There is nothing accidental in this world, it’s all incidental. There exists no such thing as chance in the universe.  /Hariharananda Giri

Right there at the closing keynote with David Sibbet on stage it happened. The final nudge to reignite my engine. He stepped out of the car and pushed it. It rolled gently forward until that magical sound of connection echoed wide out into the wild.

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The field of Visual Practitioners is like a wild jungle, or as David Sibbet put it: like an archipelago with several islands.

I dove into this field in the beginning of 2017 as I had just returned back to Malmö, Sweden after being away 10 years. I was exploring my options going forward and I had three boxes in front of me.

1. Starting another communications agency.
2. Getting a job again.
3. Or putting all my cards into a new field: Live Scribing.

Where did the idea of Live Scribing come from?

An old colleague of mine dropped it in a conversation and I got curious how the field has been evolving in Sweden and around Europe. A few years ago in Brussels when I was organizing an event, I actually worked with a Live Scriber. Martin Saive at Cartoonbase. He did a visualization the entire day on a huge canvas.

I remember that I was incredibly impressed with his skills and how he was able to process all the talks so quickly and turn them into illustrations and visual metaphors. However, after the event – it didn’t appear again in my mind. Until my old colleague mentioned it.

My research showed that there are several active Live Scribers around Europe and a few as well in Sweden. Some doing it full time and some on the side. There are a few agencies like Visuality in Belgium or Smartup Visuals in the UK. Or networks like Creative Tribe in Austria. And companies like Bigger Picture in Denmark. Germany stands out in terms of market maturity and organization. Visual Facilitators with a base in Hamburg, is an agency and a network with some 30 visual practitioners. Bikablo is a company based in Cologne with a focus on trainings. They have some 20 trainers and a world-wide program.

In total there are about 3000 visual practitioners around Europe today. Pretty soon we’ll be 30.000.

A European agency with HQ in Sweden

I didn’t see any agencies or companies branding themselves as “European”. So with my background working across the EU both in the private sector as well as at the European Parliament, it was a natural move to launch EU-wide with Simply Draw it Big – The European Agency of Live Scribers – and the projects started to come in. 

I have been blessed to work with many professionals like Toni Arribas in Madrid and Nikki Schmidt in Malmö. My first confirmed project with Simply Draw it Big was at the European Parliament Open Days in collaboration with Visuality’s Mara Callaert and Maria Foulquie. That very same day 6 of May, 2017 we had another project in Malmö working at TEDxFolketspark where Victoria Rönning and Nikki Taylor scribed together.

Since then, business has been moving forward for Simply in Europe. We’ve been at larger events and smaller workshops. For example the European Smart Cities Conference happened in Budapest and was a wonderful experience where we also got to meet some of the local Hungarian scribers like Szilard, Melinda, Reka and Kata and the team of Remarker. This year however, my main focus has been to grow the market on homebase.

Swedish roots and focus

Working cross-culturally will always be much fun and it’s something I’ll be striving towards again very soon. However, now that I’m back living in Sweden, I need to direct my energy and ambition to my home country which is in need of coordination. That is not to say I’m not continuing working on European projects if they appear. I’m simply now focusing inwards.

And I see that things are moving in Europe so I will happily watch the development.

The international forum of visual practitioners

This year’s international conference EUviz, happened in Denmark this year for a reason. It’s been largely held in the US as the main organizer IFVP –International Forum of Visual Practitioners – is founded in the US. The past year there’s been a co-creating community arising in Europe due to the need of building a European platform. It goes by the name of EFVP – European Forum of Visual Practitioners.

A visual practitioner, by the way, is someone who works on using visuals to help people understand, make sense and remember better. It’s a collective name which is more of an academic term rather than a go-to-market label. Usually people who work in this field sell themselves as a “Graphic Recorder”, “Live Scriber”, “Visual Storyteller”, “Visual Facilitator”, “Visual Coach” and the names go on. It’s a field where visualizing can happen live, in real-time – translating what is being said and making sense through visuals. The person can be either a fly on the wall or a facilitator participating and encouraging dialogue. And then there’s “off-live” visualization in a more traditional style of working, with for example explainer videos where the production is iterative and happens throughout several days.

