Events

As the world slowly returns to normal, in-person events are making a comeback, driving the gradual decline in popularity of virtual events. Once seen as a convenient and cost-effective alternative to in-person events, they are now overshadowed by the appeal of meeting people face to face. 

However, live illustrations can help bring virtual events back to life and make them a relevant and valuable tool for event organisers. By adding a visual element and creating a more engaging experience for attendees, live illustrations add to the appeal of virtual events, making them more insightful and memorable. This creative approach to notetaking brings the virtual event format back to the forefront of the events space in a world that is slowly but surely returning to normal.

Incorporating a live illustrator into virtual events can bring numerous advantages!

Engagement

Live illustrations bring a new and innovative dimension to virtual events, offering a visual element that helps increase engagement by capturing the attention of attendees. Complex information can be presented in a simple and visually appealing manner, making it easier for attendees to understand and retain.

With live illustrations, virtual events can be transformed into interactive experiences that leave a lasting impression on attendees.

Interactivity

It can offer a fantastic opportunity for event organizers to create interactive experiences for attendees. By having a live illustrator on hand, attendees can participate in the event in a uniquely engaging way. For instance, attendees can make suggestions and watch as they are transformed into illustrations in real time. This not only adds an extra layer of excitement to the event but also helps increase the level of engagement and interaction between attendees and the illustrator.

Break from the monotony

Virtual events can sometimes be lengthy and dull, causing attendees to lose interest and become disengaged. Live illustrations provide a much-needed break from the monotony of presentations and help keep attendees interested and entertained. By incorporating visually stimulating illustrations, virtual events can become
a more dynamic and engaging experience for attendees.

Increased Retention

People remember only 20% of what they read, but 80% of what they see. Studies have shown that people are more likely to remember information presented visually, making live illustrations a valuable tool for event organisers. By incorporating visually appealing illustrations, attendees can retain information better and recall it more easily after the event. This not only enhances the learning experience but also ensures that attendees get the most out of the virtual event. 

Memorable Experience

In a world where virtual events are becoming increasingly common, live illustrations can help set virtual events apart and provide a unique and memorable experience for attendees. These real-time illustrations are a creative and innovative way to make virtual events more impactful and memorable, ensuring that attendees leave with a positive and lasting impression.

Contact us now!

Let’s bring some colour to your next event! Why not have Ortus Draws listen in? With a live illustrator present, you’ll have a concise, coherent, and colourful visual representation of the discussion ready to catch the eyes and engage viewers.

Ortus Draws is a live sketchnoting company that specialises in bringing ideas to life with creative and informative mind maps. Our sketchnotes capture the key points of virtual events, roundtables, webinars, discussions, conferences, presentations, pitches, interviews, and internal meetings. Are you looking for an illustrator for your event? Contact us now!

It looks like virtual events are here to stay. Now that they’ve become a viable discussion platform for professionals, you’ll have to discover how to keep your virtual participants interested throughout your events.

Here’s a suggestion: don’t forget to BREATHE. These interesting break ideas can help you energise your next virtual event—and provide your guests with a more memorable knowledge-sharing experience.

Boost brain power with a bit of movement

Research conducted by UCLA has shown that stretching improves heart rate and blood flow, reducing stress and enabling higher brain functionality. A 30-second stretch break after every segment of your discussion should help your guests shake off the fatigue and clear their heads for the next part of your event.

Some of your participants may even be joining you on their mobile devices. You can encourage them to take a short walk outside so that they can get a bit of fresh air while they listen in on the conversation (only if the weather permits, of course).

Remember to break the ice

Virtual events are a great way for professionals to expand their networks and connect with like-minded peers. This is why holding icebreaker activities at the start of any event is important. As their host, you must encourage them to feel comfortable with one another before they engage in your discussion and in the socials at the end of your event.

Looking for the right icebreaker for your next virtual event should be a breeze. There are so many interesting games and activities to choose from, and Ortus Draws has compiled a list of creative icebreaker ideas that your guests can enjoy as fun warm-ups before their discussions.

Energise the mood

Staying energetic all throughout the discussion is a challenge for most virtual event hosts. Read the room from time to time. Yawns, awkward silences, and glances at their phones are clear indicators that your guests are losing interest in the discussion.

Here’s a creative solution to keep the mood lively during your event from start to finish. Ditch the slide decks and project a live sketchnote instead so that your guests can actively see their contributions to the discussion. These illustrations will surely add more colour (literally) and entertainment to what could otherwise be another bland conversation.

Allot time for team building

Aside from sharing and gaining insights into new trends and pressing issues, people participate in events to expand their professional network. As a virtual events host, you can help your guests build meaningful and lasting business relationships with one another.

Team-building activities provide opportunities for your guests to discover during event breaks whom they vibe with the most among the group. One fun and entertaining example is creating team logos. Cluster your guests into teams of three or four and give them five minutes to come up with a company logo that reflects their collective professional identity and goals. You may find that, after the event, some of them will have connected with one another over LinkedIn after the event.

