What’s your story? Keep it visual.

Hello, Gamestormers! As I write, three helicopters buzz overhead monitoring a peaceful protest in a park some six blocks south. Nearer, and to the north, I hear the almost-faded sound of live music and the cheers of its audience, united in joy on their socially distanced balconies. The many and dizzying faces of Spring 2020. As I try to identify with everything going on around me, I realize I can't, at least not all at once. It's not the first time I've used the Empathy Map for non-business purposes.  I hope this weekend gave you at least one moment of joy, an opportunity to be grateful for something, large or small, maybe previously unnoticed. It's OK to be wherever you are with what's happening in your world and that you have a mechanism - maybe journaling, maybe sketching, maybe pottery - to work out your thoughts.  More than a resume (CV) Something that had me smiling all week was Raquel Félix's JourneyFolio. I still grin each time I think about it, both for the sprit and the manner in which she created it. When record numbers of us are looking for work, JourneyFolio offers an elegant way to tell a much richer story than a resume or CV ever could. Even if you're not actively job hunting, building your own JourneyFolio would be smart.  Raquel could easily have charged for JourneyFolio; she decided to share instead.  Take me to JourneyFolio

The bias of collaboration software Raquel created JourneyFolio on Google Slides - a tool most of us have access to and would probably never use in the way she did. The dead-simple hyperlinking functionality that makes JourneyFolio so slick is somewhat hidden, and certainly not apparent on the shortcut toolbar. This unorthodoxy makes JourneyFolio so delightful and inspiring: it lets us in on a little bit of creative magic! Software trains us to use it in identical ways (this is why we have 30 & 60-minute meetings). An all too common outcome of this homogenization is what we call PowerPoint culture: where clip art and clones of copies make indistinguishable one idea from another - we paint by number in templates we never created. Only occasionally do we venture beyond the visual shortcuts to the depths of the toolbar.  Not long ago I added a my first physical post-it note to my otherwise bare monitor. It reads: DRAWING GETS ELIMINATED.  I wrote it three weeks into coaching a group of Gamestormers to facilitate virtual meetings. We used a digital whiteboard with a full feature set - many of them identical to Powerpoint. The digital post-its came too easily. The initial satisfaction we enjoyed from aligning their centers and distributing them evenly masked a surfacing deficiency: everything was too neat and sterile.  What I love the most about an in-person workshop is the satisfaction of creation and the evidence it leaves behind - all the shit on the walls, the different ways people draw the big head on the empathy map, the crossed out title on a flip chart, the fits and starts of an idea sketched, the random doodles the workshoppers leave behind. These are the signs of creation. And software eliminates its rough edge, as I heard James Macanufo call it. It takes discipline, creativity and planning to incorporate drawing in our virtual world.  But once you figure out how to do it, your meetings will be a little more delightful. Your participants will feel like they were let in on a little bit of magic - because you did something few others are doing.  We need to make trade-offs for our new virtual facilitation reality, don't let the rough edge of creation be one of its casualties. Be well & happy Gamestorming!

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