dotMED The Creative Medical Conference

On Friday 12th February, I had the privilege to attend this unique medical conference.

Two years ago I had sat at Smock Alley Theater in  Dublin and done a bit of graphic recording of what I saw and heard. The whole thing was magical, a completely different and much better medical conference than anything I had attended before. Not only I had an amazing time but I earned myself an invitation to return and do it all over again this year. dotMED 2014

I drew some colorful cartoons of all the speakers/participants that became the cover of the program on the day (and it felt so good to see them in paper!!) and also the twitter avatar of some of them (thank you guys!).

And then I sat there trying to capture many of the amazing things these people were sharing with us, an eager audience. Thanks Leticia Ruiz for the great pic of me “working” (naaaah, no really working, just having a fantastic time!!)

The amount of memorable sentences and amazing presentations kept me on my toes all day but it was all worthy. There isn’t a better way to stay focused on a lecture than having a great speaker and wanting to immortalize most things he or she says.

And then of course, it was meeting and then listening to someone like Samuel Sham who has left a mark in any doctor who has read The House of God   for three decades. All the speakers were fantastic and so was the touching music of the violin player, Colm Mac Con Iomaire (a guy with an unpronounceable name for a Spaniard like me). Honestly, have you ever seen a fiddler in a medical conference….so good! It was great to relax for a bit and just do a quick doodle of him and then listen to the somehow sad story of each of his songs and the spirited  music itself.

Let me share with you the sketch notes I took from all these creative minds. But I’ll tell you something, listening to them all was a unique experience but sharing meals and chats with them was an opportunity to open the windows of my mind and let some fresh air in. I am ever so grateful to the organizers for their hospitality and generosity:

Here are some of the notes:

There were two speakers whose participation was particularly difficult to capture since they shared their own amazing visual work, a graphic novel and weekly comic in the Guardian by Ian Williams and the photographs by Leticia Ruiz. I did my best to grab some ideas…..

I left yet again with an invitation to return to Dublin for next dotMED conference. So hopefully I’ll come back and I hope it is all smoothly ran by the extremely kind and efficient Kerry O’Sullivan.

So there…..can we please have some more medical conferences like this?

I’ll see you next time!