Just the other week, I had two experiences that gave me pause. 

Very close to the actual event, I was asked if I was interested in volunteering to pull together a pop-up extravaganza for the IAF Impact Awards … I discovered that folks in the NYC Metro area didn’t have the appetite/time/energy to get together in person to watch the awards and discuss facilitation. Wanting to support the event, I offered to graphically record it. The timeline for prep was tight—I had a lot of other projects on my plate too and so not a lot of time to devote to this last-minute choice to offer my services. 

Truth be told. It was a very challenging event. So many winners of the awards, fascinating, life-changing projects, and many moving (SHORT) parts to the agenda. Orchestrating the capture of info in the breakout conversations happened at breakneck speed. I also, true to form, felt I had to try something new to make it a learning experience for me. I usually create my own templates or design and yet this time, I decided to work with their imagery—a blessing and a curse. With a bit of working with their materials—gaining new skills and ways of thinking in the process—I achieved new and different results. It was a bit messy —getting to the result I desired—and it took a bit longer than I’d planned, yet creativity is like that for me. 

What about you? When is the last time you chose to take a new and different path? 

What did you discover—like and dislike—about the process that will influence your work going forward?

The very next day I started preparing for my session for Drawify. To share the fun and excitement of using the new Drawify plug-in for Miro. In fact, I hadn’t used this new app on Miro so I had to learn how. It was a snap (yay!). Then I needed to design the session to teach how to install the app (easily accomplished) and show a few use cases… because I’m me, I also wanted to make the session an engaging learning experience for participants. 

As I started playing with the app, I became immersed in the possibilities—thank goodness that there are only about 800 images in the plug-in and not the almost 10,000 on the Drawify site as I would have fallen deeper into the rabbit hole! I also wanted to show folks how quickly they could create a fun, appealing, and useful visual. I timed myself—the very first time using the plug-in on Miro—and in just over 30 minutes. I had found more images than I needed, combined illustrations and text, and had a fresh look for material previously conveyed in my hand-drawn visual. 

Using a wide variety of styles was joyful. I had also designed a way for participants to collaborate with this new piece—something I hadn’t done when I originally presented the material. 

I then shifted to preparing the frame in which the participants in the session would collaborate with me to develop an evaluation/feedback tool. With my original hand-drawn digital piece from several years ago and a draft of the text for the new document, we got to work searching for illustrations. In less than 10 minutes’ time, we had created a new resource that was easily interactive for a group of virtually any size. Granted, it needed just a little more fine-tuning yet the results were… well, you can judge for yourself! 

It was great fun and people’s questions arose while learning/working with the plug-in:

• What illustrations are available in the plug-in-in? 
• How do I search for them? 
• What happens if I don’t find what I’m looking for?
• How is the plug-in different from the Drawify platform? 

Our 30 minutes together flew by! Folks left with the ability to use the plug-in immediately… my work was done.

If you’re planning to create Miro and you’d like a hand in working with the plug-in, (perhaps a 10-minute conversation over Zoom in the app) let me know! My guess is that you’ll get it in a heartbeat—if not, you know where to find me. 

If you’re interested in playing with the Drawify platform—having access to the almost 10,000 illustrations there, you can try it out for free for two months—no strings attached, https://drawify.com/promotions/Drawify2MonthHeroJill

If you’d like to walk this path of reflection and learning with me, let’s talk. I offer coaching with an Appreciative Inquiry lens.