How to go to market?

I’ve been using the term Live Scriber rather than Graphic Recorder as I find it an easier way for clients to understand our work. It’s happening Live and it’s Scribing ( a mix of writing and drawing). While Graphic Recording for me is an ambiguous term. “Graphic” gives connotations to graphic design or drawings but not text. And recording can be just about anything, audio or video recording. There’s no link to drawing by hand which is the core element of being a Visual Practitioner. I understand where the term “Graphic Recorder” is coming from, however from a business perspective it’s not clear enough and therefore I’ve chosen to go to market with “Live Scriber”.

A strong community

The EFVP has had several meet-ups to align on what their purpose should be and how the community can be strengthened in Europe. Therefor it was a beautiful culmination of their work to see that the entire international community of Visual Practitioners gathered in Denmark. I attended the EFVP meet-up in Madrid a few months ago and was hugely inspired by the people, the new knowledge and the activities.

The EUviz conference was my second meet-up with other visual practitioners, in Madrid we were 30 people. And now in Denmark we were almost 200 people.

The benefits of such a meet-up or conference are:

• Knowledge sharing – keynote speakers, session hosts, workshops. Many topics have been covered and new insights has been gathered.
• Community building – you are there sharing the same ups and downs of the field with other professionals like yourself.
• Networking – getting new contacts for potential new work or travels.

And all this wrapped in a feeling as you would have around family and friends. Although many are competitors when it comes down to the business side of it, we laugh. And we share knowledge openly.

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David Sibbet’s talk is for me the highlight of the conference. It is on spot, touching on the diversity of the field. He sheds a light on the multiple ways we go to market by having people stand up as he calls out the different terms we call ourselves. I am one of the first to rise as he asks “Who in here has been in the practice a year or less”. Then he goes on. The people who call themselves “Graphic Recorders” rise and amount to 60%. He ends the live survey by saying:

“The most important thing is that you do what you say you do”

Towards the end of David Sibbets talk, he asks us to draw the logo of this year’s conference. It’s a hand holding a head. In the head it says “to draw or not to draw”. He asks us to only draw the head and not the sentence. “Think of your to be or not to be. What will be your next step?”

I go deep into my head.

I think back to my concerns if I should really be in this business or not. I have been twisting and turning in bed several months. Me, a refugee in a land unknown. Who am I, a foreigner to this long-standing land of visual practitioners, to enter without experience.

But wait.. I do have experience. I have 10 years of experience in leading change, managing groups, giving trainings, community building, running a marketing and communications agency. Yes it is true, I do not speak the language as well as you do, experienced visual practitioner, but I have skills and a strong will to make it happen. I will speak the language as well as you do. It’s simply a matter of time and practice. My quick processing skills and ability to sense a room and feel the people in it – that I have already years of experience in. Nearly 40 years now.

I feel a fighting spirit rising. One that has been strengthened by David Sibbet earlier on mentioning in his keynote “Things are going on in Sweden”. I’d like to think it has something to do with our talk earlier. Or perhaps he can simply sense what is going on in a field he’s a pioneer in. A field he knows by heart. The ins and outs.

I draw the hand and an outline of the head. And I write: “Enable Swedish professionals and market”. It’s not pretty. But it’s there. And it’s from my head and my heart.

This is my “to be”. This is my next step. I will do what I do best: I’ll be the Enabler.

* Connect. Communicate. Collaborate. *

/Mina

Here’s a feeling just before David comes on stage:

Here’s a video from Visual Facilitators that perfectly mirrors the feeling from the conference in general. It starts beautifully with morning yoga practice that I had the honor to host: www.facebook.com/visual.facilitators/videos/1204456436371735/

On the second day we even went down to the beach:

More photos available here on my Flickr:

August 01, 2018 (Wednesday)

August 02, 2018 (Thursday, final day)

And official pictures from Orest Tabaka here EUviz2018. A few here below:

*disclaimer: if anyone is wondering why I’m sounding so nasal, it’s because I managed to get a humongous cold just on time for the conference. Still managed pretty ok 🙂