Any conference, strategy meetings, and workshops is a major expense, a huge effort and total waste of time if everyone walks out recalling very little of it. The energy of the conference can easily lose its momentum if there isn't an easy-to-refer-to reminder of the event. Sure, you can provide them with screeds of PowerPoints, documents, and videos of the event, but realistically who has the time to look through all of that?
In the information era, everyone is time-poor. So how do you effectively get information across? How can you get your audience better engaged in what you're trying to achieve?
Sparkol Inc. conducted a study of different visual mediums and found that live creative drawings (either in front of you or on a 2-3 min video) were 156% + better retained than other forms of mediums. Why, because it's more engaging to see someone creatively capturing an event as the meeting is progressing. To support this, Lester, P. M. said in his book, The Syntactic Theory of Visual Communication researched that we remember 80% of what we see or do, 20% of what we read and only 10% of what we hear on average. These studies among many support that 'creative visualization' is a key element to retaining events. I think that illustrative interpretations of communication are key, but supporting it with voice, sound and words maximised the retention. It's like being attracted to your partner, first visually, then it's all the other elements that make the total package.
Apple Inc. figured this out years ago and have used Graphic Recording in their key meetings to generate more creative ideas and capture the events, making the energy of the event live on.
Capturing your conference using Graphic Recording (i.e. an illustrator who can listen, interpret and draw the event as it's happening) might be an additional expense, but one that is definitely worthwhile for reviewing the event during the meeting, and also referring to the illustration after the event for ease of recall.
There are many methods of Graphic Recording. You can draw on large paper (like the title picture), you can draw on Whiteboard or on a computer. They all have their strengths and weaknesses depending on what you're trying to achieve, however most of my clients of mine are moving towards digitally capturing the event so that they can easily transform the picture into posters, screen-savers etc as a constant reminder, making the event live-on.
If you have any more questions about how Graphic Recording works, or turning those into short reminder videos, then let me know. I this post helps generate some ideas for you key events this year.
Dave Leigh | Emphasise Ltd | www.emphasise.nz