Whenever I sketchnote an event, people tell me that they love my work. They ask if I’d be interested in sketching other events, podcasts, books, presentation designs, blog post illustrations, and so on. People love the informal, informative style of sketchnotes, and they want to use it to spread more ideas. Terrific!

But you know what would be even awesomer? It would be fantastic if more people could get into sketchnoting – pro-bono, for barter, or professionally. There are a lot of great ideas out there that are missing their potential because they get forgotten or people’s eyes glaze over when confronted by lots of text or slides. More sketchnoters, more possibilities.

Many sketchnoters and graphic recorders refer work to people they know when they’re too busy themselves. I want to refer as much as possible to other people, especially people I don’t know. I want to broaden the network and bring more people in. I want my default to be referring work to other people, accepting work myself only if it’s something I really care about and I’m the only one who can make it happen. (Which is probably never, because lots of people can draw!)

It makes sense to have lots of sketchnoters sharing the opportunities instead of a few sketchnoters drawing most of the work. When a topic lines up with your interests or background, everything is better. You have a richer visual vocabulary. You learn a lot more from the content. You can keep up with speakers more easily. And when there are lots of active sketchnoters, we can learn a lot from each other’s styles.

I think it would be interesting to have a gig board where people can post opportunities and other people can contact them if interested. This is different from a job board because jobs tend to be longer-term commitments, while sketchnoting might just be a few hours. I don’t mind routing everything through my e-mail first.

So, what’s getting in people’s way now, and how can we address that?

• A slowly growing market: Although some event organizers have been taking advantage of graphical summaries as a way of reaching out to attendees and prospects, graphic recording is still pretty limited in terms of conferences and corporate events. Sketchnoting is still pretty novel.I’m not going to focus on event organizers who don’t know about sketchnoting yet. It’s helpful to have a place where organizers who want sketchnotes can connect with sketchnoters.Many events have limited budgets, especially in this economy, so they might not be able to afford professional sketchnoting. However, if a pro-bono or barter event matches up with a sketchnoter’s interests, maybe the sketchnoter will do it anyway. Besides, I want to encourage organizers to think of more creative bartering opportunities: links? sponsorship? feedback over lunches? ticket giveaways? introductions? testimonials?

  How is this different from, say, simply showing up at an event and taking notes? Connecting with the organizers beforehand makes it easier for the organizers and the sketchnoters to make the most of the sketches. The organizers might be able to arrange complimentary tickets, perhaps including an extra ticket that the sketchnoter can raffle off or trade with someone else. The organizer can help publicize the sketchnotes, and the sketchnoters can get a wider audience.

• The power law: Sketchnoters who post their notes publicly get lots of requests, which lead to more sketches, which lead to more requests. There are even more sketchnoters who haven’t made that jump. Maybe they’re not comfortable posting their work online or their website isn’t popular, but they’d be fine with e-mailing an organizer samples of their work.
• Sketchnoters might be too intimidated to make the leap. I remember being nervous the first time I committed to sketchnoting an event for a fee. What if things fell through? What if I wasn’t good enough? It turns out that an excellent way to deal with risk is to offer a guarantee, which is good for the client and good for you. As for worrying I wasn’t good enough–I figured the client was grown-up enough to make decisions based on my online portfolio. If they thought my stick figures were awesome, then okay!I can help sketchnoters get over their intimidation by talking through their concerns and helping them mitigate them. For example, I sometimes worry about my tools failing on me, so I bring backups. There are lots of things you can plan for or around.Also, if you’re intimidated, you might pair up with another sketchnoter, especially at a pro-bono event. Connecting with the organizer and the other sketchnoter(s) beforehand will make it easier to, say, sit together with the other person or swap URLs afterwards.

I have a couple of requests that I’d like to refer to other people. What would be a good way of sharing them?

• A. Add a page on my site, coordinating with the people who want them posted. Remove posts when the need is filled or enough time has passed. Have a simple mailing list for updates.
• B. Post them on my regular blog in a new category, coordinating with the people who want them posted. Tag with keywords. List open opportunities in the sidebar. Continue doing this until I start receiving requests from other people, then split it off into a separate blog.
  • Advantage: No need to maintain a different site.
  • Disadvantage: Blog clutter, and people may find it difficult to see just those posts.
• C. Create a new site. Post the current requests there after coordinating with the people who want them posted, tagging with keywords. List open opportunities in the sidebar. Tweet announcements and link to them from my main blog; spread the word. Accept requests by e-mail or contact form. Eventually look into job board plugins if there’s a lot of interest. It should also have a newsletter that people can sign up for. Eventually this might even have people’s profiles.
  • Advantage: Uncluttered. Can customize display.
  • Disadvantage: May go stale. Probably a good idea to create it on one of my domains first (maybe somewhere under Sketchnote Index?). Need to maintain another site.

I like option A more. So let’s run it as a little experiment… Here are some possible outcomes:

• Okay: If I post my current requests there and I don’t find anyone, well, at least I have a place to post future requests, and I can say I’ve tried.
• Good: If I match people to my current requests and have a handy place for me to refer future requests, that’s fine even if I don’t get external requests.
• Better: If other people subscribe to it and are interested in hearing about opportunities, that’s a double-win.
• Best: If people start submitting requests and it gets to the point where it makes sense to build a job post submission interface or a geolocated search, that’s a triple win.

I’m not going to invest a lot of time into it in the beginning, so I might start with a simple theme and no development work. As we see the response, I can make it better.

Sounds like a plan! Any thoughts or suggestions?

Image credits: Wanted (Thinglass, Shutterstock)