Mike Rohde’s The Sketchnote Handbook (see my sketchnotes of it) focuses on pen-and-paper sketchnoting. I really enjoy digital sketchnoting, although there’s a bit more of a barrier to entry in terms of hardware. I’ve figured out a pretty sweet workflow for live-publishing conference/event sketchnotes so that you can catch people while they’re looking at the Twitter hashtag. Mike and I will be talking about digital workflows and tips for one of his podcasts, and I wanted to sketch my thoughts/talking points in preparation.

Click on the image for a larger version of the sketchnote.

Not specifically mentioned there because it’s more of a blogging setup, but WordPress + NextGen Gallery + Windows Live Writer + Text Templates plugin = great.

Feel free to share this! You can credit it as (c) 2012 Sacha Chua under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Canada licence.

Like this? Check out my other sketchnotes and visual book notes. Want me to sketchnote your event? Know of any interesting tech / business talks coming up? I’d love to hear from you!

You can view 16 comments or e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

In The Sketchnote Handbook, Mike Rohde breaks down the process for sketchnotes. He found that writing his notes in pen in a small sketchbook and giving himself permission to doodle made taking notes so much more fun and less frustrating. If you’ve been having problems paying attention in class or in meetings, or you’ve been frustrated by your inability to remember key points from conferences and presentations, this is for you. No art degree required.

Here’s my one-page summary. Click on the image for a larger version, and feel free to share it!

© 2012 Sacha Chua, Creative Commons Attribution Licence

If you’ve always been curious about how to start sketchnoting, this is the best book I’ve come across so far. Read this, then read Dan Roam’s Back of the Napkin for more business-oriented visual tools.

If you’re ordering through Peachpit, use the coupon code SKETCHNOTE to get 35% until Dec 31, 2012. It’s roughly the same price on Amazon (affiliate link). Note that there’s a video edition that includes 70 minutes of video tutorials, which is great for bringing these ideas to life.

I received a review copy of this book from Peachpit Press. Props to them. =)

Check out my other sketchnotes and visual book notes for more business- and technology-related visual summaries!

Other people’s visual summaries of The Sketchnote Handbook:

• Doug
• Thiago Esser
• Linda
• Luigi
• William
• Hoopdiaries

You can view 2 comments or e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

Most people are lazy when it comes to taking notes. That’s because we think we understand things when we listen to them. Everything makes sense. We’re sure we’re going to remember everything, or at least the important parts. Besides, if we take notes, then we’re looking away from the speaker, and we might miss something on the slides, and what’s the point of coming to a presentation instead of listening to the podcast or reading an article if we can’t watch the speaker’s eyebrows go up and down? It’s hard to listen and take notes at the same time, and it reminds us too much of school. (I totally hear you. I hardly took notes in university. I wish I did. I wouldn’t have fallen asleep in lectures if I were taking proper notes, and I would’ve made better use of that time.)

Taking notes gives you an instant follow-up excuse. I am such a lazy networker. Small talk and regular networking is hard. You’ve got to come up with a way to do enough of a “deep bump” (as Keith Ferrazzi puts it in Never Eat Alone) that you’re memorable and you’ve found something valuable for your follow-up. Notes? Notes are awesome. They work for practically everyone. Talking to someone who didn’t take notes? Offer to send them yours. Talking to someone who took notes? Offer to swap notes. That gets your e-mail conversation going, and you can take things from there.

Sketchnotes are even more awesome. Simple notes with stick figures, colour, whatever else. Nothing fancy. But  they resonate with people, they’re easy to review, and they’re fun to share.

Here’s how you can really take advantage of sketchnotes in a way that you can’t do with text notes or live-tweeting:

Walk up to the speaker after the talk and ask for their autograph. You’re there. The speaker’s there. You might as well. While waiting for your turn, you might get to eavesdrop on interesting conversations. And when that turn comes and you bring out your sketchnotes and ask for their autograph, you’ll most likely get this reaction:

“Wow! That’s so cool! Send me that!”

… cue the speaker’s business card, and often a deluge of business cards from other people around you. Send them all a link to your notes once you’ve posted them. Voila! You’re memorable, you’ve created something of value, you’re on people’s radars, and you can ask them questions in that e-mail in order to continue the conversation – maybe even set up a phone call or coffee get-together.

