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CatalystCreativ Wysdem Talk | Can Wisdom Be Designed?

Exploring a model for systemising wisdom.

In March I got to both attend and speak at Catalyst Creativ Week, Las Vegas, which was founded in 2012 in partnership with Tony Hsieh’s Downtown Project.

As you’ll watch, the subject was nothing to do with social media, instead, my long overdue and yet-to-be-launched moonshot project exploring can wisdom be designed, wysdem.com and which I blogged about here.

The official line (although please judge for yourself above and leave any thoughts / guidance / ideas you have in the comments):

“DK was an engaging speaker at CatalystCreativ’s March Catalyst Week Showcase. He drew the audience into his talk with his research on how wisdom plays into systems and held their attention by posing important and thoughtful questions on this discussion. In his talk, he explored how wisdom plays into individual responsibility so that we can better understand how it plays into the systems around us.”
Evelyn Sabino, Communications & Events Manager at CatalystCreativ

Check out the other magnificent talks from the event as well, some gems in here:

Twitter Roundup #1 | Curating The Curated

Curating the best and most tasty treats from my recent Tweetmailing.

Exploring a new concept here:

Richard Branson and Peter Thiel are going to break the money transfer market : story link / Tweetmail link
National UK news channel launches a gif-only Tumblr site : story link / Tweetmail link
Video essays rule, especially ones done this well : video link Tweetmail link
Three amazing questions to ask your users / customers / clients to truly understand them : blog post link / Tweetmail link
One of the best keynotes I’ve seen in a while magnificently deconstructing the issue of all this online world stuff : video link / Tweetmail link
Even if you can’t code you can still join a hackathon : video link / Tweetmail link
Copyright free images a plenty : website link / Tweetmail link
How to structure a video essay (and any story with the power of “therefore” and “but” plus “meanwhile back at the ranch”) : video link / Tweetmail link
Looking to collaborate? Just get out and ask : video link / Tweetmail link
And finally, a site to check how many people are in space right now : website link / Tweetmail link

The main reasons I use Twitter are for:

connecting / keeping in touch with wonderful souls / minds around the planet
listening and researching ideas / stuff
distributing delicious and juicy finds from my web wanderings

The last one, which I’ve been doing for a number of years now, is also a strategy of not just distribution and adding value, but also one of recording for future reference. I save all my tweets to a dropbox text file, an online google spreadsheet plus into an evernote folder (via ifttt.com), where it can be searched any time for previous content.

Also aware that many of these goodies get missed as only tweet them out once

Follow me on Twitter (or better yet, follow your dreams)

ADDENDUM—A little alert notified me of when I originally joined Twitter plus my first ever tweet:

Image credit | CC 2.0

What Does It Mean? | The Role Of The Interpreter

A Richard Feynman lesson in cultivating and connecting curiosity.

An interpreter goes beyond translating and connects the relevance for each party with wider contextualising viabilities. The role exists to drive fascination into the heart of the conversation and activity which in turn ignites the potential and awe (thank you Mr Silva) into the possible.

For nearly a decade this is what I’ve been attempting: interpreting the new and emerging technologies and platforms into wonder and relevant context for each audience / client. With the emergence of curation as a skill set, the ability to extend the conversation and apply situational probabilities is becoming a differentiator.

(And loving being reminded how again process is more important than product in the above video.)

Recently I’ve had the good fortune to dive deeper into this role as a conscious interpreter through the following gigs:

Keynote speaker and workshop taker at IntegratED, Portland

“If you are looking for someone to engage your audience with authentic stories, reflection and laughter then DK is your guy! He doesn’t just speak to your participants he immerses himself in your conference, which makes his “social” message grow 10 fold in the hearts and minds of your community.”
Darren Hudgins, Director of Integrated Events, OETC

Digital strategy advisor / facilitator for IBI Group, Portland / San Fransisco

“DK has been helping us think through vital futures for IBI Group. He asks the right questions, guides us towards solutions and most importantly is a deep listener. DK makes it about us, not about him and you couldn’t find a more important quality in a facilitator and consultant.”
Charles Finley, Global Director for Marketing and Communications

