Portfolio: graphic facilitation in action.

Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce

The Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce reached out to me to provide graphic facilitation at its annual Mackinac Policy Conference—held at the iconic Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island annually for the past 50 years.

The collaborative event attracts government leaders, top business professionals, corporate CEOs, entrepreneurs and veteran regional champions. Plus big thinkers like Fareed Zakaria and Thomas Friedman.

It was the first time they had used graphic facilitation at the conference and the live visual mapping process blew them away. I got to chat with the amazing Donna Brazille over champagne cocktails. And I was delivered to the hotel in Mammie Eisenhower’s ’59 Cadillac. All in all, a very special event.

An interview with me at the event was aired on Michigan Public Radio. And one of the visual maps was used as a backdrop on the set of Michigan Public TV.

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CDC (Center for Disease Control & Prevention): Weight of the Nation Conference

1200 public health policy makers and health professionals gathered in DC to assess where we are as a nation on the challenge of addressing obesity.  I provided live graphic facilitation so attendees could see the content visually. We covered subjects ranging from Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” project to Sesame Street’s efforts to promote healthy eating to HBO’s new documentary Weight of the Nation. Scientists, policy makers and academics love seeing their information presented in a creative visual way.

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Wisdom Thinkers

Three days with brilliant leaders: academics, philosophers, artists, community activists and business people, having deep dialogues about what sustainability looks like not only in our environment but in our democracy, economy and within us individually. Most of the meeting consisted of four small groups having conversations which I meticulously gathered the essence of those ideas and synthesized into a rich visual map. We also held a town hall to highlight and discuss those ideas with the public.

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Accenture: International Energy & Utilities Conference

For several years in a row I have supported with graphic facilitation Accenture’s International Energy and Utilities Conference, an annual gathering of senior executives from around the world who lead energy and utility companies. Because of my background in environmental policy and sustainability, it’s easy for me to capture the technical content of the presentations and panel discussions. Presenters have included Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Former Secretary of the United Nations Kofi Annan, EU climate consultant Jeremy Rifkin and MIT inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil.

 

Interestingly enough, two years later at SXSW Ray started his presentation with a slide of my visual map saying, “Here’s my presentation, any questions?” I love that these visual maps live on long after the conference.

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Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS): World Cafe

Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS), an organization that works on immigrant and refugee issues, held a series of meetings around the country to assess what kind of impact they are having in the communities where they work.  I graphically facilitated the meeting in Tampa Bay. The day was rich in storytelling as people from Venezuela, Italy, Thailand and many other countries shared their experiences about their home country and their new country, America. After the first round of the World Cafe, I gave the organizers a digital image of the visual map which they quickly copied and inserted into a folio along with a certificate of participation. They wanted folks to walk out with a little reminder of the day and something to show their family and friends. This is a great example of how graphic facilitation turns a one-time event into a long-lasting memory. 
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American Geophysical Union (AGU): Fall Meeting

At a huge conference attended by 15,000 earth and space scientists, I was unable to work live due to constraints with the conference facility. So I became a roving reporter, taking notes during sessions and composing murals from the notes in the conference atrium where several thousand people walked by, generating a lot of interest. People came by and talked to me while I worked to say they loved what I was doing.

I digitized the murals upon completion and posted them to Twitter. The AGU staff posted them on the Fall Meeting blog and other bloggers did as well on their blogs so that people following the conference from all over the world could see a glimpse of what was going on.

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American Institute of Architects: Miami River Corridor project

The AIA has a program called Communities by Design where they put together a project team and drop these folks into a community to give recommendations on challenging issues in order to improve the community’s quality of life through design. I teamed with them on their Miami River Corridor project to synthesize and visually map several meetings with the Commission and the public.

Personal mapping and visual business plans

In coaching sessions over the phone, I facilitate and map deep conversations with my clients to uncover where they are stuck on a project, idea or dream they want to bring to fruition. I help them see visually where they want to go and we create action steps to get them there. They get a 4×8 foot map and a digital version of the session.

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