The Tampa Bay Technology Forum (TBTF) is an organization that unites the region’s tech leaders promoting collaboration and innovation. On September 7, TBTF held an event at the Hilton in Downtown St. Petersburg. This event included 16 “lightning talks” featuring Tampa Bay’s top thought leaders, and services that impact the world of business.

Many of speakers were leaders of various national and global companies that are here in Tampa Bay. These businesses are hiring and developing within the region. The importance of this event revolves around listening to local leaders in the industry while highlighting their expertise. In order to remain competitive and to create a different approach when bringing products to service, technology leaders must work with one another and remain agile.

One of the partners of this event was RIDG: Royal Innovation Design Group. RIDG focuses on design thinking and innovation processes to help companies shape, visualize and tell transformative stories driving the necessary change to grow people and profits. At the TBTF event, RIDG provided visual facilitation and sketchnoting. This graphic recording is the practice of taking visual notes during a meeting or event. The live visual note taking increases retention and understanding while decreasing boredom and daydreaming. During each “lightning talk”, graphic recorders from RIDG captured the main concepts of each talk through text and imagery.

By partnering with RIDG, TBTF wanted to tell the technology story of Tampa Bay. Because some individuals learn visually rather than verbally, RIDG succinctly conveyed the main ideas discussed by the 16 storytellers through graphic recording. The concepts were amplified by RIDG’s graphic recordings, which acted as an additional microphone. As a result of the limited space within the hotel, TBTF used RIDG to leverage its services in order to express the technology story throughout the Tampa Bay region. Hopefully with RIDG’s work, TBTF will expand its audience-base in order to engage and inspire more individuals within the region to join the movement.

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