 Everyone, thank you so much for coming. My name is Jessica Eldridge. I'm a front-end developer at Shopify, and today I want to talk to you about taking notes. More specifically, I want to talk about taking awesome notes by practicing sketchnoting. How many of you guys have heard of sketchnotes before? Oh, great! So exciting. Is anyone sketchnoting right now? I love you guys. Please share afterwards. We're going to tweet all the photos. So if you haven't heard of sketchnoting, let me explain. I like to describe it as visual note-taking. It's the practice of combining hand-drawn elements and text to create visually-compelling notes. Are you familiar with mind maps? Show hands? Anybody done that before? Yes? Who's used a whiteboard when designing software before? All right. See? You guys got this. You're already familiar with the concept of sketchnoting. Basically, it's the difference between notes like this and notes like this. I first started sketchnoting because of a man named Mike Rody. He's a designer who lives in the Midwest, and he coined the term sketchnoting. I was preparing to go to South by Southwest one year, and I was searching the internet for photos, trying to get an idea of what I was getting myself into, and I stumbled across his notes. And he's been doing this for a long time, at least since 2008. And he does it when he travels, when he goes to conferences, meetings, and I just went into this rabbit hole of looking at his wonderful notes, and I thought, you know, I think I can do this, or I at least want to give it a try. So I started practicing. I did it at that South by that I attended, and local meetups, and meetings at work, and I totally fell in love. So I was going back through the archives, preparing for this talk, trying to find some of my first sketchnotes, and these are my very first sketchnotes. It's probably kind of hard to read, but the first speaker I saw was actually DHH. I had no idea who he was back then. What is this, 37 signals, I don't know. My sketchnotes have changed a lot since then. Get ready for some eye candy. These are some notes by Paul Supeset. He's one of my favorites. I really love his handwriting. Veronica Erb likes to incorporate illustrations into her notes. She's got a really playful style. Sasha Chua, she's from Toronto. She goes to a lot of technical talks, captures a lot of content in her notes, and she actually uses a tablet PC and a stylus. I like that there's a lot of dense content here, but you can still kind of tell what's going on because she's highlighted the key points. You can also use an iPad. There's various apps on the iPad. Use a stylus to take notes like Daniel Kirsch. Super condensed, simplified. I love the pops of color. You can still get the point across. So there's a couple of different ways that you can take notes. There's live and there's later. Live sketchnoting involves taking the notes at the same time that the presentation is happening. You're doing it in the moment. Later sketchnoting is kind of where you might be able to jot down some bullet points, maybe using your computer, maybe on another piece of paper, and you go back to your sketchbook later and draw them out. I prefer to do live sketchnoting because I'm a developer. I like to keep things dry. I don't want to repeat myself. When the talk is done, my notes are done. I can immediately share them, and I can move on and enjoy the next talk. So for the rest of this talk, the techniques I'm going to talk about mostly refer to live sketchnoting. So why do we want a sketchnote? Firstly, I think there's inspiration in analog processes. Taking yourselves out of your computer, we're all developers. We spend a lot of time on our gadgets and our devices. But spending some time with just good old pen and paper allows for a change of perspective. You get outside of your comfort zone and you start seeing things in a different way. Hopefully, while slowing down, you can clarify some ideas that you already have and maybe come up with some new ones. Some famous sketches that didn't do it for a living include DaVinci, Kurt Vonnegut, Darwin, and Freud. All of those people are amazing. We know what they've done. They use sketchnoting to help clarify their ideas. Sketchnoting also allows you to focus. How many of you guys have been in a meeting with your computer and you just check email real quick, or maybe somebody IMs you because there's a bug on production and you got to fix it like right now? Basically, the computer is a rabbit hole of distractions. So when I sketchnote, I try to put things away. I keep my phone out in case I need to look up words that I'm not familiar with. But all I have is my sketchnote in my pen and I'm listening to the content. Once you're on the computer, there's just way too much stuff that can come up. And I really like stepping away from that. Sketchnoting also helps to improve your memory. There's this concept called the dual coding theory which was proposed by Alan Pivo. It's saying that we process information in two different ways, using verbal and visual information. And