The Visual Thinking Global Summit is over and we already miss it! For those of you who couldn’t be there we wanted to share the experience …
This year’s summit was organized by Muxote Potolo Bat in collaboration with the International Forum of Visual Practitioners and the European Visual Practitioners. And they did an amazing job creating this grand international hybrid event, putting so much love into decorating the location. As one of the main sponsors, of course we were there, too.
Neuland booth
You don’t have to ask us twice to come to Spain and have a booth at the biggest international conference for visual practitioners. Boy, were we excited! So we jumped on a train in Fulda, travelled all the way to beautiful Bilbao, and started unpacking. Fun fact: Even after one and a half days of preparing our booth, we were still bubbling with excitement.
Since our two latest products are the Neuland FineOne® and the Neuland BigOne® Art, we made sure to bring a lot of them. ‘Cause you know … A rainbow of Neuland Markers is just the best way to welcome everyone at our booth. 😉 And there’s more: The participants could draw or write something on a piece of paper and we then printed it on the BigOne Art – our personal highlight.
Pssst: You can do that, too! There’s a blog post and a special offer coming soon …
To make sure all participants were able to document their learnings we also designed a goodie backpack to equip it with a BulletProof and a Neuland FineOne® Flex. It was so great to see how much they enjoyed using their new marker to sketchnote the conference. But what was this summit all about?
Shake it to shape it!
That’s the motto of the Visual Thinking Global Summit. If we aim to shape a better future, there’s no way around thinking outside the box. By pairing quality keynotes with methods like Open Space and sense-making dialogues, participants could influence the direction of the summit and look at their chosen topics from different angles.
Of course, everything was recorded adequately: on one GraphicWall V3 and on two V3 XL. Everyday, five Graphic Recorders continued shaping their impressive visualizations. In the end, there were three Graphic Recordings – in English, Spanish and Basque!
The keynotes
After we were welcomed by a Basque chef, on day 2 Ida Castiglioni held an inspiring speech on intercultural communication, transdisciplinary and collaboration, followed by a sense-making session with Joanna Sell. Day 3 was all about digital futures with Nancy Rademaker. And day 4 featured two keynote speakers on sustainable value creation: Jackson Araujo and Lisa Lang.
The interactive part
Landing – connecting – transforming – acting. These words describe the journey from day one to day four. And it was not just the speeches that were fit to these terms. After each keynote, on-site and online participants decided which topics they’d like to discuss, got into groups and afterwards shared their findings.
The raffle
During the first three days of the event, everybody could participate in the big raffle including many highly coveted prizes. It’s hard to say which one’s the best prize. All we can say is that there was a 250€ Neuland voucher and a 500€ Neuland voucher to be won. 😉 As part of the Basque Festa at the final night, the raffle winners were drawn. But watching the winners celebrate was only the second best part about it. A total of 1300€ in raffle proceeds were donated to Aita Mari, a maritime rescue NGO.
We are one!
This summit was a truly inclusive event. The main language was Spanish, some speakers held their presentations in English or even Portuguese. More than 130 people participated in-person, 77 joined us online and 23 countries were represented. In order to enable everyone to be part of the conversation, the organizers had hired interpreters for Spanish/English and sign language. Moreover, there were Graphic Recordings in English, Spanish and Basque.
It’s amazing how the core team managed to create a united feeling of being one people by connecting on-site and online participants and let us all experience the Basque culture in different ways. Thank you for creating this unforgettable event!
