Pre-con, Workshops,
Mentorship &
Doctor‘s Hours
Attend any number of workshops brought to you by professionals from around the world. Learn new skills, meet the experts and level up your abilities.
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Business Workshops
Sales Secrets For Visual Practitioners: Reach Your Clients and Make Them Say Yes
Mathias Weitbrecht
Wednesday, July 31, 10:30am to noon
Sales secrets from over 10,000 visualizations sold: What is going wrong when your client says no? Are you sometimes unsure how to sell (and pull back into “I just want to draw”)? Imagine you know what a client needs, convince them without a hint of pressure and close the deal almost every single time. I had clients in dozens of countries, for any imaginable project. In 19 years as a visual practitioner I made every mistake one could possibly make – in sales / marketing, and more. Out of that stems a wealth of experience which I will share here. Expect your mindset to be challenged and your views to be upgraded in order to reach new success in your business. And you will leave the session with your own new sales process, knowing what’s next for you.
Business Operations & Strategy for Visual Practitioners
Rachel Thompson
Wednesday, July 31, 1:30 – 3pm
Working as a visual practitioner requires the skills to do client work – lettering, graphic recording, facilitation, etc. – AND the skills to create and operate what is often a solo business. This workshop will help you take a proactive and strategic approach to running a sustainable and supportive business. We’ll focus on developing the business operations and strategy side of your work so you can make strong, aligned decisions supporting your work.
You’ll learn about:
- Foundations: How to build and streamline a solo business.
- Operations: How to run a solo business.
- Strategy: How to make strategic choices to move you and your business forward.
This workshop is for any visual practitioner currently running or looking to start a solo business who would like to feel more organized and in control as a business owner.
Business mindset
Nitya Wahklu
Thursday, Aug 1st 8:30-10am
As visual practitioners most of us are mission driven and committed to serving our clients and community. We deserve the same abundance that we bring forth into the world. In this workshop, we will work on our internal money mindsets and learn how to strengthen our sales muscle–so that we can expand our work, our impact, our revenues, and financial wellbeing.
After this workshop, participants will leave with:
1. An understanding of their sales and money mindsets: superpowers and blocks
2. Practical strategies to elevate their sales and relationship building skills
3. Two experiments to try for the next thirty days
“Show Me The Money” is suitable for visual practitioners at all levels–and applicable to those colleagues who are actively interested in entrepreneurship and growing their business. The workshop methodology will focus heavily on collaborative conversations and peer learning.
Growing your Business with Partnerships
Emily Mills & Brian Tarallo
Friday, Aug. 2 10:30-Noon
Working as a visual practitioner requires the skills to do client work – lettering, graphic recording, facilitation, etc. – AND the skills to create and operate what is often a solo business. This workshop will help you take a proactive and strategic approach to running a sustainable and supportive business. We’ll focus on developing the business operations and strategy side of your work so you can make strong, aligned decisions supporting your work.
You’ll learn about:
- Foundations: How to build and streamline a solo business.
- Operations: How to run a solo business.
- Strategy: How to make strategic choices to move you and your business forward.
This workshop is for any visual practitioner currently running or looking to start a solo business who would like to feel more organized and in control as a business owner.
Graphic Recording & Drawing Workshops
Think Fast!
Jim Nuttle and Sara Nuttle
Wednesday, July 31, 10:30am to noon
Tips and tricks for handling the fastballs, curveballs, and anything else that can get thrown at you during a live graphic recording session. This will be a hands-on workshop, with emphasis on techniques for quickly pivoting and adjusting graphic capture during a shifting conversation. Emphasis on recognizing and addressing difficult and/or unexpected subject matter and situations.
Exercises will be drawn from real-life experiences of the presenters. Instruction will be geared towards marker-and-paper capture, rather than digital, though many of the same concepts will apply.
What will participants learn? (Please list two or three goals and outcomes):
Participants will learn simple and effective techniques to enhance their ability to think and draw quickly in real-time situations. Participants will gain an increased awareness of conversational pitfalls and ways to navigate and/or mitigate them.