if you utilize both of them, you have a better chance of remembering the content later. So sketchnoting, you can use visual elements and you're using your handwriting. And later, hopefully, you have a better chance of remembering the content that you were trying to capture. So all of that stuff I just told you is what you're going to tell your boss to prove that you're not doodling in the meetings. The real reason to sketchnote is that it's just fun. I love talking about it. People like looking at notes. I like looking at my notes. I think it's a really great practice. And really, I just don't need an excuse. I try to find out a way that I can do it whenever I can. So let's get to the good stuff. But maybe you're thinking, Jess, I can't draw. I hear this all the time and it's the reason why I'm giving my talk today. And I'm going to debunk this in one slide. So what do you see up here? We've got some shapes. If you can draw any of these shapes, then you can sketchnote. If you can't draw these shapes, please come find me. We will pair. I'm willing to take the time to practice with you. And we can get those done. Using these shapes and practicing is how you're going to sketchnote. You use lines, arrows to connect ideas. Use the boxes and the clouds to add emphasis. Those shapes also form the basis if you want to go and do some illustrations or icons. These are all the fundamental building blocks that you need. You're also going to need some other tools. This is what I like to call my sketchnoting config file. I prefer to use a plain sketchbook. I use Moleskine, something with heavy paper. I'm a very ham-fisted drawer and I write really heavy so I don't want it to bleed. I use a uniball pen for most of the writing. It's very smooth, something like a rollerball. I know people that like gel pens. There's a couple of other art pens in there that I use for bolder notes and I've been using a Faber-Castell artist pen for shading. So kind of pick what works for you. A lot of people like to start out with grid paper too because if you feel like you can't write in a straight line then the grid lines kind of help you keep everything in place. And obviously like I talked earlier about some of the electronic devices that you can use. So if it makes you feel better to use an iPad, absolutely go for it. So here are some sketchnotes in mind where you can see some of those building blocks being used. We've got a cloud and some arrows and lines and boxes. That's pretty much all you need. So here's the good part, right? How do you actually do this? And for this I'm gonna turn to one of my favorite poets, Mary Oliver, who wrote in Sometimes, Instructions for Living a Life. Pay attention, be astonished, tell about it. When I was reading this poem again recently I thought these are really good advice for sketchnoting as well. So how do we pay attention? The very first thing I wanna tell people about sketchnoting is that it's not about drawing, it's about listening. It requires active listening to really focus on what the speaker's talking about. Sketchnoting helps you focus on the important parts of your presentation. Listening is different than thinking. Sometimes a speaker might be talking about something controversial, maybe other ideas come up in your head while they're speaking. You don't wanna let your emotional reactions get in the way of capturing content. So if you disagree or maybe, I mean you might think of something else or oh, I wish you'd said this, like you don't wanna let that get in the way. You really wanna focus on what the speaker's saying and then let the emotion come later. I also advise to follow the speaker and not the slides. We live in an age when most speakers are gracious enough to share their slides on the internet with us later so you can kind of get that content if you need to later, most of the time. The good stuff's not gonna be on the slides though. The good stuff is gonna be with the speaker. You have one moment to be in the presentation with them and to really hear what they're saying. If you know a speaker's style, it's a little bit easier to plan your notes. I've been going to enough tech conferences that I kind of get an idea ahead of time. DHH is gonna be super colorful and crazy and controversial. Erin Patterson loves to tell a story. There's like cool jokes in there. Glenn Vanderberg, great storyteller, very linear format. So as you practice, you'll kind of get an idea for that. I would follow the speaker's body language, their speech patterns. Maybe they like to take dramatic pauses. It's a time for you to slow down also and pay attention to what they're saying. So how do you listen for key points? This is pretty hard. It requires some multitasking. Firstly, I would avoid summarizing everything. I think when you first start sketching, it's really tempting to try to get everything on paper. You don't wanna miss stuff but you kind of gotta let that go. The talk title is the first clue to what the important content's gonna be but it's not always accurate. Sometimes the speaker's gonna be