This free online virtual event series is being organized by the Microsoft Reactor team in collaboration with Azure Advocates and the Lets Sketch Tech community. Join us and #VisualizeIT for yourself!

🎨 Visualize IT: Origin Story

The #VisualizeIT series is a free online series of workshops that we hope will inspire and motivate more technologists to embrace visual storytelling as a key skill for creative and inclusive communications.

The idea has been percolating for a while among us and this seemed like the perfect time to launch it as we all head into the holidays and think about our resolutions and goals for the new year.

This first series is a 6-part collaborative effort involving a number of talented and community-oriented folks in North America. Read on for more about what we hope to accomplish, and why this matters.

🌟 What is it?

You can read it as "Visualize it!" or "Visualize I-T" (IT being an acronym for Information Technology). At its core, it's about building your creative storytelling skills to complement your software development expertise.

We all know that storytelling is a powerful way to communicate complex ideas. Visual storytelling is about using imagery, colors, fonts and other visual aids to make complex tech concepts easier to comprehend, retain and recall.

The current sessions cover digital sketching (with Procreate) to creative journalling, tech doodling, sketching tech concepts and enhancing your public speaking. We also hope they provide an opportunity to meet and connect with other creative technologists, and build a sense of community around visual storytelling.

🤗 How can I join?

The series is being run as online workshop events happening once a week (on Saturdays) and hosted by Microsoft Reactor. The time was chosen to be friendly to audiences in all North America timezones.

Because the series launches before the holidays, we are running it in two parts - with 3 sessions in December and 3 in January. Each session features a different creative technologist to teach you a new skill or gives you a new perspective to build your storytelling toolkit.

Interested in attending? Just RSVP to the workshop of interest on the Microsoft Reactor meetup page below:

Don't forget to 👈🏽 bookmark this page or 👇🏽 subscribe to the comments to get notifications on updates to the series!

The Sessions

You can find all the recordings on the #VisualizeIT Playlist on YouTube. Or check out the individual talk posts (above) to see an embedded video for that session, along with attendee feedback.

👩🏽‍💻 Behind The Series

This series would not happen without the collaboration between various members of the LetsSketchTech community, Microsoft Developer Relations and Microsoft Reactor. Learn more about each below.

❶ Azure Advocates / Technology

@AzureAdvocates refers to the Cloud Advocacy organization within Microsoft Developer Relations. Our charter is to help every technologist on the planet succeed through community outreach, content creation and developer skilling and engagement at events worldwide.

We focus on multiple platforms including Azure (Cloud+AI), M365 (Productivity) and Power Platform (Low-Code Development).

Want to learn more? Follow our Azure publication right here on dev.to

Microsoft Azure Follow

Learn how to build and manage powerful applications using Microsoft Azure cloud services. Explore the documentation and samples, skill yourself up with tutorials and training. Any language. Any platform.

❷ Lets Sketch Tech / Community

Our community partner for this series is LetsSketchTech -- an initiative from Marlena Compton -- focusing on building a community of people who value sketching and the powerful role it plays in business and technical communications.

One key outcome here was the 2020 Lets Sketch Tech Conference. Many of the #VisualizeIT speakers are organizers of that conference, and we all met virtually there for the first time.

If you like their mission, follow them @letssketchtech or support them on Patreon.

You can also follow the Lets Sketch Tech organization here on dev.to

Let's Sketch Tech! Follow

Let's Sketch Tech! is an inclusive, online community focused on sketch-noting, graphic recording, visual thinking and visual storytelling of all things tech.

Microsoft Reactor / Events

Join Microsoft Reactor and learn new skills, meet peers and find career mentorship with other developers. Our mission is to Learn. Connect. Build. and we do this through virtual events that run globally, around the clock! Join us anytime, anywhere.

Check out our meetups and find your next skilling event!

The People!

Want to follow our amazing speakers and collaborators? You can find them here and on Twitter.

Speakers

• Ashton Rodenhiser | @mindseyeccf - Minds Eye Creative
• Brittney Braxton | @mintiiB - Website
• Denise Yu | @deniseyu21 - Blog
• Kaitlin Gu | @_gubean - Instagram
• Marlena Compton | @marlenac - AppearWorks
• Nitya Narasimhan | @nitya - Blog

Organizers

• Aaiman Amir | @aaiman_a - Microsoft Reactor
• Dionne Corey | @DCorey09 - Microsoft Reactor
• Nitya Narasimhan | @nitya - Azure Advocates

This free online virtual event series is being organized by the Microsoft Reactor team in collaboration with Azure Advocates the Lets Sketch Tech community.