Cleaning up digital images
Sunshine Benbelkacem
Wednesday, July 31, 10:30am to noon
This session will explore the various ways GRs/GFs capture, clean and package their work post-session. From charts scanned by a professional service or sending them to a graphic designer to clean to shooting the work with an iPhone or fancy digital camera and back to using Photoshop’s curves, levels, masks and action buttons all the way through how the final product is delivered to the client’s hands, we will collect various processes and curate a menu of options for those looking to learn, use new tools, or outsource.
This will be an interactive learning session with the goals of:
- Learn new tools or processes for capturing and cleaning work;
- Compile and curate a list of various capturing, cleaning, and packaging processes and services.
Graphic Recording on the iPad
Lucinda Levine
Wednesday, July 31, 1:30 – 3pm
The session will offer an overview of graphic recording on the iPad, using the ProCreate app and an iPencil.
Participants will learn 1) how to prepare for graphic recording on the iPad, 2) how to use the tools in ProCreate that are most helpful in graphic recording, and 3) some tips and tricks that make graphic recording easier on the iPad.
Targeted audience (Who should attend?):Graphic recorders with an interest in learning to record digitally; graphic recorders who have some knowledge of ProCreate or other iPad drawing apps who would like to focus their iPad use on graphic recording
Tell Your Story in Three Panels, bikablo®
Jill Greenbaum
Thursday, Aug 1st 8:30-10am
Tell Your Story in Three Panels “Whether you’re an old hand/experienced practitioner or new to creating visual stories, join me for fun with the bikablo® emotions figures and our story framework.
Working with the app and our “”bikablorary”” of emotions figures you will craft a story with your teammates then have time for your own creation—personalizing your figures with facial expressions, gestures, effect lines, and more.
What stories will you tell? Will it be a challenge, a triumph, a journey? So many stories to tell… so little time!”
Participants will learn to:
• Draw figures from real life that express emotions
• Draw bikablo® emotions figures Tell a short story in a short sequence of frames
We Can Draw Hard Things: Practical Strategies for Drawing Well on the Job
Terry LaBan & Emily Mills
Thursday, Aug 1st 8:30-10am
This workshop will help both experienced and beginning visual practitioners expand their tool kit of tricks and techniques. We’ll start with a fun warm-up exercise, talk about the right drawing mindset, discuss visual metaphors and visual libraries, practice speed, and close with practical strategies and discussions about tools and how to face difficult situations we encounter on the job. If time allows, we’ll cover hard-to-draw concepts or other requests from attendees.
Lettering as Illustration. Illustration as Lettering. Using visually expressive words.
John Bloch
Friday, Aug. 2 8:30-10am
In our practices, we often draw an image with a caption to express an idea. This session will explore the notion that words, drawn expressively, can enhance meaning and memorability. We will also explore integrating simple graphic elements as we progress.
Expressive words are useful in portraying ideas that are awkward to depict, such as sexual orientation, race and cultural issues. Abstract ideas (e.g. “strategy”) are often difficult to illustrate as well.
Participants will learn the elements of expressive lettering and become more comfortable integrating it into their work.
Layering Color
Renatta & Heather Martinez
Friday, Aug. 2, 10:30-Noon
Info to come.
Facilitating with Visuals (templates)
Abby Wilkymacky
Friday, Aug. 2, 10:30-Noon
Join facilitator Abby Wilkymacky from Mindflower Studio in this interactive 2-hour workshop designed to elevate your facilitation skills through the power of visual templates.
In this workshop, participants will delve into the world of visual templates, understanding their significance in guiding discussions, structuring ideas, and fostering collaboration throughout the process of facilitating a creative or strategic workshop session. Through practical tips, hands-on activities, and real-world examples, participants will learn how to create effective visual templates that enhance communication, strategic output, and creativity.