really cool and nice and tell you ahead of time what they're gonna cover. The opening slide and say, I've got three things that I'm gonna go over today but you're not always gonna be able to rely on that. So one thing I like to tell people is if you had your phone out and you weren't taking sketch notes right now, what would you tweet about? So anything that you listen to that you're like, man, that's really awesome. That's what you wanna get down in your sketch notes. So we're at a technical conference. I'm talking to developers who wanna do this. There's gonna be a lot of demos and live coding and my advice to you is don't sketch it. I tried to do it once. It's really hard. I tried to actually sketch code samples. It's really hard. It's also gonna look kind of boring because it's code. If you do wanna sketch note during a demo though, I think there's still some tips you can follow. You wanna listen for gems of advice. Usually there's a reason why somebody's demoing. They wanna show you that something's better than something else or kind of go through a problem solving exercise. Maybe there's code libraries, gems, plug-ins that are mentioned during the talk that you've never heard of before. I usually like to jot those down to go look up later. A lot of times pros and cons. Obviously, if somebody's showing off something that they did, they might say this is better than this other way. Those are things that you might wanna capture as well. It's virtually impossible to write as fast as somebody can speak. So sometimes you need a backup plan. I like to carry around some scratch paper. I advise using post-its to just kind of like jot down ideas real quick in case you can't keep up with the speaker speech. There's usually also lulls between the main ideas, people pausing between all of their main points. That's also a good time to kind of go back and fill in if you missed something earlier. You can also use post-its to hold on to a note or an idea while you're waiting for the connection. Sometimes they'll bring up the problem and talk about the solution later and you wanna just like hold on to that thought. Also, sometimes, I mean, you might not wanna commit an idea right away. Like maybe something better's gonna come up next. So you can use the post-it to sort of be a placeholder and a backup plan in case that following idea doesn't pan out for you. It's also important to be astonished. You might wanna share your notes with the world and show them to other people, but ultimately, your notes are for you. You wanna capture what stands out to you in the moment and not worry about what anybody else thinks. Also, feel free to fill in gaps and add your own sort of notes on the side. I used to be really worried about capturing what a speaker said extremely accurately and I didn't wanna misrepresent what they said in a talk and I learned to sort of let that go because I need to remember what they were saying. I need to interpret what they were saying. So sometimes, I'll write something off to the side just to add in and enhance what they're saying so I can remember later. It's all about listening to what's being said and interpreting it in your own way because you wanna remember what happened in the presentation. It's really interesting to see that a bunch of people can attend the same talk and come out of it with different things. These are some sketch notes by Caroline Soule of Brooklyn Beta, she went to a talk by Tim O'Reilly. I went to that same talk and these are my notes. So vastly different styles. Other fun things to capture include jokes and quotes and F-bombs. If the speaker's funny, capturing a joke is a great way to enhance your notes. I mean, it's what everybody remembers. It's gonna make you laugh when you go back and look at your notes later. Cuss words usually used for emphasis which means that it's something important. If you want great colorful notes I advise going back and looking at all of DHH's talks in the past. I also listen for quotable moments. Anytime a speaker makes a dramatic pause, maybe they've repeated a phrase over and over again. Listening for metaphors and similes, that's a great chance for you to kind of visualize something. The speaker's doing it for you, they're giving you a hint, this is like this. And if you can come up with an image that captures that, that's a good way to enhance your notes as well. So speaking of F-bombs, these are some notes by Aaron Hawkins. This talk looks like it was really fun to go to. Another thing you can do is to create your own visual language. And that means kind of coming up with a style or some sort of cue that helps you remember certain things in a talk. So what's an example of a visual language? Maybe if you're trying to take direct quotes from a speaker, you can use quote marks, speech bubbles for direct quotes, question bubbles for maybe something, a question you asked yourself and you wanna look up later. Like an eye and a circle for info or tips. I read on a blog somewhere that this girl likes to put titles of books inside a picture of a book. So