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Creative Welly Launched | Learning Out Loud

A new long-form video podcast for curious and creative humans.

Creative Welly is a new project from an old idea repurposed and reborn during the isolation of lockdown:

We curate and collide intrepid talent from the coolest most creative little capital in the world (with a few out-of-city friends as well from time-to-time).

This project is totally self-funded and wouldn’t be possible without these amazing collaborators:

All episodes are shot and edited by the wonderfully talented Jono Tucker, Empire Films. An extremely diligent and personable soul who has added a polish to the resulting video which I never could’ve achieved, thank you Jono.

Hosted at Xequals, a centrally based web development agency who provide us with a kick-ass office which totally gets kitted out for the shoot. Thank you Alex Matthews for being so gracious with your space.

This first episode represents about four to five day or pre-production experiments with lighting and seating scenarios plus editing options. The result of which is something quite different and unique.

Two further episodes are already ‘in the can’ with another two lined up for this month plus a very long list of possibles from my network here in the capital.

Each episode takes about two hours to set up (one hour to pack down), another two hours to shoot then there’s the editing time of both the video and audio. After that there’s posting the curated bios and relevant content online plus sharing out across channels.

There are also ‘hard’ and recurring costs:

WHATCOSTS (NZD)
Table (round table from thrift store)$55
Chairs (x3, comfortable and supportive)$379
Backdrop photographic paper (for style)$105
Libsyn (audio podcast hosting & distribution)$275pa
Vimeo (video hosting)$130pa
Domain + hosting$25pa
TOTAL$969

I find myself feeling so privileged to be able to start this journey and explore a new format during these challenging global times. It truly serves my purpose of ‘giving people voice’ whilst also my skill base of ‘curating’ as well.

Oh and why not YouTube? Have no intention of monetising the content and don’t like their forced adverts plus the time it takes to figure out the algorithms with the hope they choose my content over others. Vimeo is a wonderful creative community which aligns with the brand values of the intention behind the initiative.

Please let me know what you think and triple please subscribe to receive the bi-monthly episodes via Creative Welly.

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Creative Ideation Workshop | Facilitating Inspiration (aka Herding Cats)

The components of effective facilitation.

Last week I attended a ‘Creative Ideation Workshop‘ organised by Wellington NZ (the city’s and region economic agency) and facilitated by Creative HQ (my attendee experience tweet thread) to:

We need to get ideas into action and we are keen to work collaboratively with you and other creative minds who are lucky to call Wellington home. We’d like to invite you to an ideas hui to brainstorm creative solutions to some of the city’s challenges following the economic impact of the Covid19 pandemic. We will take some of the best ideas generated at the hui, develop these further into tangible solutions and work to secure funding to turn them into reality.

From the original email invitation.

Was great to see so many souls respond to the call of collaboration and the energetically run afternoon session certainly generated an array of ideas based on the challenges laid down.

It was shared early on that the ideas from the session would be directed towards the City Recovery Fund (a new amount of money made available and administered through the city council which TEDxWellington recently applied for). The criteria was displayed to the participants as part of the intro:

  • contribute to the immediate recovery of the City economy;
  • enhance or protect Wellington’s position as a leader in innovation and creativity;
  • seek to use innovation and creativity to support recovery, revitalisation and job protection or creation;
  • contribute to sustainable economic outcomes; and
  • align to the WellingtonNZ promotional campaigns.

The session however missed some crucial and foundational elements to catalyse appropriate ideas (and totally appreciate the challenge of managing any group of humans coming together for the first time within the 2.5hours allocated).