Creative consultant / advisor plus speaker in Missoula, Montana

“We had the honor of hosting DK at a series of events in Missoula, Montana (a round table master class, a public presentation for a couple of hundred folks, and a University specific presentation.) Each program was exceptionally tailored for that audience. DK was brilliant, warm and inspiring.”
Elke Govertsen, CEO and Founder of Mamalode Magazine

“DK brings a fresh and powerful perspective on social media that helps you see the big picture and then figure out what it means for you. Working with DK is stimulating, practical and above all fun!”
Paul Gladen, Director, Blackstone LaunchPad, University of Montana

UPDATE: Watch the video of the talk here

Closing keynote speaker at Sandbox Summit, MIT, Boston.

“DK’s closing keynote for Sandbox Summit at MIT had everyone standing on their feet and dancing. As usual, he struck just the right balance of intelligence, imagination, and inspiration.”
Wendy Smolen, Cofounder, Sandbox Summit

Consultant at Hasbro, Providence, Rhode Island

“DK brings a new level of depth and perspective to how social media affects business and business building, how and why it impacts, focusing on core issues, generating tangible and growth strategy solutions.”
Phil Sage, Hasbro

Attendee / speaker at Catalyst Week and Creativ Week, Las Vegas, founded in 2012 in partnership with Tony Hsieh’s Downtown Project

UPDATE: WATCH my talk here

“DK was an engaging speaker at CatalystCreativ’s March Catalyst Week Showcase. He drew the audience into his talk with his research on how wisdom plays into systems and held their attention by posing important and thoughtful questions on this discussion. In his talk, he explored how wisdom plays into individual responsibility so that we can better how it plays into the systems around us.”
Evelyn Sabino, Communications & Events Manager at CatalystCreativ

Speaker / advisor at New Canaan Library and Darien Library, Connecticut

“DK’s high energy, intellectually stimulating presentation to our combined teams has really resonated with all of us. Many of my leadership team commented that it was the best professional learning experience that they had attended in many years. Our entire team enjoyed and learned. DK’s presentation has sparked all manner of continuing conversation on how we engage with our community and is impacting on our work programme already.”
Lisa Oldham, Executive Director, New Canaan Library, Connecticut

new canaan library crowd

Brainpickings video hat-tip

TEDAche | Stretching, Compassion & Rebounding

TEDActive spontaneous dance party

The wonders / dangers of attending a TED conference.

A few hours ago TEDActive ended.

I’m currently sat in my Whistler hotel room even though the party goes on with groups of tremendous souls from all corners of the globe still hungry to connect.

Alas, I’m all talked out after six days of immense conversations, nearly 100 TED talks plus a variety of moments which truly remind you of the spectrum of experiences this world has to offer.

I feel stretched.

Full of compassion.

Ready to bounce!

For me, the themes taken away included these ideas of:

stretching—reaching beyond your grasp and changing your mind / body / habitat as an attempt to find new solutions or better questions;
compassion—embracing and empathising with suffering as a means of connection to discover new perspectives;
rebounding—the act of trying again or even using the negative as a reframing exercise to grow or carve out new paths.

Events like these are dangerous if you’re not ready to change (or commit). No matter what your expectations are, in the giving of yourself to the experience you lose something: some light stuff (like sleep and the yearning of solitude) although also the dark (as the stories curated and the organic ones shared with your fellow participants fuel the yearning to be more).

The aim now is to digest, deconstruct plus apply the learning (especially from the other TEDx organisers in attendance—there were 350 of them) to the future TEDxWellington events, and selfishly, my journey.

Onwards!

Picture above is of the TEDActive spontaneous dance party whilst Aloe Blacc woke us up:

Jad Abumrad | Gut Churn Of Creativity

jad bumrad radiolab

Reflective storytelling and analysing the ‘crappy queasy space’ in the journey of finding your true voice.