she knows when she scans through her notes if she wants to go buy a book later, she can find it very quickly. So here's some examples of Eve a lot of Lambs notes and she's using little highlighted quotes everywhere. It's an easy way to pick out the speaker's direct quotations. And sometimes you're gonna listen to a talk and the content is not gonna stick and there's always a backup plan for that too. I went to this keynote, it was way over my head. Sometimes you just gotta be in the moment and you can't get it on paper. So the last step is to tell people about it. I really think it's important to share your notes. I think it's a great way to continue the dialogue after a conversation. I use Twitter is the main avenue for my notes. I always use the conference hashtag and at mention the speaker. You can also upload to places like Flickr, Instagram or Dribble. There's a blog called Sketch Note Army which is run by Mike Roddy. He takes submissions, you can just tweet at him, you can email him but he's also got a committee of people that go around the internet looking for sketch notes whether it's on Flickr or Twitter and then he features them on his blog. And it's really a nice way to share with people but also thank the speaker. Speaking of thanking the speaker, they're gonna be really grateful if you share your notes. I didn't actually realize that this was a thing until about last year when I was really getting going with this and people were tweeting back at me like, thank you so much, this is amazing. And it's kind of weird that I didn't think that it was something that other people would care about but it's nice to have an artifact of your talk when you leave. It's also nice that people are talking about your talk after you leave, you kind of want that. So sketch notes are a good way to, I think, thank the speaker and prove that you were there and you really listened and captured the information. A lot of times in your sketch notes you'll realize that you captured information that the speaker didn't even intend. They didn't think it was that important and then here you're getting feedback from people saying, no, this was really cool. Your boss will also be impressed, I think. No one else in your meeting is probably going to be taking in sketch notes. You're going to capture different ideas and it's a good way to enhance team dialogue when you're like sketching out ideas or thinking about really hard problems. Sketch notes will add a diversity to the conversation. So this isn't all, there are some actual practical tips that I can pass on to you. The first one is to get comfortable. I always go to a meeting or a talk early to find a good seat. The aisle is great for elbow room. It's not so great for people flowing into the room and you constantly have to get up and be interrupted. So I actually recommend a middle seat. I also try to tell people to find a good light source. They'll dim the lights in a lot of conferences so you want to try to find some way that you can look at your sketchbook. I'm also that jerk that will put my purse on the seat next to me so I have some room. I'm sorry, Marty. I mean, it's really hard when you're squished in and people are sitting next to you and typing on their laptops. Sometimes it's nice to have a little bit of elbow room. I think also getting to a talk early means that you can write down the speaker's name, their Twitter handle, the title, get that stuff out of the way so that you're ready to go when they start. It's also important to slow down. When I did a practice run of this talk at Shopify, some people came up to me and said, well, my handwriting's really bad. So what do I do about that? And I advise this person to slow down and write your letters as if you're drawing them. When you slow down, you have to be deliberate about it. Also, trying to draw larger letters will force you to slow down and I think make you really pay attention to your writing. If you're doing your normal handwriting, it's easy to just go really fast and it turns out a little bit sloppy. So if you slow down, I think it really helps. Also try to play with layouts. Normally when we're writing just regular notes on pen and paper, we're going top down. I think kind of stepping outside of your comfort zone and trying something different will really help. There's different ways to do that. I tended to do sort of a popcorn style where I just fill in notes anywhere there's space on my page. People can also do columns. That's really great for panels. You can do a radial style or maybe you start in the middle and sort of map out kind of like mind maps. There's also sort of the winding, story-lane sort of style. You can go left to right, left to right. But basically it's important to try to challenge yourself and do something different. So these are some examples from Veronica Arab again doing sort of a radial style. You can see like the title up at the talk and she's sort of going out. Add the decoration last. This is gonna be really tempting too when you're sketch-noting. You wanna make it look really pretty