Throughout the workshop, participants will have the opportunity to create their own visual templates, experiment with different facilitation techniques, and collaborate with peers. Whether you’re a seasoned facilitator looking to level up your skills or new to the world of visual facilitation, this workshop offers practical tools and strategies to enhance your facilitation toolkit.
Self and Story Workshops
50 Visual Thinking Strategies for Creative Problem-Solving
Iryna Molodecky
Thursday, Aug 1st 8:30-10am
Unleash a new way of seeing and transforming challenges into creative opportunities with freehand drawing. Using a unique 50-card deck with illustrated visual prompts on the front and guided instructions for using drawing as a creative problem-solving tool on the back, participants will learn how to apply a variety of visual thinking strategies within a 5-stage creative problem-solving process. With a focus on freehand drawing for the purpose of communicating ideas, boosting creativity and exploring multiple ways of understanding and solving complex challenges, the intention of this card deck is to encourage freehand drawing as a visual language.
Participants will explore:
1) the connection between creative problem-solving, imagination and visual thinking through drawing.
2) drawing symbols and image templates using basic shapes to communicate concepts, simplify complex problems, and enhance creative problem-solving abilities.
3) visual thinking and visual doing with Facts, Metaphors and Story prompts.
A demonstration of the Visual Thinking Strategies Card Deck will be offered as well as the opportunity for participants to practice the tool. Participants are encouraged to bring a challenge to work on.
Harvesting the Wisdom of YOUR STORY: Reflective Journaling for Visual Practitioners
Katherine Torrini
Friday, Aug. 2, 8:30-10am
Turn your sense-making superpowers on your own life!
As visual practitioners, we are professional listeners, synthesizers and sense-makers for our clients. We know better than anyone the transformative power of this depth of harvesting and reflection —to illuminate patterns, surface insights and crystallize wisdom. But how often do we give our own thoughts, story and journey this exquisite treatment?
In this interactive workshop, Visual Practitioner + Journaler Crusader Katherine Torrini teaches for the first time some of her advanced visual journaling practices —with the power to create greater life satisfaction, self-awareness and a felt sense of progress in what matters most to you. She’ll share the structures and rhythms she uses and invite you to craft your own in a rich reflective process done on a daily, monthly, and yearly basis.
Learn:
• How to create a nourishing space (literally) for your own thoughts and journey
• How to harvest the “content” and wisdom of your own life in a simple, customized structure that tracks what matters most to you.
How to use drawing and imagination, to live a bold, playful and meaningful life.
Kati Orav
Friday, Aug. 2, 10:30-Noon
People have always dreamed of being more than they think they are capable of. As children, we
have all dreamed of having superpowers. And you know what? We do! We have several innate
qualities. Drawing and imagination are one of the human superpowers. In the session, we will learn
more about their nature and explore how visual facilitation can help us harness these superpowers to
live bold and playful lives. We explore what courage and playfulness mean and how they make our
lives more meaningful. In the session, we open the theoretical background of the above-mentioned
keywords, but the session is interactive, which means that the participants are involved through
conversations and practical exercises.
After the session you will know:
- what is courage and how to develop it;
- what is imagination and how we can be more creative;
- what a meaningful life means and what drawing has to do with it.
Doctor’s Hours, Open Door & Mentorship
Dr‘s Hours
Nora Herting, Mara Callaert, Sam Horvath, Sarah Spencer, and more.
Date and time TBD
Schedule time with a seasoned visual practitioner to get your questions answered. Subjects such as sales and marketing, working alone, business strategy, ups selling, and collaboration will be covered.
Open hours with an Expert
Joe Rovetta
Date and time TBD
Calling all creative minds, innovators, and pioneers in visual design! We are thrilled to announce that the visionary Art Director, Joseph Rovetto, will join us at the IFVP Global Summit! This is your golden opportunity to learn from a master crafting stunning visual designs for over two decades. 🌟
Take advantage of this chance to soak up wisdom from one of the best in the business. Individual and group appointments with Joe will be available onsite during the Global Summit.
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