This week I attended a talk by Radiolab’s Jad Abumrad at the Warren Miller Performing Arts Center, Big Sky, Montana.

It was a storytelling masterclass with layers of different media from sound to text to animation to video (tapping into the VARK model of learning), all orchestrated by Jad as he weaved our attention deeply around the forms created.

The talk was a personal reflection on Jad’s own grappling journey with finding ‘his voice’ and the hunt for authenticity, ensuring you are true in your own self is so important as you’re often:

…forced to sit in the emptiness to face the authenticity.

In radio / podcasting, here’s his description of where the power lay:

…it’s like being with people whilst being by yourself…

And the ultimate goal in the act of producing is an attempt to:

…create an emptiness which is so much bigger than you.

With a splendid assortment of delectable stories and experiences to quote, from napkin sketches of radio shows story structures through to Ira Glass’s gap, Jad also shared his own three big lessons:

Chasing the antelope: storytellers are like shamen as they lull an audience into a collective dream state. And just like the shamen, it’s not just asking the questions but living it, chasing it down, just like Scott Carrier;
Chase the little shit: a lesson from a filmmaker friend regarding the cognitive effect of how paying attention to the smallest of details reframes a story to have massive impact;
Follow the odds: how talking to poker player Annie Duke led to understanding how 25% odds are a great bet. Like the time Jad did a radio piece on how many colours we see in a rainbow compared to other animals. Hard to do in the medium of sound. So they converted the the colours of rainbow to sound which led to Jad assembling and conducting a choir in this radio piece.

Here’s an older and much condensed version (not as multi-layered, polished and doesn’t have a lot of the above) presented at a 99u conference:

Thanks Jad and gutted you’re too busy to explore a trip out to NZ to speak—let me know if you change your mind.

If you’re reading this Jad, would love to know what setup you were using (in terms of hard/software).

Analog Blogging | Capturing Legacy

Analog Desk

Presenting the the analog memory desk open for a myriad of uses.

Imagine the above and it’s uses:

at the back of a classroom for students to record each days activities
during meetings of a project development cycle
as a visitor book in a museum or gallery or restaurant
during an event for participants to share their interactinos
as a ongoing dialogue of ideas in a companies cafeteria

Each option can be digitalised (or not) and held as a journey record of the project and its oh so important process / legacy.

Love that the plans are available to make under an open Creative Commons license:

What else can it be used for?

Linklove to This Is Colossal

Scared Is Scared | Inspirational Video Model

Creative storytelling.

What a format to replicate / embellish / take inspiration from.

It also has this pearl:

The scared is scared of the things you like.

Oh the wisdom of youth.

Hat-tip Nat

Five Canvases To Create Businesses | Tools To Explore

Make love to the canvas.

A canvas is a tool which can help you to create businesses, social enterprises, communication plans plus deconstruct opportunities and intentions:

Business Model Canvas

“The Business Model Canvas, is a strategic management and entrepreneurial tool. It allows you to describe, design, challenge, invent, and pivot your business model.”

Download ‘Business Model Canvas’ PDF

Value Proposition Canvas

“The Value Proposition Canvas makes explicit how you are creating value for your customers. It helps you to design products and services your customers want.”

Download ‘Value Proposition Canvas’ PDF.

Lean Canvas

Lean Canvas is a 1 Page business model for a faster, more effective way to communicate your business model with internal and external stakeholders.

Download ‘Lean Canvas’ PDF

Social Really Lean Canvas

Devised by David Clearwater, Acceleration Director at Akina Foundation for social enterprises (with inspiration from the Download ‘Social Lean Canvas, obviously).

The Social Really Lean Canvas’ JPG.

Javelin Experiment Board Canvas

The Experiment Board is free for you to use and make money from as an entrepreneur, consultant, teacher, or executive.

You pay via a tweet or just search online and you’ll find it.

ADDENDUM (27.4.15): Awesomely Simple Digital Questions

Not exactly a business canvas, more a triage of awesome digital focussed questions which will give your institution / organisation a shot in the arm to rethink / reimagine your approach via Helge Tenno (download here)).

