Corporate Work

This was a job I was looking forward to because an energy corporation was making big changes to the way we use the energy grid! They are upbeat folks and wanted me to document a board meeting while they discussed the early stages of a many-part process involving hybridizing regional electricity. I arrived a little early and these fine people were still assembling. Some more amazing people began to filter in the boardroom and things began to focus. I had chosen a sidewall and placed a long mural-sized paper on the wall that was over twenty feet! It was such an honour to graphically record the interesting discussion that followed. Rest assured, some amazing minds are hard at work devising alternatives to delivering power to Ontario to radically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and still keep homes heated and lights shining when you need them. I was wearing a nice suit and felt incredibly happy. My heart was racing and I almost dropped my markers a few times while I visually paraphrased what was going on. I just knew it had to be eye-pleasing and be up-to-pace with what they were saying, and at moments it was certainly a fairly quickly-paced meeting. Fortunately, discussion paused enough over certain ideas that I was able to jump back and create emphasis around key points. I chose to use a bit of negative space design for the recording and avoided the sweeping colours and ribbons of words that are sometimes used in visual scribing, opting instead for simple colourful clusters of ideas. The resulting work spanned all twenty feet, looked excellent, and the corporation ordered a poster-sized print. This is an option I offer all customers, and so I patched together twenty feet of photos into an attractive print and it was delivered almost overnight! I also offered as a courtesy to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement with them, even though there wasn't anything overly top-secret, and to my surprise, they took me up on it because who knows? NDA's are often a good idea. So I now must be careful not to really say who they were although I don't think they'd mind and careful not to display visual notes from the day without consultation. Fortunately, there really isn't anything of wild interest to competitors in the visual notes, but it is a good practice to sign these. Hopefully, since I became iron-clad with their lawyers, they'll have me back some time for another session. The entire experience was very good for me in terms of developing professional confidence in a highly-demanding situation, and I was thrilled it worked out to everyone's satisfaction. A good day well done!