Scribing? What is it?

Wow! Of course this isn't a brainstorming session, but rather an animation of a whiteboard drawing in sync with a talk which was given earlier. The compelling nature of this sort of presentation cannot be denied. There are several reasons why I think this is the case:

1. First of all, there's the whole viewer completion angle. The person watching the video has to 'connect the dots' regarding how the picture relates to what's on the screen. I believe this sort of approach creates a hypersensitivity for viewers enabling them to create a larger comprehension bandwidth than if watching video, a slideshow or someone talk. And for this reason, I believe this sort of presentation can only last at the most 7 to 10 minutes because after that point the brain just wears down and quits trying to make the connection.
2. Also, a whimsical presentation like this one can liven up a presentation which had no life before. A friend of mine, Floyd Wray, who has done 20 years of research into "Cognition Records" points out rightly that over or under stating a situation can be funny, and engaging– which we see clearly in this video.
3. And, watching this video, one gets the impression "It's not that hard to do!" Sort of like viewer completion only we feel it's something possible. So, unlike watching a full features 3D animation where you know $300 an hour experts used a billion processor cycles to create 10 frames of animation, here we have just one guy using a marker on a whiteboard. Of course upon further inspection, actually, it's not that easy. But the fact the scribing animation is done AFTER the talk allows for more time to think, setup, create trial pictures and then animate the whole thing. More on how I believe this can be done easily later.

What may be a harder job is the realtime scribing of a brainstorming session. For these it's more difficult as you pretty much have to think, and draw, on your feet, with little time for contemplation or mistakes. And it has to make sense– at least to the participants. Again, the concept of viewer completion helps significantly. While a casual observer may look at a scribed brainstorm session and not understand what is going on, you can be sure the folks who were present remember exactly the points the pictures made.

So, to that end, I thought I'd try scribing a brainstorm session with a client of mine who had hired a brand new Ad Agency and PR firm to begin the process of creating campaigns for a new product we've been working on for months. While I have never tried scribing before, I have moderated these type of sessions. Turns out it's pretty hard to provide direction, ideas, and scribe all at the same time. Lesson learned! 

While 7 hours was a bit daunting, and very tiresome, I was able to create a number of whiteboard drawings, of which here are two of them. There's some distortion as I had to combine multiple iPhone camera shots together to get the whole picture, and I did have to whiteout the clients name, but it's a start. And there certainly is room for improvement. I have some ideas on how to do better. I'll talk about those on a later blog post.