Most people have never been asked for their autographs, and are delighted to oblige once they see you’re not asking them to sign a contract or a blank cheque. It’s a little weird to autograph someone’s text notes. Visual notes, though, especially with a little sketch of them? Excellent excuse to make contact. It doesn’t matter if you have a signed sketchnote or not (this isn’t like a signed first edition or anything), but it gets you that human contact with the speaker and with other people who’ve stuck around for questions.

(Lenovo tablet PC tips: you can disable the buttons on your stylus. I just figured out how to do this, and it will save me so much explaining to speakers.)

You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

Click on the image for a larger version or contact me for a high-res version (2608x1600px). Feel free to share this under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence.

Lots of great research released under Creative Commons. Yay Jeremiah Owyang and Altimeter!

Quick notes for searching, more later: Social business hierarchy of needs: Foundation –> Safety –> Formation –> Enablement –> Enlightenment

If you like this, you might also like:

• my notes from the previous Third Tuesday Toronto talk (Engagio)
• more sketchnotes from meetups and books
• the Third Tuesday Toronto meetup group
• other cool sketchnotes around the Web

Enjoy!

Here’s the text from the image to make it easier to search for:

Jeremiah Owyang
Third Tuesday Toronto: May 14, 2012
Sketchnotes: Sacha Chua (@sachac): LivingAnAwesomeLife.com

untrained employees
advanced companies prepare internally first

~180 accounts for average enterprise
-only 25% active
Social media mostly separate from rest of site/db

Frequency of social media crises
-exposure to poor customer experience
-poor influencer relations
-violation of ethical guidelines rogue employees

Social sanitation
Reinforcing bad behavior
We’re teaching them to yell at their friends.

Constantly getting ahead of themselves.

Advanced companies
Social business hierarchy of needs

5 Englightenment
4 Enablement Empowerment scaling
3 Formation asset inventory Center of Excellence
2 Safety Team workflow Crisis prep
1 Foundation Policy
Education required
social media & communities

Holistic
Real-time
Predictive
Predict what customers are going to do
Integrate into databases, etc.
Build better products
Tap employees

self-serve hubs Chatteratti (EZE help, compensation) bit.ly/Altimeter Social

strategic internal communications tactic
Governance
Policy
Guidelines
Training
important for scaling

10.8%
Decentralized centralized

41% Hub and spoke
sometimes on their behalf

18%
Dandelion
COE empowers business units

1.4%
Holistic
Safe & consistent
(Best Buy, Zappos)
I do customer support

Team Aug. 11
1.5 social strategist 3 comm manager soc media manager 1 analyst 1.5 dev

content strategist, emerging role
-editorials, ex. journalists, comm agencies…

Education
-Executives
-Strategists/Business units
-all employees

Access
-Tools
-Everyone has access & must be trained

Listening centre
some involving business unit centres
triage
-good
-bad
-ugly

FireBell simulation of social media crisis

Most crises: Friday afternoon

Q&A: #3TYYZ
-Analysis? CRM, Omniture (Adobe), SAS, Eloqua… A number of different directions. System integrators.
-Adobe Social. Very bullish, if they can act like a small company. Paid, earned, owned media
Also watch Lithium Technologies & bazaarvoice (300% ROI for ratings). New ad units, IBM social metrics.
-Soc media correlations? Social loyalty (people are loyal to each other), gamifications.
C-suite: Novelty, fear, potential for new business models.
any data company stands to gain early in the space, lots of experimentations
-Social software: Combrian explosion. Lots of duplicate companies, VCs investing in clones
Best-in-class will probably connect with each other.
-Startup? Yes, but you can go through steps faster. Our research focuses on enterprise, but can still help.
-Soc media agencies? Ads right now. May need to restructure. Everything starts with earned.
-Disclosure? Vendors unlikely. Agencies making tech-agnostic methodologies.
-Facebook fans? Loose affinity. Facebook wants people to pay.
-Product is info? Utility, etc. Go up a level: Lifestyle, workstyle. G8, IBM.
Get clients to tell stories. See banks for examples. Orsten in.

You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

Click on the image for a large version. Want an even better version for printing out? Contact me. Feel free to reuse or share this image under the Creative Commons Attribution license.

We heard from Pamela MacDonald, Liako Dertilis, and Billy Dertilis of Red Rocket Coffee at today’s Small Business Network meetup at the Toronto Reference Library. They shared hard-won lessons from building a coffee shop business that now has three locations.