What follows is a list of those elements which needed more attention and which can also assist anyone else reading when approaching creative facilitation:

  • Framework: Outlining the language set and definitions to ensure clarity (for example, what do we mean by creativity? What scale of economic impact is expected from the ideas to aim for? What collaborative examples would illustrate success? etc.). Always good to share any of this before attending as well (in this instance, detailing that all ideas were to remain in the focus of the City Recovery Fund would’ve managed expectations).
  • Resources: This could be the things in the room (which was evident), also the expertise (who had talent in what areas to be activated), the budgets (if applicable beyond any one session), the time (how is it to be used) etc.
  • Constraints: Equally as important to what is available are the boundaries. The thresholds and hard deadlines (for applications), the range of grant amounts available, types of things not to explore (all which wasn’t discussed bar one which was at the end when an idea was dismissed as it was part of another plan).
  • Timescales: Having a simple timeline of expectations from ideation to formulation, to invite to hone ideas and collaborate right through to application and then expected decisions and delivery plus impact. Having a visible agenda helps here along with a shared example of how any work is to blossom into action.
  • Success / Metrics: There are several ways to answer this one from amount of ideas crafted, the quality, the potential of ideas which fit the framework / resources / constraints as laid out above. This can also be a broad as an invitation to explore based on the brief or a chance to connect with other passionate souls on the same issue. Who is going to measure this and again by what framework?
  • Intellectual Property: Crucial for trust building is setting clear and tangible creative control. In terms of internal workshops this matters less although named ownership or departmental association is welcomed for celebration. For cross-sector collaborations this is key along with is these ideas are going to be shared elsewhere and to whom with what attribution (it was mentioned towards the end of the session to add individual names onto the sheets of paper we were working on and would imagine that’s the strategy for identification of ideas in this instance).

Looking forward to receiving and seeing all the ideas from the sessions which was discussed as an action at the end of the session plus hearing how some of the ideas will be progressed.

Image credit: Two Cats, Blue and Yellow (1912), Franz Marc (German, 1880–1916)
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Launching Soon | Creative Welly : Courageous Conversations With Bold Humans

A new long-form, conversational project to tickle your neural pathways.

Revealed only in retrospect these past couple of years, is a thematic thread through my past projects / experiences of ‘giving people voice’ (which has become my spoken purpose plus evidenced in both my producing and coaching roles).

Creative Welly is a mash-up-manifestation of this and my hunger for curating good people:

We curate and collide intrepid talent from the coolest most creative little capital in the world (with a few out-of-city friends as well from time-to-time).

A few years ago I bought up a bunch of domains relating to ‘creativity’ and ‘Wellington’ with the intention of bringing together groups of people to explore the future of the city. After pitching it to a few educational plus civic institutions looking for collaboration and hosts there was no appetite.

A recent retainer contract with a client to see me through till the end of the year, has freed up the head-and-energy-space to revisit and reboot the concept.

A combination of devouring hours long-form and conversational content on the web (whether that’s podcasts, interviews and / or debates) these past few months during lockdown catalysed a seed of an idea for what to do.

Within a space of a week a superb collaborative team was formed. After seeking video advice from pal, Jono Tucker, founder of Empire Films and producer of many review videos for TEDxWellington and Creative Leadership, he offered to collaborate. The shooting location is kindly donated by Xequals through Alex Matthews, another pal who is on the TEDxWellington leadership team.

Last week we ran a few shooting, lighting and audio tests:

Enabling us to play with variations on editing looks from the footage which will give the episodes a unique look. The aim is to share the first episode at the end of this month with a target of releasing two a month in the first year.

Oh and the business model, well:

  1. Sponsorship
  2. Membership
  3. Donations
  4. Affiliate links
  5. Paid content
  6. Selling branded merchandise
  7. Selling tickets to live shows
  8. Our own time and money.

Truly humbled to be in a position not to care as what’s important for me is offering something which enlightens, connects and excites, so it’s another pro-bono project and experiment in celebrating humanity through conversation.

Please do head over to Creative Welly and subscribe to receive email notifications of the episodes (or grab the RSS if you’re kicking it old school). Audio subscription options will be available in the coming weeks.

Published

#18 June 2020 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

Time to surf the information superhighway for treats and things.