Take a moment to decompress

Mindfulness breaks are perfect for the midpoint of your event. Give your guests 15-20 minutes to re-centre themselves after a lengthy discussion. That way, they can clear a bit of mental space for more new information during the rest of your discussion. 

You can also take this time to let your guests ponder on the ideas shared in the discussion thus far. This allows them to reshape their perspectives on the topic at hand and develop new insights that they can share throughout the rest of the event. Either way, what matters most is that they’re prepared and energised for another round of knowledge sharing.

Hype the group with mini-games

Nothing spells excitement more than the thrill of winning, and, as professionals, your guests know that a bit of healthy competition is good, clean fun. 

You can even add a new dimension to your sketchnotes by using them for a memory exercise. Have your assigned illustrator erase the captions under each sketch and ask your guests to recall each caption correctly. They’ll certainly relish the challenge—and appreciate the extra mile in helping them retain the things they’ve learned in your discussion.

Enjoy a meal together

No matter the occasion, food always brings people closer together. Breaking bread with peers fosters a more cozy and familiar atmosphere during virtual events, even if your guests are thousands of miles apart from each other. 

That mindfulness break you’re thinking of could be a great time for you and your guests to share a meal together. A hearty lunch or dinner can even open up conversations that lead to new discussion points later on in your event. To make your guests feel even more appreciated, you can have food delivered to them before your event. Here’s an amazing example of how The Ortus Club treats their roundtable guests to scrumptious meals they can enjoy before their discussion. 

Looking for more ways to energise your next virtual event? Ortus Draws makes conversations more engaging and exciting by illustrating ideas shared in live discussions. With sketchnotes, knowledge-sharing experiences become more interactive, vibrant, and insightful for all participants.

Contact Ortus Draws today to book a live illustrator for your next event!

At their core, discussion events and meetings are about the insights that matter to the participants involved in the conversation. But, sometimes, these insights get lost if the conversation grows stale or the participants start losing interest in the discussion.

To eliminate this monotony, you can throw in a few exciting and engaging art activities during your breaks. Here are some great ideas that can add a dash of colour to your next event or meeting.

Desk Alphabet

The best events and meetings always start with a good icebreaker. It’s an excellent way to fire up your participants for the discussion, which is why you must get creative with your activity to ensure this.

Desk Alphabet is a fast yet engaging way to get your participants’ thinking juices flowing. The premise is simple: going around the room, each participant has to doodle a desk item whose name starts with the letter of the alphabet on which they are. 

Before you begin, prepare one sheet of paper (or a virtual whiteboard if you’re on a video call). Pass it to the first player who, naturally, has to think of an item with ‘A’ as its first letter, like ‘alarm clock’. The next player does the same, this time with an item that starts with ‘B’, and so on until all the letters of the alphabet are done. To save time, players can skip their turns. Smarty pantses beware: ‘a’, ‘an’, and ‘the’ don’t count.

Pix-cell Art

Let’s face it: spreadsheets are an integral part of our workflow. Sure, working with them may feel a little too serious most of the time, but no one ever said they can’t be used for a bit of fun now and then. So, in the middle of your next event or meeting, give your participants a fun breather by using spreadsheets to create ‘pix-cell art’. 

Think of it like doing a colour-by-number activity, but on Excel, Sheets, or Numbers. What makes this activity even more fun is that there are so many formatted templates available for you to download. Or, if you’re up to the challenge, you could create your own!

Playing this game is also really quick and easy. Split your group into three different teams and provide each team with a copy of the same template. Whichever team completes the illustration first wins! To make things even more exciting, you can even set a time limit, giving the W to the team which completes most (if not all) of the template once the timer hits zero.

Art Director

This drawing activity’s a great way to sharpen your participants’ listening and critical thinking skills. Run this as an impromptu recharge exercise in the middle of your discussion if you start to notice a lot of yawns and droopy eyes around the room.

In this exercise, you, as the host, will direct your participants to recreate your own illustration. It’s up to you to decide whether to give them as much time as they need or if you’d like to raise the stakes by setting a time limit.

The catch? As the art director, you can choose between giving clear and specific instructions or being vague about how your prepared illustration looks. For instance, you can sketch a house before the start of the activity. Your first instruction could either be, ‘Draw a horizontally-oriented rectangle on the bottom third of your sheet,’ or simply, ‘Draw a rectangle.’ It should be proper good fun! (Just make sure those yawns turn into laughs, not groans.)

Pictionary

This is a tabletop classic that has stood the test of time. A favourite among people of all ages from different walks of life, Pictionary is one of the biggest pillars in the space of illustration games.  

Many of us know how the game works. Players take turns sketching ideas provided to them by the host, and the rest of their team attempts to guess what the sketch is depicting. Winning the game is as straightforward as it’s always been: score the most number of correct guesses. 

For the sake of adding more creativity to your art breaks, let’s put a spin on it. Instead of players creating sketches for their own teams, have them illustrate their selected idea for the other teams to guess. If any of the other teams get it right, that team gets the point. If they fail to guess correctly, the illustrator’s team gets the point. What’s a bit of healthy competition to spice up an event or meeting, right?

