Have you ever tried sketchnoting? It’s a practice that combines note-taking and doodling to produce a piece of content that’s fun, whimsical, and also informative and easy to understand.

“Twelve Factor Applications”, a sketchnote I created in 2018.

“Twelve Factor Applications”, a sketchnote I created in 2018.

This year, I’m kicking off a new project: sketchnoting workshops for teams! If you’re looking for a memorable, creative, and highly interactive activity to help your team bond, or if you want to improve your skills of visual explanation, look no further.

To get an idea of what my workshops are like, check out…

  • my deck that I used to run a workshop for PearConf and Write/Speak/Code in 2019
  • another deck that I made to hold virtual workshops during the early 2020 lockdowns
  • the recording of a virtual workshop I ran for Let’s Sketch Tech Online, which I co-organized with Marlena Compton and Kaitlin Gu in April 2020

I’ve also run variations of this workshop for Women Who Code, GitHub Campus, and a few other meetups and conferences.

Who is this workshop for?

This workshop is open to all disciplines, all industries, and all ages. The only requirement for participants is that they have an internet connection, as the content delivery will take place online, on Zoom.

This is geared towards teams that work together, but do reach out if you’re looking to book for a bunch of friends, a meetup group, a university club, a birdwatching society, or anything in between!

If you’re based in the Greater Toronto Area, I have some capacity to run in-person workshops - reach out for details.

No prior art experience whatsoever is required — I specifically designed this workshop for people who do not self-identify as artists or even “artsy”. Folks with art experience are also welcome, of course!

Workshop Length & Format

The most basic workshop, with no modifications, is about 1 hour in length.

I can modify the length of the workshop based on your needs. The minimum workshop length is 1 hour, and I can extend up to 3 hours in a single day (with breaks, of course). I can also offer a series of workshops, spread over a few weeks.

I recommend booking 90 minutes or 2 hours if you only have time for a one-off workshop, to allow for a more relaxed pace and more time for customized content.

I will always try to tweak existing content to be more related to the subject matter that your team works on. For example, let’s say you work on a hosted Git-based code sharing platform — how fun would it be to challenge your teammates to illustrate a “merge conflict”?

Outcomes

By the end of the workshop, participants will have at least one artifact: a small sketchnote related to their work. For examples from past workshops, check what folks have shared under #SketchTogether! Your team will also feel more confident about using visuals to supplement technical concepts at work, and perhaps you’ll start seeing tiny anthropomorphized computer doodles in unexpected places!

One thing is for sure: we’re not going to take ourselves too seriously, and we’re going to have a ton of fun.

I will also send you the custom deck I’ve created for your team’s workshop, as well as any supplemental doodles I created along the way.

Rates

My 2023 base rates are:

  • $250/hour for a group of up to 10 participants
  • $25/hour for each additional person beyond 10, to a cap of..
  • $500/hour for a group of up to 25 participants

For groups larger than 25, please contact me directly for group rates.

If your company is based outside of the US, Canada, or western Europe, I know this can be a lot, so please reach out to me and we’ll figure out a fair rate.

For an additional consulting fee, I can design new course content that’s tailored specifically to your business domain.

I’m interested! What’s next?

Email me at hi@deniseyu.io. Tell me a bit about…

  • Your organization
  • The size of your team
  • When you’d like to have your workshop

I am based in EST, but I can run workshops for teams as far east as GMT+1 and as far west as the North American west coast.

I will schedule an initial 15 minute call with you, to learn more about you and your team, and to get ahead of any potential logistics issues.

We’ll finalize the workshop date, and I’ll send you a short blurb about the workshop that you can share with your team ahead of time. Then we get ready to rock and roll!

It's always DNS

About Denise

If you haven’t met me before, I’m a software engineer and engineering manager who’s passionate about breaking down barriers within software engineering. I’ve been doodling and creating art since I was a kid, and for the last five years, I’ve been using my art skills to infuse new life into the process of explaining technical concepts, like The 8 Fallacies of Distributed Computing, The 4 Golden Signals of Monitoring, Linux filesystem capabilities, and many more. I firmly believe that there’s always room for whimsy when you’re communicating and teaching, no matter how dry the subject matter! You can find me, as well as my art, on the internet at deniseyu.io.