Marcel van Hove
Co-Founder Visual Friends
Co-Founder Visual Friends
To understand what bikablo® means we need to go back almost 10 years. When a company — actually a consultancy from Cologne stated their first product and this company was called, it’s still around, of course, Kommunikationslotsen, it’s quite hard to pronounce I know. It means actually communication pilot.
So it’s a consultancy that works on a holistically approach to help companies to change, to go through change phases. The Kommunikationslotsen is one of the first companies in Germany who actually started with visual facilitation and they created a product which is like a pad of picture cards.
Let’s write that down. So they built this product which was like a visual dictionary and it was basically a collection of picture cards. Those picture cards were mounted together like you see here to a block. Have a look.
1st Bikablo Book
Bestselling original visual dictionary is a concise easy-to-use reference book that will guide you into the world of visual facilitation with hundreds of brilliant picture symbols. So it looks like this and you can still order it, and it’s still very valid because pictures don’t change so much. Like, you have a good dictionary in there. Right, and if you see that picture card pad, if we underline the first two letters here you would come up with a funny English term, it would be pi-ca-pa.
Okay, but the words in German they start with bild for pictures and cards we have karte and for pad we have the word block, which is similar to an English word.
So picture card block was actually here the first two letters, and that’s how the word bikablo® came up as the brand based on the first product they created. Right, but today bikablo® is much more than just this one visual dictionary.
Just recently we opened up the bikablo® academy, which is the worldwide head organisation for the bikablo® trainings. The bikablo® academy provides a training program which is quite different to many others.
We provide a very systematical approach to drawing. So you don’t need to draw a straight line to come to the training. We actually teach you how to hold the pen, how to draw a straight line without a ruler and just get this out of the pen. First thing in the morning we do together. All right. So let’s capture that.
We provide a systematical approach to drawing, and if you like, there is an early bird available and you can join in either in Sydney or Melbourne. There is London coming up and everywhere in the German-speaking areas as well.
The article was written by Natalia Tsygankova. Natalia has always loved words and talking to people. She has put that passion to good use and has been sharing people’s stories in the community radio, TV and print media for the last 10 years. Natalia is also a big fan of true storytelling events and regularly volunteers at the most famous one – The Moth, interviewing the winner. You can hear her own story of moving to Australia from Russia in 1999 here. Natalia believes that everyone has a story – So what’s yours? Contact her today to share your story.
