to help anyone practice telling their story. 

It’s called the Feynman Technique, and it goes a little something like this: 

1. Identify a subject

2. Teach it to a child

   1. Speak in plain terms

   2. Be brief (Quick like a bunny)

3. Identify your knowledge gaps (yes, yes, more research is needed…)

4. Organize + simplify + tell a story

   1. Practice reading your story out loud. Pretend to tell the story to a classroom of students. That way, you’ll hear where language stops being simple. Stumbles could indicate incomplete thoughts, or cumbersome language.

   2. Use analogies and simple sentences to strengthen your understanding of the story, like this example from F-diggity himself:

“All things are made of atoms — little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another.”

How do YOU tell good stories? Share your strategies and ideas!

Once again, thank you from my heart and soul for your support, great senses of humor, brilliant minds, collaboration and what you're each doing to make the world a better place.

Cheers, 

Where in the Virtual World is ConverSketch?

CSU Vet Medicine Research: Capturing the first framing class for the renowned researcher Sue VandeWoude for her Vet Med Research course. What a way to launch the semester!

Children with Medical Complexity: Continuing in the 7th virtual site visit reflecting on accomplishments, challenges, and where teams want to take their work serving these children and their families.

Strategic Planning: With a consortium of financial folks as they began planning for the future and how to better work together - but I can’t share any of the drawings.