Hungry for more? Check out diytoolkit.org resources for a canvas on pretty much everything you can think of.

Am I missing anything?

Narrative Podcasting | Learning Out Loud

Learning. Unlearning. Relearning.

I produced my first podcast nearly a decade ago. I went on to create over 200 more plus taught hundreds / thousands of others how to do it themselves via my social media courses / masterclasses.

Over the New Year break I spent some time unlearning what I know from this Alex Blumberg “Power Your Podcast with Storytelling” Creative Live course. Once you acclimatise to the nervous teaching style (sorry), there’s some fantastic gems for those who are new to this narrative style via Alex’s huge pedigree in this space (award-winning reporter and producer for This American Life and co-host of NPR’s Planet Money plus his new Startup podcast series).

As I’m highly kinaesthetic in my learning style I’ve been doing to learn.

Offered here with permission from Dennis Hodges (the interviewee) is my first attempt at narrative style podcasting:

Here’s what I learned:

have the story in mind before you start: sometimes other stories come out during an interview although having a story you want at least enables you to come out with something solid;
focus on one thing: you’ll hear from the outcome that I focussed on just the politicians eyes work. There was lots of other stuff we talked about which was equally as interesting, just this was something that was very different;
you have to be ruthless: we spoke for over 30mins and I got it down to just over 4mins which was hard work cutting out good stuff;
getting the interviewee to record their audio doesn’t always work: Dennis has a lot of audio hiss in the background which I tried for ages to clean up. Getting interviewees to record a sample in the future will help a lot (my audio could do with a rounder feel to it as well for which I’ll use my new mic in the future);
editing takes forever: seriously, ages!

I’m relearning the medium and upping my game for wysdem.com, and during my research I’ve noticed four types of podcasts:

Soloing / Group—just one person or a group sharing ideas / insights / observations. Sometimes scripted, sometimes loose in its form. Sparse editing is employed and it’s the main model used by most video podcasters / vodcasters / vloggers as well;
Interviews—simple one-to-one question and answer sessions. Medium investment in editing to ensure tidiness and the focus is very much on the interviewee and their offerings;
Narrative—heavily edited and crafted. Emphasis is on the storytelling and clarity of theme / subject matter.

Each have their place although the latter is gaining more traction although it’s obviously the hardest to do well with it’s focus on crafting something the listener consumes as a cognitive or emotional journey.

So feel free to critique and offer ideas / guidance on the above.

It’s a first offering and an attempt to ‘learn out loud’ so approach with kindness which I’m sure you will. Thanks in advance.

Podcast music credit: Toivo161 via freesound.org

Thanks to @foomandoonian for suggesting the ‘group’ type.

VARK | How Others Learn To Better Teach / Inspire

vark explained

Understanding how we learn to better teach / inspire others into action.

For many years and until recently, I developed and delivered social media courses for a vast array of cross sector clients. Early on it was apparent that attendees learned and reacted to what we were sharing in different ways, which in turn broadened our delivery to accommodate these varying styles.

Some participants would literally run ahead of the pack clicking all the buttons and figuring it out on the fly, a fair few would need to take their time and consider the notes / outlines / examples given and move forward checking themselves as they go, whilst a few literally needed one-to-one careful tuition which meant lots of reinforcement and a higher intensity of care (which is why we always delivered in tandem).

The VARK model gives a great insight into how we all have biases towards specific stimuli and learning. It’s my go-to when describing or helping clients deconstruct their own delivery / content around teaching staff or inspiring others:

visual—they like to be shown not told, prefer illustrated examples and visual cues of achievement;
aural—this group prefers to listen and will be adept at converting spoken instruction into action;
read / write—these do best within the ‘traditional’ educational approach by devouring text and replicating the medium;
kinesthetic—the more action focussed party of people who love just getting their hands on tools and figuring it out through physical feedback cues.

If you’re involved in any kind of capability building or skill increasing activities check if your ‘teaching’ style is fluid enough to cater for all those who learn differently.

What is your learning / teaching style?