'Scribe Life': Hotels!

Can Visual Scribes also be travel influencers?

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/9d3023_fe3c0dbadfe241dfa4baba7269bc4cab/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

Say 'Hotel, Motel, Holiday Innnnnn'

Yes.

Pre-pandemic, it was the whole lifestyle - travelling out to big events like conferences, business transformation workshops or 'ASE's (Accelerated Solutions Environments), and other events, to draw onto big white walls, drawing boards, or big bits of paper.

Personally I find that when I'm travelling a lot, and only in a location for the duration of an event, often only seeing the inside of a conference venue or hotel, I get disorientated easily.

The sensitive nature of a lot of the content a scribe draws out from the room, especially in facilitated strategy meetings for global corporations, means the actual drawings can't really go beyond those contexts: They belong with the client, and they support the client's goals.

So: To tell people what I was up to, I got into a habit of drawing my hotel room from an isometric viewpoint, and I kept this up throughout 2017 and 2018.

A room I was most taken with in Zurich. The ultra-confidential nature of the event was augmented beautifully by the Bond-villain vibes of the venue and setting.

Revisiting these drawings, I am struck by a couple of things.

One: How did I have time to do this? I don't do this anymore when I travel for work, it just doesn't seem fun to me. The answer is most likely, it was therapeutic for me when in a new place. Traveling is a skill that took me years to build and is still stressful in a myriad of ways.

Two: The extension of this, is something I have heard about from people who work in therapeutic contexts. Visualising a viewpoint above you and looking down - like an isometric angle forces - can be a way to ground yourself, becoming centred and calm.

Nowadays, I try to build 'white space' around the event - I go for a walk, I go to a local restaurant, etc.

So: Next time you meet a visual scribe, ask them about their travel lifestyle. Maybe they'll have a recommendation for you. Or a fun story about a conference hall.

Final thought: As a visual scribe, every now and then you need a lanyard audit!