The small business network meetup at the Toronto Reference Library happens on the second Tuesday of every month. You can view my sketchnotes from past meetups:

• The Shy Entrepreneur (me) – April 2012
• Sal Sloan of Fetching! – March 2012
• Kristina Chau of notyouraverageparty – February 2012

View more sketchnotes, read my notes about business, or browse around my blog!

Here’s the text from the image to make it easier to search for:

redrocketcoffee.com
RED ROCKET COFFEE
Pamela MacDonald Liako Dertilis Billy Dertilis

Small Business Network Meetup
Toronto Reference Library
May 8, 2012
Notes by Sacha Chua, @sachac, LivingAnAwesomeLife.com

Make sure you have enough money to live for a year.

You always have to be “on”, even at the grocery store.

Be adaptable, but watch out for over-adapting. You can’t please everybody.

Book recommendations:
-Setting the table: the transforming power of hospitality in business
-The little black book of entrepreneurship

Be prepared to wear a lot of hats.

Take care of yourself. Give yourself time to recharge.

Soft opening: work out kinks

The smartest thing an entrepreneur can do is learn when to let go.

#1: Good relationships
clients suppliers neighbours…

Hire a Lawyer. Any kind of contract, any kind of lease

Organization is important!
Suppliers etc. make mistakes, bill you twice…

Reassess success.
Had to buy out partner. Have partnership agreement!

Dedicate time to schmooze.
Customers can become suppliers!
Building relationships with people who understand

Trust your instincts.
Build a team you can delegate to.

Knowing WHO to ask & WHEN
Made up recipes
Passion!

We don’t micromanage. We’re very very careful about hiring, and we let them run the show. We let the store develop its own personality.
self-employment benefits

You can view 2 comments or e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

Click on the images to view larger versions. I might redraw these sometime – I still have to get the hang of working with paper! =)

Building a Social Enterprise
Andrew Jenkins, Volterra

Like these? Check out my other sketchnotes, visual book notes/reviews, and visual metaphors.

Here’s the text from the sketchnotes to improve people’s ability to search for it:

Building a social enterprise

Building a Social Enterprise
Andrew Jenkins, Volterra
#torontob2b May 3, 2012

Historically:
Listen
competitive intelligence
pin points
needs
cocktail party
conversations we couldn’t overhear before

Message
Engage
Individual targeting
Reputation
Culture
Indium example
content contact cash
planking example

External to Internal
Training
examples
policy
-IBM
-Coca Cola
-Dell
social media university

adoption
can’t make me
adoption count me in

How does communication flow?

Influence

Some people: I can’t wait for you, so I’m going to set things up myself…
ragues

Q&A
-Resistors: Use peers, look for the bright spot.
It took 20 years for e-mail to be ubiquitous.

Who can’t gain from greater visibility? question
Social media: 10 years
RBC: 140 years

Notes by Sacha Chua, @sachac, LivingAnAwesomeLife.com

You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

Marketing Automation
Jeffrey Yee, Eloqua

Like these? Check out my other sketchnotes, visual book notes/reviews, and visual metaphors.

Here’s the text from the sketchnotes to improve people’s ability to search for it:

Marketing automation

Marketing Automation
Jeffrey Yee, Eloqua

leads small
list management
forms
scoring
analytics
events
challenge
-Too expensive
-Not fully used
-Not implemented correctly
-Did not address business needs

1. Focus
one thing! business need!
2. Identify
Look for what your top performers are already doing
3. Start small, then build for mass adoption
-Target the second-tier salespeople!
4. Wait patiently for the lift.
incremental improvement

Best practices from client side
Dun & Bradstreet
credit risk management sales & marketing supply risk management

1. Focus
Example
Retention trigger-based e-mail
one need
40.1% opens
13.4% click through
10% increase in retention rates
2. Identify before you automate
Focus group?
Study top performers
How are we achieving this today?
Can we automate and scale this?

Repurpose

Think linear, it’s easier that way

Get personal and add value
plaint text e-mail from sales, not marketing
3. Mass adoption (but start very small)
advocates get others on board

Look for the people who are close to their quotas:
Tier 2 segmenting your salespeople!

Have reps vet leads before adding to program

3rd party data
4. Wait patiently for the lift. Set expectations.
Ex results
-6 months
pipeline value *19%
# of yes 14%
average upsize 3%
ops won 25%

Budget 12+ months

Like low-hanging fruit
Scaling up what already works
Notes by Sacha Chua, @sachac, LivingAnAwesomeLife.com

You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.