Beyond Visuals began with a wish that quickly became a decision. It was July 2025, and I was in Birmingham for the 8th International Sketchnote Community event. Exactly ten years earlier, I had attended my first international gathering for visual practitioners in Rome, when the two communities I will talk about in this article were still taking shape. In Birmingham, I felt ready to pick up the baton and bring the event to Italy ten years later: there had been around ten of us in Rome; at Beyond Visuals, there were 110.
I wanted to add another challenge, one that would make the project even more ambitious: bringing two international communities together at the same event for the first time, European Visual Practitioners (EVP) and the International Sketchnote Community (ISC).
In this article, I share what I learnt from the experience, what I would do again and what I would do differently. If you organise learning events or create opportunities for peer-to-peer knowledge exchange, some of the reflections and approaches we tested at Beyond Visuals may be useful to you.
The challenge of bringing two international communities together
While queuing for lunch in Birmingham, I realised that belonging to both communities put me in a rather unusual position: I could create an opportunity for these two groups of visual facilitators, graphic recorders and sketchnoters to meet in Italy. A year later, with Claudio Nichele immediately stepping forward as co-organiser and with the generous contribution of our volunteers, that idea had become Beyond Visuals: 110 participants from 20 countries, bringing different experiences, cultures and ways of relating to both their profession and their community.
With my background in social psychology, I was also interested in seeing how the identities of the two groups would find their place within the shared space of Beyond Visuals and seeing what might happen if the conditions were created for skills and perspectives to mix.
Henri Tajfel and John Turner’s Social Identity Theory shows how part of our sense of who we are derives from the social groups to which we feel we belong. Over time, something deeper can become attached to a professional role, as happened here: participants arrived with an existing sense of belonging to their own community and belonging carries relationships, memories, language, rituals and a shared history, all of which make a group psychologically meaningful and can preserve the boundary between ingroup and outgroup even when the groups have much in common. For this reason, we also tried to create the beginnings of a shared story through shared experiences: the informal time spent sitting around a table during coffee breaks, a tour of Verona, dinner overlooking the Arena and even an introduction to Italian artisan gelato through ingredients rooted in different regions, from raspberries from Lessinia (Veneto) to pistachios from Bronte (Sicily) and hazelnuts from the Langhe ( Piemonte).
Beyond Visuals set out to create a third space in which people could remain part of EVP or ISC while also recognising themselves as part of something new. This was one of the reasons for choosing a BarCamp format, in which participants help shape the programme and become active contributors to what happens.
At the end of the three days, something happened that I found particularly interesting. When the 2027 EVP and ISC events were announced separately, some participants described a sense of discontinuity: after three days in which the boundary between the two communities seemed to have gradually become less important, seeing them presented once again as two separate entities came as a surprise. Personally, I did not expect a shift towards a new joint event as early as 2027. Creating an experience that brings two communities together takes time, mutual understanding, empathy, diplomacy, constant problem-solving and careful design that respects differences between groups. Beyond Visuals was, after all, an experiment: perhaps it planted a seed, but seeds need time and receptive ground before we can see whether, and in what form, they will grow.
That is precisely why I found that reaction of surprise one of the most interesting and rewarding signs of the whole experience: for some people, a new sense of “we” had already begun to emerge.
From this point on, I would also like to bring some of the words participants spontaneously shared after Beyond Visuals into the story. I am keeping them anonymous, so that their voices can sit alongside mine and offer an inside view of how the experience was lived.
“When I boarded my flight on Thursday, I didn’t know any visual practitioners. Now I have a whole community.”
“That is what this community does. Not convincing each other, but borrowing each other’s way of seeing and taking something better home because of it.”
“It was absolutely amazing to meet both old and new friends. Hugging my EVP and IFVP friends, also sharing smiles and deep thoughts with the ISC community meant the world to me.”
“I had a great time connecting with so many people from different professional backgrounds and nationalities. It’s what makes this community so important and relevant at this time in history.”
“What unites all these different people is curiosity, creativity, openness and a sense of humour.”
“I’m so grateful for the kindness, the fantastic organisation and for making everything feel very seamless in this wild wild heatwave!”
From BarCamp to BarCamp Plus: rethinking the format
The starting point was the BarCamp format, an unconference in which a substantial part of the programme is created directly by participants. Anyone who wants to share a skill, propose a topic or open a discussion pitches their idea, and the sessions take shape from the proposals that emerge.
I did, however, want to experiment with something more, a kind of “BarCamp Plus”. Having attended so many unconferences over the past 15 years, I had repeatedly felt that something was missing, and at Beyond Visuals we decided to respond to that need through two innovations.
