BLOG – Page 35 – Hello, I'm DK – creative producer and speaker coach

The Social Really Lean Canvas | Minimal Business Model

A great tool to use when scoping business ideas (both large / small and not just social entrepises).

Devised by David Clearwater, Venture Manager at Hikurangi Foundation with inspiration from the Social Lean Canvas (obviously).

Hat tip : Finding Ideas that Matter

The Power of Empathy | Connection

Thank you Dr Brene Brown.

“Rarely can a response make something better—what makes something better is connection”

Full ‘The Power of Vulnerability’ talk.

Innovation | Defined

innovation defined

A definition for innovation found in my notebook.

Doing something different that has an ongoing positive effect.

What’s yours…?

Curation As An Emerging Skillset | A 5 Step Guide

How to become a curation king / queen.

Traditionally, a curator researches and puts together a collection which speaks to a narrative and / or serves a larger idea in art galleries and / or museums.

In the current digital habitat, all can participate in this activity, so the challenge is honing the skills and leveraging the tools. Why?

Because for you and the organisation / company you serve, curation will be at the forefront of:

developing new ideas;
broadening discussions;
navigating and sifting through information to concentrate it into action;
celebrating those in specific industries; plus
uncovering / creating / deepening relationships to those that matter.

How?

Here we go:

1. Find : Track other digital curators to emulate / learn from.

Follow / learn from Tina or Jason or Maria or Shaun or the Open Culture peeps etc—rather just serving individual tastes, these guys are also aiming to inspire, educate, challenge, explode wonder, intrigue, curiosity, in their audience.

2. Find : Deliberately forage content from many sources.

Online is a noisy place and it’s not simple to find the signal. For many of us with the tools such as advanced search techniques plus RSS it’s a simple case of making the web work for you. RSS allows for a filtering on a delicious scale which when mashed up with things like IFTTT and Yahoo Pipes can become the perfect recipe for making yourself look double awesome.

3. Follow : Click those inspirational digital breadcrumbs.

Be careful not to get stuck in the filter bubble—sites like Tumblr and Pinterest exemplify curating platforms plus once you start clicking you will discover how deep the rabbit hole goes. Don’t worry too much and just click away, flow around areas of interest, follow those links and see where those web-roads take you. You’ll be astonished with the gems you’ll find.

4. Focus : Sharpen the sights and cull the chaff to find the good stuff.

Now you’ve been using the above tools / techniques for a while it’s time to sort and strain. It might be you’ll decide to stop following certain feeds and replace them with ones who serve more specific content. It should always be a trial and error process in pursuit of revelatory inspiration.

5. Frame : Context is king so reposition & tell stories with the new found ideas.

The best curators (some listed above) contextualise the treasures found by weaving a narrative around. This adds the much needed context for the audience and yourself when you return years later plus demonstrates your ability to join ideas into salient points. It’s time to shape the reason and link the work to creative action (whether that be an infographic, white space in an established industry, applying divergent technologies into traditional approaches, learning from obscure voices from other sectors to influence innovative strategies etc). Wrap those finds up in beautiful potential.

So examples of where this can be applied:

students can be taught the above as a research methodology for their studies;
product designers can utilise these steps to gain a deeper picture of the problem / industry their serving;
teachers can employ these techniques as a way to collate content related to their subject focus;
start-ups can use these tools to aggregate ideas around the market they are entering;
leaders can illustrate brand stories in which they would like to emulate.

…you get the idea!

Follow the plan and basically suck the juicy wisdom out of the web then humanise it for good.

How relevant is curation in your role / organisation? And who else is talking about this as a skillset (am keen to learn / connect)? Riff in the comments!

Related / inspired / remixed from original post 2013 | Create / Curate plus all images from Graphics Fuel

Steve Jobs And Elon Musk | The Innovation Ecosystem

“To appreciate Jobs’ and Musk’s contributions, you must pull the camera back. What they did uniquely was to imagine the broader ecosystems in which those products could become transformative. To do that involved an intimate understanding not just of the technology but of what would be necessary in design, logistics, and the business model to launch those products and make them truly compelling to potential customers. You can describe both men as amazing designers. But their design genius should be thought of as not just an obsession with satisfying shapes and appealing user interfaces. Those matter, but the start point is broader, system-level design. Most innovation is like a new melody. For Jobs and Musk it’s the whole symphony.”

So many quotable lines from this amazing article : The shared genius of Elon Musk and Steve Jobs

Sonder | The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

The wonder of sonder.

sonder – n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.

Via The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Big Sky Montana Thinking | Hatch 2013

Hatch is about connecting a group of madly curious people and trusting in their ability to generate creative value.

Split over two locations (one in the Montana hills at the Rainbow Ranch Lodge, Big Sky and the other in the heart of Bozeman via an innovation lab / space), no other event has ever challenged me as much to be present and in the moment (hence the lack of notes):

This was due to the loosely structured agenda and being surrounded by film-makers, musicians, technologists, artists, entrepreneurs, marketeers, architects, trouble-makers, designers, writers, inventors, specialists, generalists (full attendee list here), all of whom ignited the brain with conversations that dripped in inspiration and possibility!

And oh those delicious Rugrats moments:

Deep waist bows to all attendees, partners, sponsors and obviously the organisers—humbled to have been invited and definitely learned (again) that giving is living!

Read other HATCH posts.

Two Gigs, One University | Massey

Two speaking gigs testimonials from last month:

DK was invited to speak at Massey University’s College of Creative Arts fourth year Creative Futures class about the power of digital social interactions. The course explores social and business enterprise, starting a business, ideas for non-profit organisations and developing a strategic positioning proposal. The students enjoyed DK’s presentation, which generated a number of interesting discussions and provided much food for through around what ‘socialising’ can do for start-ups.

Anna Brown, Director at Open Lab, College of Creative Arts

DK spoke to a group of PR and communication students at Massey University and he blew their minds. It’s not often that a speaker can resonate with an audience who already think they know all about the subject, but DK’s experience, coupled with a killer presentation, demonstrated to them that social media is more than just Facebook.

I have already recommended DK to people who need better insight and direction with their social strategies. The man knows his stuff!

Kane Hopkins, Lecturer at School of Communication, Journalism & Marketing

What an honour to speak to students—want to do more and explore opportunities to do project work with these hungry minds. If anyone thinks I can offer value in this area please get in touch.