Drawing DevOps with Ashton Rodenhiser

Matty talks with Ashton Rodenhiser, who draws graphic recordings of talks at many conferences, including devopsdays events, and runs Mind's Eye Creative. Matty says that in the devopsdays Chicago budget, the line item has become simply Ashton. The cold open is what the devopsdays Toronto organizers said to a cold email: "We don't really know what you're talking about, but it sounds kind of cool."

Graphic Recording and Graphic Facilitation

Ashton calls the conference work graphic recording: listening as an outsider, processing what people say, and outputting it as drawings and text. Graphic facilitation uses the same skills in a facilitated session such as strategic planning or brainstorming, where the graphic captures the collective voice of the room and not a single speaker. Ashton describes being "a fly on the wall."

How It Started

Ashton studied early childhood education, worked at a nonprofit family center, moved into family support work, and fell in love with facilitation, which has the thread of teaching, and "you don't actually have to know the information." A friend sent a one-day graphic facilitation course in 2013, which Ashton says was the perfect marriage of creativity and group process. Ashton applied the skills right away with a young adult group exploring pluralism, spent 2014 and 2015 playing with it on the side, and got a scholarship to a 2015 conference of the International Forum for Visual Practitioners in Austin, Texas. Ashton left inspired that others had figured out how to do it full-time, and officially started Mind's Eye Creative in August 2016, after what Ashton calls a dark launch.

Ashton says the work sells by being experienced, and got conferences by cold email. The fifth cold email went to the devopsdays Toronto organizers, who said they didn't know what it was but it sounded kind of cool. It was the first tech conference and the first job Ashton had to fly to, and Ashton watched DevOpsDays talks on the plane, worried about not understanding them. At that first event Ashton was in the green room watching a feed, so attendees didn't see it unfold, but in later years Ashton was out in front of people. Toronto was followed by Dallas and Columbus in 2017, and Chicago in 2018.

Drawing Without Context

Ashton says not knowing the industry can be a strength, since it lets Ashton hear the larger picture without the baggage of the industry, and aims to draw what was said without interpreting too much. Having some context now helps with drawing things like Kubernetes and avoiding misspelled words, and Ashton challenges themself to draw time five or six different ways so as not to repeat.

Ashton likes talks with a human element and appreciates community and collaboration themes, and feels a responsibility when speakers share vulnerabilities to represent them in a way they'll feel okay about. Ashton recalls a DevSecCon talk by someone who helps people with autism find technology jobs.

Facilitation Versus Recording

Matty notes that a recording preserves a moment in time, while a facilitated meeting's output is fluid. Ashton says graphic facilitation can be used whenever a group, small or large, is having a conversation, and usually works with a separate facilitator, since it's hard to hold the visual role and make sure people feel safe and heard. Matty agrees with Ron Swanson that you shouldn't "half-ass 2 jobs, whole-ass one." Ashton says drawing in a session lets people see they're heard, telling of a group unhappy to be there that Ashton won over by hiding a little anchor in the drawing after overhearing a side joke. It's also a gentle way to tell people their point has been captured and the group can move on, and shows connections: in a session for a town's energy project, most of the conversation led back to one topic, which gave the town direction. Matty points out notes are linear and hide connections across pages, and Ashton says facilitation drawings are messier, but "we have to get through the draft."

Tricks for Mistakes

Matty says the game Drawful has no erase button, and Ashton has practice with that. On paper, Ashton has been at it long enough to judge lettering and drawing size against a talk's time, roughly so much space per five minutes, though speakers may spend 20 minutes on the first of five points, so Ashton sends out "invisible questions" about where the speaker will go next. Ashton channels Bob Ross and happy little accidents, and carries white mailing labels in different sizes to cover mistakes, since they photograph invisibly and can be written over. If Ashton can't spell something, Ashton leaves a blank and comes back, and recalls misspelling "health" three times during a mental health event. Digital has made erasing possible over the past year.

What Ashton Learned About DevOps

Ashton says what stands out is how tight-knit the community is, and that Ashton hangs out on Twitter because that's where the community is. As an outsider to technology, Ashton noticed how fast things change: the first Kubernetes talk Ashton drew was in 2018 and it was a new idea, and now "if you don't use it, you're a loser." Ashton says the last year was all observability, SLOs, SLIs and SRE, and jokes that buzzword bingo would be a win.

Drawing to Think

Ashton's advice to people who say they're bad at drawing is to try, reframing drawing as "a thinking and an understanding and an idea tool," not something for a gallery, so it's fine if it looks horrible. The second tip is to turn plain white paper on its side, because our brains think spatially and not in top-down lines, and with nowhere obvious to start you choose where to put your first mark and make better connections. Ashton has a free 30-page ebook on the visual communication method, linked in the existing notes, and is on Twitter as Mind's Eye CCF, for Creative Consulting and Facilitation.

(episode art by Ashton Rodenhiser)

• Ashton’s ignite at devopsdays Texas
• Mike Tozer's talk at DevSecCon
• Visual Communication Method - ebook by Ashton