From 31 July to 2 August 2026, EVP and ISC came together in Verona for Beyond Visuals. This event in short: if the t-shirts weren’t already sweaty enough from the heat, the hugs made sure of it 😉
The merge: Mike and Maaike
Mike Rohde (ISC) and Maaike Bosboom (EVP) opened the event by setting the scene for both communities in one breath: “we are bringing two campfires together this weekend”. That framing turned out to be the whole story of the weekend. Because the more people talked, the clearer it became: EVP and ISC have more in common than anyone expected. Facilitators, recorders, sketchnoters, scientists, teachers, professors, experts from every corner of a field none of us can quite put a fence around. And from every corner of the world, too, not just Europe. One conversation after another turned into the same quiet realisation: we get each other.
In the barcamp we find each other
That realisation didn’t stay theoretical. It showed up in the sessions. Axelle’s talk on how she works with people in remote parts of the world to empower them stayed with more than one person in the room. Some picked up concrete approaches to take home, others were quietly nudged to rethink where they currently stand in their own practice. Ben’s FLARE session landed the same way: the kind of session people were still talking about days later, already planning to bring it into their own teams. And somewhere in an EVP podcast conversation, a newer voice in the field discovered that sketchnoting, in the ISC world, is often something deeply personal where visual recording, in the EVP world, is the same technique but bigger and therefor playing with the group dynamics. Both not performance, but process.
Beyond Visuals is also Italian coffee
But if you asked around, the sessions weren’t even the main event. The real gold happened in between them. In the hallway conversations. In the moments where total strangers found out they had enough in common, and enough differences, to talk for hours. That’s where lifelong friendships get their first five minutes. Backstage told the same story from another angle: constant last-minute changes, improvisation in real time, and a team that trusted each other enough to make it work without needing to say much at all. Unspoken confidence, on stage and off.
And then there was the small detail that says more than any headline could: not a single no-show. Everyone who signed up, showed up. Anyone who’s organised an event knows exactly how rare that is.
Saying goodbye needs a lot of hugs
So if you missed Verona, here’s what you missed. You missed the rich, tangled history of two communities discovering how closely their roots grow together. You missed a city that was beautiful and brutally hot in equal measure. You missed strangers becoming friends over coffee between sessions. And you missed a lot of sweaty, real, well-earned hugs.
Verona wasn’t just another live event. It was, again, one big community hug and once you’ve felt that in a room, you don’t forget it.
See you at the next one. 🧡
Pictures taken by the EVP team on site and Angela Soardo.