READ

Why an Amazon executive resigned over company’s ‘chickenshit’ firings of employee activists (stop buying from Amazon).

A flood of coronavirus apps are tracking us – now it’s time to keep track of them.

Our lives are now run by ‘Persuasion Engineers‘ – shudder!

How Facebook could use Giphy to collect your data.

Another Apple whistleblower goes public over lack of action – “I am extremely concerned that big tech companies are basically wiretapping entire populations…”

WATCH

EXPLORE

Your illustration dances to the music.

The spoken articles list of Wikipedia.

A curated timeline of COVID pandemic events related to Wellington city here in NZ.

The British Museum has added 1.9 million images free to use for anyone under a Creative Commons 4.0 license.

Free video conferencing background images of empty sets from the BBC Archive.

Play with Mikutap—great for bored kids / kidults alike.

Blush: Create, mix, and customize illustrations made by artists around the world—then use them commercial free.

AutoDraw which converts rough scribbles and doodles into beautiful, symmetrical icons/clipart that you can download for free.

Check out this platform which make acapellas from any song or this one which remove vocals from any song.

thisworddoesnotexist.com creates words which does not exist using AI.

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
Image credit: By en:Charles Burton Barber – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gelert.jpg, Public Domain, Link.
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#17 May 2020 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

Lumping some tempting online items for you to check out.

READ

The city of Amsterdam is going to embrace the more sustainable ‘doughnut’ economy model post-covid19.

There are always the helpers.

Why putting Jared Kushner in charge as utter madness.

WATCH

EXPLORE

Listen to my mates podcast on how Jacinda Ardern is a communication master from David McQueen.

A website that helps you to see satellites in orbit from your backyard.

This will keep you busy for while.

This website teaches you Morse Code in around 15 minutes.

Love In The Time Of Coronavirus (free ebook download from GapingVoid).

If you have a spare laptop or computer check out Folding@Home, a distributed computing project for performing molecular dynamics simulations of protein dynamics (currently focussed on aiding a COVID19 vaccine).

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
Image credit: A View from Moel Cynwich: Looking Over the Vale of Afon Mawddach and Toward Cader Idris, c. 1850, William Turner, from Cleveland Museum of Art.
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COVID19 | Managing Your Personal Privacy Liability

Where does the liability lie when employers stipulate the use of certain platforms / programmes / devices which could become a future privacy issue?

Following up on my ‘Working From Home Privacy Check‘ post last week, I tweeted out the above query as conversations with some of my peers raised the challenge they were facing. It doesn’t take much to come up with some other scenarios where issues could arise:

SCENARIO 1 : An educational organisation is transitioning to virtual classes and is using an online platform to deliver to the students. Teachers are working hard to digitise the content and subsequent workflow for all involved. During some of the online lessons, a couple of students innocently post images of the classes with all the faces plus full names of their fellow students publicly on social media.

SCENARIO 2 : A small company wants to ensure its employees are staying connected and has started using a messaging system which the teams are asked to download on their devices. This creates the opportunity for work discussions along with more personal communications, just like a work environment. The platform they use gets infiltrated with a spambot and it starts sending phishing messages to all the employees personal contacts in their phones contact book.

SCENARIO 3 : A large governmental department is starting to utilise a new video conferencing platform as everyone is working from home. Its operations and the information shared are highly confidential as they deal with issues of national security. Due to a flaw in the video system, some of the discussions are accessible to other parties who use it for nefarious means.

The question about liability bounced around for about a week until I got the following response via this tweet from John Edwards, Privacy Commissioner of New Zealand:

Employees are obliged to follow any reasonable instruction from an employer. If an employee conveyed reservations about using a particular tool and the employer said please proceed, they would likely be obliged to follow that instruction. The employer assumes the risk.

