I’m at Oakland Intl Airport catching a flight back after a three day workshop on The Principles of Graphic Facilitation hosted by The Grove.
PGF Program
- Principles of Graphic Facilitation – This two day workshop builds on core skills in meeting facilitation and graphic recording and connects the two skills. Either on its own can be a powerful tool, but when combined, the impact is astounding.
- Workplace Applications Intensive – This add on workshop applies everything you learned in the first two days and starts to build the tools you need to apply it to your work.
The course comes with The Grove published books on Graphic Facilitation, Best Practices, Sketching Practice books, Visual Meetings by David Sibbett, and more. Just these materials alone would cost you hundreds of dollars. When you factor in all these materials, the course is a steal.
The Experience
Just like any other program, the interaction and meeting of the minds by people all over the world adds so much value that you can’t get from reading the books. Since we’re all busy professionals and creatives from all walks of life, taking three days off can be difficult for everyone. However, this is my first workshop where people were truly interested, came early every day just to make sure they get every little bit. The shared experience of learning and practicing together built such a strong bond that other types of programs can’t achieve in such a short timeframe.
Resources
At the last day, we got a preview of new digital tools for graphic facilitation. Below are a few things we talked about:
- Wacom Bamboo Tablet ($69) – Pen tablet input device. Very low cost for getting started and practicing.
- Wacom Cintiq ($999 for 12″ version and $1999 for 21″ version)
- Sketchbook Pro ($79) – Pro version with more options
- Sketchbook Copic Edition (Free) – This is a free version of Sketchbook Pro and uses the same marker colors as Copic Markers. Works perfectly fine for most people.
- Join.Me – I’m adding this is an alternative to WebEx and other corporate screencasting and conferencing tools. I like it because there’s a free version and it’s really easy to connect everyone.
We talked about using the iPad as a facilitation device. Although the iPad 2 has HDMI mirroring and airplay, it’s still not a very good tool for broadcasting visual displays. First, the resolution is still too low. I personally would wait for iPad 3 with a potentially higher resolution screen. Higher resolution gives you the ability to portray and view more detail.
On the iPad, I also use Sketchbook Pro and Brushes.
Looking ahead
In the coming weeks, I hope to share some of my work and present new ideas to advance the field of graphic facilitation.
Edit 9/15/2011:
Here’s an output of a practice file I made using Sketchbook Pro on the iPad while my flight home from San Francisco.
