Gavin Blake is Nailing It

A thoughtful person knows that a picture tells 1000 words and a wise person knowing this chooses their pictures carefully.

This is what Gavin Blake, the subject of this weeks ‘Nailing It’ does.

Gavin is an expert at condensing ideas, systems, procedures and conversations into a graphic anyone can understand at a glance.  Check out his business FeverPicture.com.au .

When your job is to make audible information visual you have to have a special brain that switches between listening, digesting and depicting. It’s a skill most of us don’t have.

Too much or too little information the result is not representative of the message. Just the right mix and the result is amazing.  Check out his work with Collaborative Consumption advocate and guru Rachel Botsman.

Gavin provides his services to big companies like Google, Unilever, PwC and education institutions like the Australian National University.

Gavin is most famous for graphic facilitation at TED in the US and TEDx in Sydney, Dubai, Canberra, London, Dubbo and many more – in fact, he has the world record for most graphic facilitations.

What Gavin does is help speakers who have these mind-blowing ideas communicate better.  What he does is cool, but who he is, is even cooler.

He’s a great friend to many, father of two and husband of one.

Few people understand innovation the way Gavin does – having facilitated innovation from the best in the world.

Gavin subscribes to the Gladwell “10000 hours of mastery” philosophy that basically says focus on your strengths and unique qualities and the world opens up.  He is an embodiment of this belief.  This is why talented cartoonists and such line up to learn from him.

On top of this he knows how to build customer relationships with humans.

An example of this might be when he turned up at the hospital after my brother suffered a heart attack. He said with a laugh “I hear you need a heart starter” and he threw on the table the latest issue of Boars and Babes Shooting Magazine.

This created laughter amongst my waiting family who were mostly concerned with grave thoughts of “what if…”. Giving us a chance to laugh at bikini clad women atop 100kg dead pigs was the perfect “break-in-the-vibe” that no well meaning phone conversation would have come close to achieving.

What made this moment equally special was that we had only 12-months earlier got to know Gavin, when my brother and I put on TEDxDubbo.

Gavin had provided his services at cost to our little TEDx event in Taronga Zoo (Dubbo).  We got the opportunity of knowing Gavin that bit better when he missed his plane the day after the event. He says it was because he didn’t wake up in time but I suspect it was just so we could all hang out more.

Whatever the reason I’m eternally grateful for him missing that plane.

It’s not just because he makes me laugh, has a great brain, an amazing talent, awesome personality or charitable heart.

It’s because he is Nailing It with such fun and genuine enthusiasm. Thanks Gavin for being such a humble yet inspirational person that I look up to.

Photo Credits for this article go to the fantastic Natalie Hunfalvay more of here work can be found here http://www.nataliehunfalvay.com/