Papercamp London– Sketchnotes and a mini-workshop

I’ve been to many conferences. And sometimes, I do feel the conference fatigue. Similar topics, similar talks, things you’ve heard a few times before, too many people to get to know them all and too little time to really connect with any one in particular.

That’s why I’ve always loved niche conferences – those smaller, shorter, cheaper and slightly off-mainstream topic conferences that bring together a smaller group of people in a very simple non-flashy setting to hear about interests and stories –often very personal–  that aren’t relevant to boosting your efficiency or streamline your job performance.

When I was living in London between 2008 and 2014 there were a few of these events around – conferences like ‘Playful’, ‘Boring’, ‘This happened’ or ‘The Story’ that I enjoyed a lot attending. 

Papercamp is exactly one of those beautiful passion-driven nice conferences, organised by Alexandra Deschamp-Sonsino and centred around the topic of –you might have guessed– paper in all its forms – physical, digital, virtual, theoretical or practical.

I met Alex a few years back when we were both speaking at Beyond Tellerrand conference and we had a long interesting conversation during the speakers dinner. Lucky for me, Alex remembered that conversation as well and invited me to speak at this year’s edition of Papercamp.

To complement the flow of 20 minute talks we decided that I would do a little 60 min hands-on session, getting everybody to draw and play together on paper. We did two improvisational sketching exercises together and turned the results into mini-zines to take home (and hopefully try out with friends, family, colleagues or anyone who enjoys making playing with pens on paper).

Below are a few images of the zines I created to demo the exercises.

Besides speaking myself, I was thrilled to listen to what the other speakers had to share. The talks reached from collage to origami, from paper-based teaching supports to tech-based design projects and each of them had new and inspiring insights that made my brain tingle.

I took some very chill loose sketchnotes – analogue this time and more with the spirit of playing on my piece of paper rather than frantically capturing every little detail.

Thank you Alex for a wonderful day and excuse to visit London again. A big thanks as well to all the speakers Kaye Symington, Freya Gowrley, Ben Hughes, Alistaire Somerville, Adrian Westaway and Markus Ho for the inspiring talks.

And thank you to my friend Jason for taking the time for a sunny lunch-and-stroll the day before the conference and to my friend Amanda for hosting me, catching-up and skating together for a couple of days after the conference. It was a beautiful little trip.