I had a surprise client turn into a favorite client recently, namely ViaTech Global Publishing. Kurt Heusner, the CMO, tracked me down like many of my clients – through the semantic web – and together we planned a really successful session for 75 of their top team members. I met with Kurt before Gamestorming was published and, because our planning continued after the book was released, we had the opportunity to design the 2.5-day meeting specifically around the participatory work in the book. We used techniques like The 5 Whys, The Blind Side, and Empathy Mapping and I gave the group a short talk on Best Practices for Presentations (you can click on the image above to see the five practices I chose). At the end of the retreat each team gave a storyboarded presentation as a sales pitch for ViaTech and the visual thinking the group did the two days prior was intensive. Kurt and I both got fantastic feedback from the employees (the visual and participatory work was, for me, almost magical to witness) and everyone got a copy of Gamestorming. I’m telling you, folks, if you really do want problem-solving and innovation to occur, you’ll do no harm to dive into visual thinking meeting techniques. They give you, as I’ve witnessed dozens and dozens of times, productivity on steroids. See David Sibbet’s recent book, Visual Meetings, for more proof positive. Until next time, game on.