A wonderful kick-off it was!

enter the meet-up!

A wonderful crowd to kick off vizthink Berlin…

that s what we hoped for and that s what we got: 45+ lovely people from all walks of life and with various links to the world of visual thinking – ranging from newbie to expert, from freelancer to agency-employee, youngster to senior, start-up to co-working space owner. A wonderful evening followed.

What did we do?
As people started flowing in the SUPERMARKT, we immediately warmed up with visualizing the words of our ‘Vizthink Berlin Kick-Off’ theme displayed on large walls.

After grabbing drinks and some welcoming words, we went into the next exercise: a simple template to get to know each other. We paired up in two and quickly drew some key features of our partner. Presenting each other, it was amazing to see the variety of backgrounds people came from, what brought them here and how much one can get across with such a limited amount of visual information.

Co-founder of the Berlin team and expert of the night Naho Iguchi took over from here on, gave a brief overview the history and the field of visualization and then got everybody to doodle more with her special “dim memory” exercise. This was followed by time for “show &tell” of our newly found community in which we looked at some real life cases of visual thinking applications of participants. From scetch notes and assignments of a master student to graphic recordings of conferences and even an impromptu pitch of soon-to-be-launched portable dry-erase book by K12 – we certainly got a good overview of how one can make huge difference by using simple visualization techniques!

Last chance to get our hands dirty was checking on some community needs and wants for future meet-ups. In groups of three, discussed, live-recorded and presented some of these ideas in ‘pop-corn’ style. The 2 1/2 hrs of listening, drawing, chatting and presenting passed by so quickly! Of course, we took time to mingle at he bar, chit chat and have a drink together. What a night indeed!

A big thank you to SUPERMARKT, who provided a superb space with super supportive staff! Thank you also to all the participants who offered expert input and other help to keep these meet-ups as exciting as the first one. We’re aleady working on the next one taking place on April 2nd and will announce more details soon. Watch this space!