Virtual events have ramped up across different industries over the past two years. As a result, businesses are looking to expand their knowledge-sharing journeys to more audiences.
Their biggest challenge? Keeping audiences engaged throughout their events. Business leaders know full well that they must tap into their creative side to start more meaningful and productive conversations about industry topics.
With all that in mind, here are a few exciting suggestions for making live discussions more interactive.
Drop the slide decks
Virtual event attendees now prioritise more engaging experiences, and PowerPoint presentations no longer cut it in giving discussion participants the interaction they seek. Chunks of text on 20+ slides have also lost their appeal as a way to convey information at live events.
To keep your attendees interested in your discussion, try illustrating their ideas on a single page in real-time. Sketchnoting provides a livelier and more entertaining way for your participants to get a bird’s-eye view of their discussion. Live illustrations also drive the direction and flow of any conversation, serving as ready guides in case your guests get lost along the way.
Here are some amazing examples of live sketchnotes crafted by the talented illustrators of Ortus Draws. Watch how participants’ ideas came to life in the live knowledge-sharing roundtables they attended.
Transform note-taking—for good
Research into the effectiveness of infographics as a learning medium shows that visualised information proves more potent in communicating ideas than plaintext. Roundtable organisers can leverage these findings by using live illustrations as a more interactive note-taking tool.
As the term implies, sketchnoting is an emerging standard in curating and organising ideas shared during live roundtables. Sketchnotes are not only handier references in terms of length compared to presentation decks (or worse: transcripts). They’re also more straightforward in terms of content, containing only the most pertinent information shared during discussions.
How sketchnoting has transformed note-taking isn’t limited to page numbers and curated content. Now that digital illustration tools are more readily available, roundtable organisers can finally do away with printing or handwriting sheets upon sheets of notes. One-page sketchnotes are the more sustainable option.
Simplify and amplify conversations
Here’s a fun idea for your next roundtable: stop the conversation once your sketchnote page runs out of space. No one’s looking to drag the discussion on, anyway. Once all your participants have chimed in on your topic, end the open forum and have everybody reflect on their shared insights showcased in your event sketchnote.
This exercise works great with discussion groups of any size. If you have just four or five guests at your event, encourage them to contribute to the conversation as much as they can until the sketchnote’s all filled out. For events with 10 or more people, maybe ask each participant to fill out a portion of the page until their sketchnote is complete (tip: challenge them to connect their idea with another already on the page).
You won’t even have to worry about creating these sketchnotes yourself. Let the illustrators from Ortus Draws take care of that for you. These adept artists are sure to make your next roundtable more colourful and insightful for your guests. Trust that they have the skill and experience you’re looking for—and the client reviews to back all of that up.
Looking for more tips for using live sketchnotes in your events? Check out Ortus Draws here. Take a look at some of their best illustrations to see how they breathe new life into live discussions.
Interested in creating a more engaging knowledge-sharing experience of your own? Contact Ortus Draws to book one of their talented illustrators to sketchnote your next event live!
