The Center for Graphic Facilitation

Marketing Magicians and Advertising Wizardry

Suggested links from Leah Silverman:

Hocus Pocus. For all you antique postcard buffs, a story about a 50-year-old trunk from a magician turned priest.

Wizard Academy. Roy Williams is a great writer and teacher. Nice book list and Monday morning newsletter on marketing, advertising and design.  

UseIt.com: Tips on marketing, web usability and user interface design. Hosts of the Usability Conference. (The downside is that Jacob Nielsen doesn't use graphics, mostly due to optimize download time, but also because he doesn't want to hire an artist!)

A Brief History of Graphic Facilitation

In 2001, David Sibbet and Joan McIntosh of The Grove Consultants International facilitated the following workshop that traced the history of graphic facilitation at the International Association of Facilitators Conference 2001 in Minneapolis, Minnesota:

A Graphic Facilitation Retrospective: Charting What We Learned

(Thanks to Dave Davidson for the link.)

As we attempt to create an atlas of graphic facilitators around the globe, we so many family trees of practitioners with multiple progenitors spawning communities of practice: David Sibbet's students and collaborators in the Bay Area; MG Taylor's US network; Cap Gemini's Accelerated Solutions Environments in Chicago, Cambridge, New York, Europe and Australia; and many more communities of practice of which we are ignorant.

Please help us to chart both the history and existing lineage of practitioners! If you or someone you know help individuals and groups make strategic decisions and solve problems through visual learning, please register with us. It's free and easy.

In launching this site, we aim to make graphic facilitators more aware of themselves as a community, more connected as professionals, and more accepted to both businesses and communities.

Let us know whom we should know about for our atlas!

Thanks.

Office Speak

So, I am no polyglot. In Spanish, I can only ask for directions to the bathroom, and "Where is my donkey?"  (¿dónde mi burro?).

My high school German enabled me to hitchhike and make friends across united Germany. My vocabulary in conversational Polish was honed by late nights in underground bars-- making for an animated oral defense of my master's thesis at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow.

I can interview my elders for tips on insurance, the pros and cons of a second mortgage and martial advice. I've hung out with young slavic orphans, East Tennessee hillbillies, sports fans and budding hip hop artists. And for the most part, except for golf fanatics, I've pretty much understood most of what my new friends have said.

However, there is one language in which I was sorely unprepared to make friends and influence people: Officespeak.

Benefits of Improv for Business Innovation

Many trainers, facilitators and coaches use such techniques with corporation and organizations as part of facilitated events or one-on-one coaching session.

Increasingly, professional theaters such as Chicago's Second City have developed specialized corporate improv teams to meet the demand. And, a growing crop of multi-disciplined facilitator-artist-improv types are blending management consulting, design methods and performance in truly innovative ways.

The World is Flat

Since I'm always using my hands, I don't put down my work to pick up newspaper or a magazine. And network news makes me crazy. Therefore, 90% of my news gets to me through NPR and The Charlie Rose Show.

Last night, Tom Friedman was on Charlie Rose. I'll always stop to watch him. Why? Because he's a Great Explainer. Always happy to listen to a clear speaker and well organized thinker. Friedman was talking about his new book The World is Flat.

Graphic Facilitation, Children's Books, and Practice

[from Alicia Diane Durand's blog, This Little Fish]

Today was a very fun day with my one-year old daughter at Barnes & Nobles. She and I spent an hour playing in the children’s section of the store. I was looking through the books while she played beside me. At one point, I stopped and laughed as I watched her take turns hugging her friends, Olivia, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and Curious George.

RIGHT: Pages from Diane's journal during a trip to Tanzania in 1999

I am very familiar with the children’s books characters these days not only because I am a mom, but also because I am a graphic facilitator. As a mom, I read to my daughter all the time and as a Graphic Facilitator I draw in my journals almost daily. My journals are filled with thoughts, mind maps, models and sketches. The sketches are of things I see… a pattern on a carpet, art on a label, a character in a book or the details of a mantel.

Scientific American's Quarterly on the Mind

Walking through Boston Logan airport--my mind numbed by TSA's gentle touch, beeping people movers, businessfolk yakking on cellphones and the glare of a thousand florescent suns--I spotted an intriguing magazine hidden amoungst the alternating covers of John Paul II and various and sundry midrifts.

Scientific American has put out a quarterly magazine addressing the brain, consciousness, learning, creativity, neuroscience and the nature of the mind, titled, simply enough, Mind.

Worldless Diagrams

Nigel Holmes recently discussed his book Wordless Diagrams in this NPR story.

Q: What makes a good diagram?
Holmes: Simplicity, I think.

White Walls

The core activity of a graphic facilitator--drawing out a group's thoughts--requires lots and lots of two-dimensional drawing real estate.

Some graphic facilitators prefer the football-length of butcher block paper; others are flipchart junkies; and there is a population who can't survive without a beloved expanse of white wall.

We've seen dozens of complex of mobile facilitation spaces put together using Kinetic Energies walls.

Designed by a former NASA scientist and made in the US of A, these marvels have lightweight honeycomb interiors and gentle wooden frames.

A team of two can easily erect an environment for 50+ participants in a couple of hours.