The first concerned the time intentionally set aside for relationships and networking; the second was designed to rethink what happens after the sessions, using Cross-Pollination and Harvesting to recirculate the knowledge generated across the workshops and activate a process of collective intelligence.
The next two sections explore these innovations in more detail: what they involved, what worked well and what received more critical feedback.
Before that, I would like to share some of the comments participants spontaneously posted on social media or sent to me privately shortly after the event.
“The participants created the programme themselves. Different sessions, different facilitators, very different ways of doing things.”
“…but then people started filling the grid. Within an hour it was full, within two it had been rewritten more times than I could keep track of, and what came out the other end was a programme I could never have designed.”
“The BarCamp format proved its strength once again, showing that collaboration and knowledge sharing can lead to concrete results.”
“I realised how much I had also been watching how people facilitated and how a space was created where people felt safe to participate.”
Professional networking: when connections become part of the experience
If 110 professionals from 20 countries, belonging to two communities that had previously organised their gatherings separately, come together in one place, then the relationships between people become part of the experience itself. Space was therefore deliberately protected for conversations, encounters and exchanges that no programme could have planned in advance.
The final survey revealed one of the most interesting findings precisely on this point. 63.4% of respondents rated the balance between structured sessions and networking as Good or Excellent, while 36.6% rated it Fair or Poor. Responses were less consistent here than in the overall evaluation: 85.4% rated the overall experience Good or Excellent, while 90.2% said they were moderately or very likely to recommend Beyond Visuals to a colleague.
The qualitative responses help explain this difference. For some participants, particularly given the financial cost and travel involved in attending an international event, value was easier to identify in workshops, keynotes, masterclasses and structured professional content. For others, networking represented a substantial part of the value: finally meeting someone they had wanted to speak to for a long time, comparing professional practices, exchanging knowledge or building relationships that might lead to future collaborations.
This led me to a question: can we assume that 110 people from 20 countries share the same idea of what it means to “make good use of time”?
In “The Culture Map” book, Erin Meyer shows how different cultures can place different degrees of importance on building professional relationships. Michael Eraut’s work on informal learning at work also highlights how much professional development takes place through experience and interaction with other people. In a workshop, it is easy to recognise that we are gaining new knowledge; over a coffee break, we might discuss a professional problem with a colleague and come away with highly contextualised insight without ever describing it as a “learning session”.
In my opinion, this was one of the most interesting lessons to emerge from the experience: structured learning is easier to recognise than knowledge acquired informally. Assuming that the value of the latter would be equally obvious to everyone created some distance between the expectations of certain participants and the design of the event.
The same agenda generated different experiences, both of which are worth listening to:
“Bring back the keynote speakers. As an introvert, I cannot interact all the time. I want to learn something and be inspired. This is where the keynote speakers come in. We can just lean back and get awed :-)”
“Although networking and meeting people is important, perhaps we can wonder if it’s possible to offer 2 pathways … A. Schedule as is. B. A more structured schedule for those who want to engage and go deeper together.”
“Networking and having breaks is important, however this time I had a feeling of having sessions between the breaks rather than having breaks between the sessions.”
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“It was an extraordinary experience for me. I think the last time I felt part of such an international community was during my Erasmus semester.”
“I certainly didn’t expect to reap such a rich harvest of human connections and discoveries.”
“If I had to sum up the event in one sentence, it would go something like this: strength is in the community and I’m so glad to be a part of it.”
“It was truly an amazing experience, and I am very grateful that I had the opportunity to be part of Beyond Visuals. The journey to Verona was absolutely worth it, and I met so many inspiring people along the way.”
“I’ve met some amazing people and although still evolving my visual practice, I very much felt like a part of the wider community.”
“I returned home with a heart full of gratitude, positive energy and new friends.”
“I’m coming back home with fresh energy, new ideas, and—perhaps most importantly—valuable connections with inspiring people who share a passion for visual thinking.”
Cross-Pollination and Harvesting: activating collective intelligence
The second innovation addressed an inherent limitation of the BarCamp format, one that becomes particularly apparent when the programme is working well: the more interesting sessions are running at the same time, the more knowledge each participant inevitably has to miss. At Beyond Visuals, eight sessions ran in parallel in the morning and another eight in the afternoon. Having attended many similar events across Europe over the past 15 years, I have often experienced that same feeling of missing out when choosing one workshop from many appealing alternatives. Participants often experience a real sense of FOMO when faced with those choices.
Cross-Pollination and Harvesting, both introduced on the final day, were designed in response to this.
During Cross-Pollination, the outputs from the workshops were displayed and participants were invited to move between them, gathering in small groups around the sessions they wanted to learn more about. Those who had attended a particular workshop could share it with people who had chosen another one, passing on content, questions and insights. In effect, a conversation that would normally happen by chance over coffee — “Which workshop did you go to? What did you do?” — became an intentional part of the programme.