Which was also corroborated by another tweet from 2018 Wellingtonian of the Year and an employment law specialist, Steph Dyhrberg, Partner at Dyhrberg Drayton Employment Law:

Agree. I would put it in writing to have a record of the concerns being raised. Employer should record the direction in writing too.

So if you are working from home and you have concerns regarding your privacy please do detail them via email with your employer. You might want to also ask for some risk assessment and scenario planning from the leadership also.

Stay safe and sane out there, plus wash your hands!

Related posts: COVID19 | Working From Home Privacy Check, COVID19 | A Global Pause, Effective Digital Presentation Skills | Five Quick-Fire Tips.
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#16 April 2020 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

A gaggle of curated stuff to aid the lockdown situation.

READ

Forgive yourself if you’re barely functioning right now.

Not a comfortable read but how one person freaked out after getting their file from Clearview AI.

Māori tribe restricts hongi greeting over coronavirus.

WATCH

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSUpFHuAIqI

EXPLORE

If you’re on a Mac use Fluid and turn your favorite web apps into real apps.

Nine Inch Nails releases some free music.

Upload a video or GIF & remove the background with Unscreen.

Some free royalty free premium music for projects (cleared for YouTube) via UnMinus.

The most dangerous writing app.

Undraw is a constantly updated design project with beautiful SVG images that you can use completely free and without attribution.

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
Image credit: Beautiful Dingbats’ Pattern Generator
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COVID19 | Working From Home Privacy Check

With citizen lockdown now spanning half the globe, don’t forget about privacy during these times.

Most work environments are now private homes. Collaborating and staying in touch with colleagues has changed rapidly, so lets have a quick look at the main areas through a privacy lens:

CONFERENCE CALLS

As we replace normal face-to-face meetings with video conferencing platforms, Zoom has exploded due to it’s simple interface and scalability. However, there are historical and current issues to be aware of when considering using this service:

One option if you can’t get away from using the platform is to not download the app but log in via a ‘secure’ browser to a meeting using a something like Brave or Epic (just don’t have the app downloaded and click the link from the invite which takes you online).

Zoom though is not the only option out there. Other alternatives include:

If you can use a browser based video conference option (along with a proxy-based privacy-centric browser) then the only thing to allow is access to camera and microphone, which can be turned off again in the browser settings once the call has finished.

CHAT

To replace the casual opportunities for quick chats and interactions the office offers, think about setting up a group channel utilising chat functionality to stay in touch.

Something like Slack is very popular for this as might already being used in a corporate setting, but again this has privacy considerations [Are Your Remote Work Apps Spying on You?]. Some folks also utilise WhatsApp although this is owned by Facebook who have a history of capturing and then commodify data for external use like influencing elections etc.

Explore something like Signal or Telegram which have end-to-end encryption. Also, both have desktop versions so your phone can be kept for personal use and you’ll only be ‘at work’ when on your computer.

PERSONAL vs WORK

You might be using personal technology devices for the first time for work such as laptops and / or phones plus other tablets.

For laptops / home computers / tablets, set up a separate user account so that all work activities plus programmes / apps are set up there. For phones there’s also an iOS and Android option (hat tip Mike Riversdale)

This will aid the psychological perspective of ‘going to work’ in the morning when you log on to these accounts.

If you’re adding any apps to your personal phone during this time ensure you’re not giving access to all your contacts and access fully to your phone.

Also, if you have any smart speakers running Alexa or Google Assistant, consider that they also now are privy to your calls and any verbal interactions you have. For some professions unplug the devices completely as they could become a potential security risk for information leakage.

Truly appreciate there are bigger things going on for many at this time plus many will be mandated by ‘HQ’ on preferred systems / platforms / apps (which again why setting up alternative user accounts and separating personal devices from work is important).

Remember to read the privacy and data policies of any websites, platforms and technology being utilised and make informed choices from that basis.

Very much open to other alternatives explored above so add them in the comments below and will check them out plus add to the blog post.

