DevLearn 2014 once again lived up to the Elearning Guild hosting the leading conference and expo in the industry. This was my fourth consecutive year attending DevLearn. While I could write a long post on the experience, this post is about this year’s keynote speaker, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Dr. Tyson is arguably the most brilliant mind living today where one would be easily intimidated. Yet he’s a very a dynamic and entertaining speaker with a very open and approachable personality. I had been looking forward to seeing and hearing him speak for months leading up to the conference with hopes of meeting him if not for a brief autograph. What happened that day blew my mind!

Those of you that know me know that I like to draw. I’ve been sketchnoting for many many years but it never occurred to me that sketchnotting would become the trend it is today in sketching conference talks. While I may be able to whip up a drawing fairly quick, I am by far as talented as most sketchnoters and still struggle with structure and hierarchy. I didn’t care. I just wanted to say I had the opportunity to sit in and sketchnote a keynote talk by *the* Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Here it is:

It gets better…

I was invited to lunch to visit and ask Dr. Tyson questions after the keynote with 30 of my colleagues. During lunch several colleagues asked him questions and I listened intently while he shared his thoughts and philosophy on those topics. After lunch, to my surprise, we all had an opportunity to meet him and get our photos taken with him. I was sitting next to Tom Kuhlmann during lunch and I shared my sketchnote with him. Tom suggested I get Dr. Tyson to sign it. So I did.

He even broke out his special fountain pen!

In the big scheme of things my little ole signed sketchnote is trivial in most eyes. Like others, I’ve got autographs from celebrities, athletes, musicians and other notables I’ve met over the years. Aside from my newly acquired autographed sketchnote, there’s only one other autograph that I have that I think is really cool – singer/songwriter Sam Samudio, a.k.a. Sam the Sham of “Wooly Bully.”