Harvesting took this one step further. While Cross-Pollination recirculated what had already been produced, Harvesting invited participants to use their experiences from the previous days as material for creating something new. The areas for reflection explored what was emerging in the profession, hybrid intelligence, innovative ideas, business opportunities, how we care for one another within and beyond the community, and the knowledge we would need to develop in the future.
From the perspective of Organisational Psychology and skills development within organisations, this step is particularly interesting because experience alone does not guarantee learning. For an experience to become meaningful, it needs to be processed, connected with what we already know and turned into meaning. When that process happens collectively, different interpretations can meet and generate an understanding that no individual participant held at the outset. This is where collective intelligence comes into play.
“This made me realise how much can happen when a big part of an event is not decided beforehand.”
“In the conversations, people brought up perspectives that might otherwise never have been put into words. People shared unfinished thoughts and work.”
“No ready-made answers. No predetermined outcomes. Just enough structure to allow people to explore and develop ideas and thoughts in their own ways.”
“What might happen if you leave more room for the participants to surprise you?”
“I went to Verona mainly to meet my tribe. Somehow, I ended up learning far more about facilitation than I could have ever dreamed.”
Beyond Visuals: what made BarCamp Plus work
The data show an overall positive evaluation of the experience. 85.4% rated Beyond Visuals Good or Excellent, and 90.2% said they were moderately or very likely to recommend it to a colleague. Even more interesting, given the aim of connecting people and communities, is the result on new connections: 92.7% said the event helped them build new connections Moderately or Very much.
“No judgement, but plenty of appreciation, laughter, joy and curiosity.”
“I certainly didn’t expect to reap such a rich harvest of human connections and discoveries.”
Precisely because the overall results were positive, the less favourable feedback becomes particularly useful. Some participants would have preferred more workshops, more keynotes and a greater amount of structured content; others found the intensity of the networking demanding and would have appreciated moments when they could simply sit, listen and recharge.
This reveals an important psychosocial consideration: the same design feature can create value for some people while representing a cost for others. A highly interactive event supports relationships, exchange and informal learning, while also requiring considerable cognitive and social energy. More structured moments can therefore give participants a way to regulate the intensity of their social engagement.
The design question then becomes: how can we create an environment in which different forms of value and different ways of participating can coexist?
If I were to invest the considerable energy required for a project of this scale again, I would focus on three areas:
- making the rationale for unstructured sharing time more explicit from the outset;
- offering, for a limited part of the programme, a choice between informal space and formal learning;
- expanding Cross-Pollination and Harvesting, which showed particularly interesting potential.
What Beyond Visuals can teach organisations
Organisations want to keep innovation and experimentation alive because both can drive change, yet people are often asked to innovate while being given very little room for error.
The trade-off is clear: the more certainty we demand about the outcome in advance, the less room we leave for experimentation; the more willing we are to experiment, the more capable we need to be of observing what happens and learning quickly from the consequences of our choices.
On a much smaller scale, Beyond Visuals was exactly this kind of process for me. We formulated hypotheses, adapted an established format, observed people’s responses and collected data. Some choices worked as expected, others produced effects we had not anticipated, and some would now benefit from a different design.
The same principle applies to anyone designing a learning experience or peer-to-peer knowledge exchange in an organisation, perhaps for an intercultural group of a hundred people. If the objective is to transfer technical information, a highly structured programme may be efficient. When the objective also includes future collaboration, the circulation of expertise and mutual learning, relationship-building time becomes part of the strategic value of the meeting and needs to be calibrated according to culture, expectations, group composition and different ways of participating.
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This retrospective grew out of a desire to make sense of the feedback and clarify what I had learnt, to make those insights available to anyone who might find them useful.
I am deeply grateful to all the participants. Without their presence, contribution, energy and warmth, Beyond Visuals would have remained little more than a programme sketched out during a lunch break in Birmingham in July 2025. Thank you for travelling all the way to Verona and for putting your trust in an event that meant investing time, money and energy, and, for some, making a very long journey. Above all, thank you for sharing your techniques and perspectives so generously, turning a project on paper into an experience I will remember for a long time.
A little gift from Verona: download the 96 Icon Cards
Beyond Visuals also explored Visual Thinking in three dimensions. We created metaphorical objects using paper, so I thought I’d leave you with something to take away from Verona. If you were at Beyond Visuals, consider it a little souvenir of the experience; if you weren’t there, all the more reason to take a little piece of that experience home with you.
Download the 96 Icon Cards, the first free Visual Psychology resource, and use them to facilitate reflection and conversation in your workshops.
https://www.visualpsychology.it/en/icon-cards/