Related: What You Should Know About Online Tools During the COVID-19 Crisis plus this tweet to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner NZ which inspired this blog post.
Additional reading: Top 5 Open Source Video Conferencing Tools for Remote Working and Online Meetings
Image credit: Cameras, Conference Calls, Chat, Personal vs Work.
Published

COVID19 | A Global Pause

A meandering thought ramble on the current pandemic to redirect my overly-anxious brain.

This week, New Zealand went into lockdown for four weeks after announcing a national emergency plus moving to the highest Level 4 alert. The opposite was sent to all mobile phones in the country to announce the nationwide curfew.

At the time of writing, we have nearly four hundred cases here (no deaths) and taking this approach could ensure the spread is contained.

Nearly all of my paid work has been cancelled although I just got notified I was approved for the COVID-19 Employer Payment for the next three months.

I feel lucky to be where I am.

However, the whole world is sharing this experience and every country is approaching it slightly differently, although many are adopting as isolation strategy.

I’m wondering (out loud) what good can come as we collectively pause together:

SOCIAL

We weren’t ready for this. Some knew:

It’s becoming clear that a mammoth economic recession is coming, along with a radical disruption of societal systems. This is a start not the end, and our overlapping society of nations will have to rethink many of its operating structures.

There’s a collective growing literacy at understanding exponential curves, inter-dependent industries and sectors plus how much small percentage points matter when it relates to economies.

Everything is being revealed as fragile.

Although this does present an opportunity to reflect on what is important. How, after a certain level of comfort and freedom is gained, everything else is a bonus.

We’ll also be critiquing the stale idea of traditional working cultures as swathes of humans turn to digital methods to deliver and continue their workload. However, as the crisis abates, I feel there will be a massive hunger for the physical and in-person again.

There are no special cases when princes, politicians, celebrities are getting it. The real super stars are those illustrating the innate goodness of humans:

ENVIRONMENTAL

The above video shows China’s nitrogen levels falling and then rising slightly again as some of the curfews are lifted.

Wildlife have rediscovered usually polluted areas like the canals in Italian cities:

https://youtu.be/cm7Py-PsXV4

As time goes on, this global pause will provide precious data and critical evidence for scientists to go further in proving the impact we’re having on the world.

CULTURAL

Talking here about the wider understanding that we all share a common space and are part of an operating system which is now in danger of collapsing.

Our streets and towns and cities personify the quiet we need to reflect on what’s crucial. To ask questions which transcend a rigged monetary system, to recognise the importance of community and amplify the need for evolving the politics of our time.

This forced reset is also ironic, separating us all from symbiotic elements of family, friendship, food, nature, place, space etc. which make us, us.

Going forward, the medical (especially front-liners) and educational establishment needs to be elevated, celebrated and remunerated properly (along with others who are now deemed ‘essential’ like rubbish men, supermarket workers, warehouse workers etc.), whilst we dull the idea of celebrity in its importance.

We have such a distinct divide of leadership during these times across nations from silly men who took so long to listen to professionals to other larger and even sillier men who thinks letting people die to save the economy is the way forward (Johnson is what happens when a guy like Trump can speak Latin) to our own PM here in NZ, leading with kindness and compassion (jumping online after putting her baby to bed to take a Q&A for those entering their first night of the impending lockdown):

This crisis simply illustrates how interconnected we all are.

Everything is linked.

All aspects of our well-being are joined to man-made constructs like capitalism as well as natural systems like the wider environment which need to remain healthy.

This is an opportunity to transform.

Become warriors and guardians of wiser and kinder system of living.

This joint deep breath, allows us a chance to redesign our intent as humans in focusing on the right things (rather than continue doing the wrong things righter).

The world has changed so much in three months, imagine if it we were intentional in rebuilding it.

Truly hope wherever you are reading this you’re staying safe and sane.

Your solitude will be a support and a home for you, even in the midst of very unfamiliar circumstances, and from it you will find all your paths.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Image credit.
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