The Death of Delegate Doodling:
REMEMBER Doodling? That creative thing we once did on the edges of our note-pad in the middle of a boring school class, Uni lecture or conference presentation? Our attention would wander from the teacher, lecturer or presenter’s monotone, we’d click our pen a few times before putting pen to paper and creating a swirling Da-Vinci-esque artwork.
I recently discovered some notes I’d taken from a conference I’d attended 15 years ago and I must admit I was impressed at how productive I’d been in the conference room! The notes themselves were dull and irrelevant (I still don’t know why I hung on to them?) but my doodles looked like they were in a professional, fresh-fromthe-shop Adult Colouring Book.
It was such a different world back then. Flowers, boxes, mazes, cartoon faces, arrows, cats, dogs, fish…..whatever and wherever our meandering minds would take us. Dare I use the new-age phrase du jour, but it was, back then, ‘mindfulness’ in action, writ large (or small) on the A4 pages on our laps.
But not anymore. Due to digital and mobile technology, these days we rarely get taxis, make old style phone calls, stay in hotels, listen to a CD (millennials, ask your parents), watch free to air TV or (frustrated parent alert) go outside and kick a ball.
And technology has now thrown the art (or lost art) of doodling on to the scrapheap of Uber-ised, disrupted behaviours.
Sad, but true - even something as simple, creative and soothing as doodling has been virtually rendered redundant by mobile phones. In 2017, if you find yourself sitting in a boring conference session, you simply, yet subtly (turn the screen brightness to low, keep the phone down below the seat in front of you, at lap level) start to flick through your emails, send a text or two, update Facebook or Tweet, Snap or Insta.
15 years ago, we had no choice but to doodle, there was nothing else to do if the speaker was boring us senseless. Yet now (sigh) delegates no longer doodle because technology has allowed us to simply get on with our lives. Doodling has been disrupted.
If you are looking for an MC for your next conference or a speaker/trainer on presentation skills or pitching skills, email andrew@lunch.com.au or visit his website at www.andrewklein.com.au.