and you're trying to capture everything. But I said before, there's always these moments in the talk where people are pausing or maybe transitioning or maybe the speaker's kind of boring for a little while. And you can use that time to sort of add all those boxes and arrows and shading that you weren't able to capture earlier. And you can also use your post-its again to keep that backlog and sort of help you pace yourself if you can't fill up the space. I like to go back after the talk as well just really quickly before I share to sort of add some more detail and boldness if I'm like reflecting on the talk and realizing that something was extra important. I'll try to go back and add some embellishment. It's also important to embrace mistakes, especially if you're live sketch-noting, it's gonna happen. There's no way to get around it. It can be really scary to use a pen and paper. You might wanna use pencil, but I really encourage you to just go ahead and use pen. I bring a bold marker just in case I need to fix something really crazy, but be okay with scratching out a word. If you didn't spell it right the first time or if it was wrong, it's totally okay. So here's some notes that I took and there's like smudges. And this word right here, that was the first time I spelled entrepreneurs wrong. I tried again. I still spelled it wrong. So that's gonna happen. As with anything, practice makes better. Here's some ways you can do that. I advise people to start out with already recorded conference talks like TED Talks, do it in your meetings at work, even reality TV. I have sketch-noted real housewives before. It's really fun. Watching videos at home on your own takes the pressure off of live sketching on you a little bit. You've got a pause button. You can sort of figure out your pace. As you practice, you'll also get a really good sense of how much information you can capture in a given amount of time. I used to take up two pages for every single talk no matter how long the content was. I've now gotten everything down to a page, like whether it's an hour and a half talk or a 30 minute talk. And so as you practice, you'll sort of find your own style. Here are some of my notes. Name the movie. So there's some notes by MJ Valenti. She was sketch-noting a BBC episode. Get inspired. When we all started out developing, what did we do? We just copied other people's code and then we tried to make it better. And I advise doing the same thing for sketch-noting. I, when I first started, just went on the internet just through Flickr every day looking for other people's styles that I liked and I tried to just copy it. As you become more comfortable, you'll find your own style. But it's okay because even if you're trying to copy someone else's style, it's never gonna look exactly like theirs. So it's always gonna be your own. Some good resources for that include sketch-note army, like I said before. There is a hashtag on Flickr and there's various user groups on Flickr devoted just to sketch-noting. I actually found a bunch of boards on Pinterest. So that's another great resource. So experimentation is how you're gonna find your own style. And what I advise doing is start with the copying and then copy another person's style and then copy another person's style and start mixing and matching and you'll sort of find your happy place. I mean, I spent a lot of time trying to match Paul Supasette's handwriting. I've never gotten it quite right. But I've taken elements of what all of my favorite sketch-noters do and tried to add them to my own. Mike Rody wrote a book that covers a lot more than what I was able to tell you today. This book is amazing. It's actually got some really great hands-on exercises that you can do. I highly recommend it. So at the end of this talk, I've sat here and I've told you all about how to do this and you're like, just, I still can't draw. You haven't told me how to draw. But that's okay, because you can sketch-note. So please go do that. Okay, so the question was this talk focused on sketch-noting for yourself and is there any advice for communicating with other people? Yeah, I mean, I think, like, I mentioned different ways or different places that you can sketch-note. I sketch-note in my meetings at work. I don't do a great job of sharing them with everyone, Nick, I'll do that next week. It is, I think that is a good way. Sharing them actually helps other people too. You'll find in meetings, there's not actually a lot of people that take notes. I mean, it's kind of surprising sometimes. We all think we're gonna remember when we walk away. So if you're the one that sketch-notes and you find it fun and other people find it fun, sharing it right afterwards is actually really, really helpful. We've done a lot of whiteboarding sessions. People take pictures with their cameras to capture that. Your sketch-notes add another layer to that conversation. And so I think just bringing all that together helps sort of document what happened so people can remember. Does that answer your question? Thank you very much.