International Sketchnote Camp in Hamburg

Last Saturday I attended the International Sketchnote Camp. You read right – there is a Sketchnote camp. I was actually the first gathering of that kind and oh how nerdy it was! In a good way!

The camp was organized in the Barcamp format which is sort of a self-organized conference. That means everyone can suggest a topic and give a session, just step up in the morning, present your topic and find a time-slot.

I arrived a little late because I took an early train from Berlin to Hamburg so I missed that part. But I wasn’t planning on giving a session anyways (I would have loved to but there was simply no time to prepare one. Maybe next time.)

But I was just in time for Mike Rohde’s Keynote and if you’re familiar with the Sketchnote topic you know him – Mike is T H E Sketchnote Guru. He invented the term »Sketchnote« and wrote the first book [Affiliate Link] about it. When Mike started to follow me on Twitter a while ago I was so flattered! And when he asked me if he could get a copy of my book even though he doesn’t speak German, I felt so so honored. So I took the opportunity to say hi to him in real life and give him a copy of the book and thanking him for starting the Sketchnote idea.

Picture: Marc Bourguignon

Since I couldn’t participate in any of the workshops on Friday I was really happy to hear that one of the workshops was moved to Saturday. Caroline Chapple spoke about »From Sketchnoting to Graphic Recording«. I find that an interesting topic because I’m thinking about doing Graphic Recordings as well. Maybe just from time to time because it’s really hard work, you need to travel a lot and the big format is something you need to get used to it. I also learned that the size is basically the only difference to Sketchnotes. Well, I kind of knew that but it felt good to hear it from some experts.

The other session I attended was about how to get Sketchnotes to schools. I mean how awesome would that be! Sketchnotes in schools! So we basically spoke about what to do to get teachers to use Sketchnotes. And I finally took my first digital Sketchnote using the iPad Pro and Procreate. I drew a lot on it already. Once you get used to that digital feeling and know where to buy the brushes you need, it’s actually pretty cool. I’ve never used it for live-drawing though but it worked pretty well. It also gives you the chance to use with color backgrounds or other colors for lines. And of course, you can take videos too.

Of course there were so much more interesting sessions. But there were so many people to meet that I spent the rest of the day chatting with others. It turns out, when you make a book people love to have it signed so I signed a lot of books 🙂 That was really a new experience for me and it was so flattering!
I had a long chat with Marc Bourguignon from France. He gave me such an amazing feedback on the book, even though he doesn’t speak German that I’m still really flattered (Thanks again Marc).

Picture: Marc Bourguignon

And of course I met a lot of other Sketchnote buddies like Eva-Lotta Lamm, Tanja Wehr, Franziska Schwarz, Diana Meier-Soriat, Professor Clayton and so many people from my digital Sketchnote bubble but still I feel I missed so many (I had to leave right after the closing ceremony because I had a Sparpreis). I got so much amazing feedback on my work, thanks to all of you for that.

What I really loved about the conference is that everyone was drawing! On most of the conferences there are only a few sketchnoters, sometimes I’m the only one.

EVERYONE is drawing 😍😍😍 Sketchnoters sketchnote at the Sketchnote camp #ISC17HH 🎉🎉🎉 pic.twitter.com/QYxJ2ix0IM
— marianne rady (@MarianneRady) September 23, 2017

I also want to say: The event was amazingly organized! The team around Katharina Theis-Böhl, Diana Meier-Soriat, Andrea Brücken and Marianne Rady did a wonderful job on setting that event up. Kudos to that! Can’t wait for the next one!

On top you see a Sketchnote selfie that everyone was asked to do for the booklet in the goodie bags. Very lovely idea!