I spent Friday and Saturday at the 21st Annual Storyboarding Conference hosted by Jim Norman here in Phoenix. Great conference. Active group discussions, good people, variety of interests... My kind of thing.
This conference wasn't on the kind of storyboarding where you draw boxes and draft pictures of a presentation or movie. This is the storyboarding that Walt Disney invented years ago to allow a kind of organization and methodology for brainstorming and problem solving. The person facilitating the storyboarding session helps the group define the problem and then helps them find a solution.
As most people do it, storyboarding is done with flipcharts and note cards. The note cards are pinned to a story board and used to help move the team through the process of deciding what to do and how to do it. I presented Saturday on OneNote. Kind of an introduction to OneNote via a notebook template I am working on based on Ken Bratz' ideas and class. (Ken Bratz runs LR&C , a storyboarding and leadership training company.)
In 20 minutes, I showed the group how to come up to speed on OneNote 2007. We set up Ken's laptop on one projector and mine on another. Ken had OneNote and had heard a lot about it, but had never used it. The purpose of the 20 minute speech was to show that in 20 minutes I could get Ken using OneNote to help his storyboarding.
I started with an open OneNote a notebook that contained sections based on the brainstorming process. I showed how the notebooks, sections, pages and notes went together. I added a couple of quick notes to one of the pages, I talked about the ability to do collaboration, I talked about the general features of the product. Then I shocked them...
I pulled out the USB drive attached to my computer and handed it to Ken and asked him to plug it into one of his USB ports. I surprised them by saying that my notebook wasn't stored on my hard drive, but on that USB drive. I then proceeded to show more of what OneNote could do... Specifically a quick introduction to the audio recording.
By this time, Ken was ready for his lesson. I had him open OneNote, then I had him open the notebook on the USB drive. The conference attendees watched as Ken was able to navigate through the notebook, make some changes, and learn the basics of the tool. (The learning was done via him asking "How would I?" and then being guided through the process.)
By now, the attendees realized that I had never saved my work. The question was asked: How did he get the changes I had made? I explained the fact that OneNote saves your work constantly without interfering with what you are doing. People were starting to get it.
If they hadn't already been sold, the next two steps did it. I had Ken close OneNote and remove the USB drive. I re-inserted it into my USB port and they watched me bring up the sync box in OneNote. Imagine their shock to see that before I could even get the dialog open to sync, OneNote had already done the syncing and I had Ken's notes. Now that both notes were merged together, I passed the drive back to him and he did the same sync.
That was the end of the planned demonstration. I think I sold everyone in the room on OneNote. Later in the day, a couple of us set up a live sharing session in OneNote across the facility's network. I'll talk about that more in a future post. If you want to see a live demonstration of OneNote and how it can help you save time and effort, contact MVP Seminars for your own personalized coaching session.
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