‘DIY’ Sketchnote

Last but certainly not least, you can ask your participants to curate their own insights and turn them into sketches for a live illustration of the ideas they bring up during the conversation. Research has proven that sketching or doodling whilst listening during a conversation helps people retain key information from the discussion.

The best part is that your participants don’t have to do all the work! You can tap an expert live illustrator to bring your group’s insights to life. A team like Ortus Draws is the right fit for your sketchnoting needs. They have some of the most talented artists in the knowledge-sharing sphere, and their live illustrations have been praised by business leaders across the globe.

It may not seem like a one-off breaktime activity, but watching their ideas take shape in real-time is sure to keep your participants engaged throughout your event.

Looking to discover other creative ideas to keep your events engaging? Stop by Ortus Draws here. With so much experience in adding colour and breathing life into live events, they have the solutions you need to make your next event more memorable.

Interested in creating a more engaging knowledge-sharing experience of your own? Contact Ortus Draws to book one of their expert illustrators to sketchnote your next event in real time!

Sketchnoting is a fairly new but incredibly effective form of note-taking that you may or may not have heard of. So what is it really? Read on through to find out and get the answer to some of the questions we get asked most frequently.

What is sketchnoting?

Short and sweet, it’s turning verbal into visual. It’s taking the most pertinent points in any discussion—be it a seminar, interview, roundtable, masterclass, you name it—and adding a creative spin! Fun and apt visuals corresponding to each point are illustrated, and by the end of the session, you’ll have a full and engaging mind map of what’s been tackled. It’s stimulating, it’s easy to digest, and it’s a far cry from the boring old meeting minutes gathering dust in everyone’s inbox. Even better, it can be done live and for everyone to watch! As participants speak, their ideas come to life. What can be more engaging than that?

Do I have to be an expert?

Nope! All you need is a creative mind and something to draw on. Drawing a cabinet of servers and computers to go with a discussion about AI servers doesn’t really sound like a ‘creative spin’ now, does it? What makes sketchnoting so wonderful and engaging is it takes you out of the restrictive world of whatever you’re discussing and connects with imagery from other walks of life, making it all the more memorable. Now, how about having an image of a robot serving you tea to represent AI servers? AI? Check. Server? Check. Instant memorability? Double check!

Isn’t it distracting when done live?

Not at all! Sketchnoting serves as a supplement to the discussion, not a replacement. At the end of the day, no matter how comprehensive the mindmap, what’s being put to paper is what’s coming out of the speakers’ mouths. Ideas are amplified, not drowned out. Statistics show that 65% of the population are visual learners. One study even found that purely auditory stimulus was far inferior to purely visual and a combination of the two, and the disparity only grows as individuals get older.

If anything, live sketchnoting helps participants be immersed even further in the discussion. Nowadays, with Zoom fatigue as rampant and widespread as it is, anything that can pull participants back into the discussion and keep their attention can be a huge boost. Plus, don’t underestimate the human attention span. The human brain can process images in as little as 13 milliseconds. Go, humans!

What about non-visual learners?

Worried about the verbal learners out there? 35% is still a huge chunk of the population. Well, news flash! We’re all visual learners in one way or another. In another study, researchers aimed to find a correlation between subjects’ preferred learning style and the one effective for them. Conclusion? Hardly any correlation at all. What they did find is that most everyone benefits from a form of visual aid. ‘Visual presentations produced better free recall than did purely verbal presentations.’ Loose translation: Words alone don’t cut it! We shouldn’t be surprised. From the age of cave paintings to the rise of hieroglyphs and ideograms to the memes and social media platforms of today, humans crave visuals. 

What do I do with a mind map?

There’s a lot you can do with your final mind map. First, you can share it on social media! To say that engagement is difficult to gain online is an understatement. Social media managers around the world will agree. Instead of having a forgettable text post on LinkedIn telling everyone about an event you just had, post your mind map. Nothing like a colourful and beautifully drawn illustration to catch people’s eyes and stop them from scrolling. Second, send it to your colleagues! So many ideas and insights can be drawn from these virtual events, but not everyone can attend. Sending over meeting minutes or reports bears the risk of having it be ignored by busy bees and go-getters. We’ve all been guilty of this. At first glance, mind maps demand attention and have a way of keeping it. Plus, going through them is both easy and enjoyable. Furthermore, you can leverage your mind maps for following up with your guests. Want to reach out to a guest or participant? Send the mind map over, and you’re sure to be met with delight. Plus, it helps them recall your event and keep you fresh on their minds.

What can I do?

Everyone has their strengths and specialisations. Not everybody can be a live illustrator, but not to worry, everyone here is! Save Ortus Draws a seat at your next virtual event, and we’ll take care of the rest. You can also just send over a recording of your event, and we’ll have a mind map ready for you in a jiffy!

Ortus Draws is a live sketchnoting company that specialises in bringing ideas to life with creative and informative mind maps. Our sketchnotes capture the key points of virtual events, roundtables, webinars, discussions, conferences, presentations, pitches, interviews, and internal meetings. Looking for an illustrator for your event? Contact us now!