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Creativity Is Not A Talent | Cultivating Innovation

Habitat cultivates habit (UPDATE: video now blocked due to copyright infringement. Other versions are here)

The above video is a feast for the brain / heart and introduces the conditions for creativity:

  • Space—obviously, both the physical and psychological
  • Time—half of creating the oasis
  • Time—to play with the problem and solving it with something original
  • Confidence—to get things wrong
  • Humour—getting us from the closed to the open mode/mindset in the quickest way possible

For me the most compelling idea in the whole presentation is that creativity is not an in-built-DNA-traceable-disposition.

It’s something which can be learned.

Cultivated.

Encouraged.

So, do the organisations / companies we create / work for foster the above conditions so creativity / innovation can blossom?

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How To Write A Social Media Strategy | Use Cartoons

gapingvoid social media strategy pics

Seriously!

The above are the images recently used in the internal social media strategy I wrote for the executive team at CORE Education—all courtesy of the fab Hugh Macleod, Gapingvoid.

The focus of the strategy was on:

  1. inspiring staff—VISION
  2. offering opportunities to develop their social media education and sustainable pathways for future use—TRAINING
  3. create success points and reflective opportunities—MEASURE

The vision provides an horizon line. A goal. An outcome focussed narrative.

The training, which all staff will take (managers first of course), attempts to bring everyone up to the same educational mark of social media and digital literacies (even if it’s not what they do).

These two things I’ve been doing for the past six years.

The last point is where the fun and new stuff is. Utilising gamification we’re going to develop in in-house system for tracking and rewarding social (media) participation. We (meaning others with bigger brains than I) might even write a paper on it all.

How do you do yours?

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Creatalyst | Releasing My Inner Artist

creatalyst 1

Images. Words. Soundscapes. Questions.

The opening lines on the about section of the Creatalyst app says:

“The creative process, a business project, even life, is a journey expanding our vision of what’s possible.”

Photographer, mentor and good friend Dennis Hodges, developed this app as a spark to the creative process we find ourselves in day to day.

The categories of Visualize, Compose, Explore, Develop, Deliver, unfold (literally) as you delve deeper into the audio/visual offering.

creatalyst 2

Used alone, it could simply excite the senses and neurons to reconnect thoughts:

creatalyst 3

And/or spark new ideas:

creatalyst 4

There are also deeper options such as favouriting images, deleting them from the image bank, sharing through social spaces, adding comments for yourself and others in the Creatalyst community to read.

creatalyst 5

I remember Dennis describing the seeds of the app idea on a train journey back from Lucerne to the Zurich, Switzerland (Feb 2011). As the magnificent view offered us lakes and majestic mountainside I was more intrigued by the essence of the idea shared.

Congratulations Dennis.

Not just on bringing an idea to market, but also on making it so engaging.

All links to the Creatalyst app are non-affiliated.
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Education vs Life | A Thought

education vs life

The answer to learning.

Most formal/traditional/current education systems provide lessons with the view the learners at some stage will complete some kind of test to prove understanding, skills, knowledge etc

Life on the other hand, provides tests and it’s up to us to make sense of the lesson (with the opportunity to pass that knowledge, skills, understanding etc on in some way).

Because I didn’t know better, the social media training I’ve developed and delivered in the past takes this test-first approach. Providing a problem to solve and a reflective space to discuss the lessons learnt (sometimes after failure), meant highly engaged participants with fantastic feedback plus obvious learning outcomes.

Would be fun to reverse the current educational paradigm of teach, learn, test.

Then again, that’s just my opinion—say otherwise in the comments below.

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Otautahi Youth Council (OYC) | Social Media Training

The next generation of story-makers / tellers / influencers.

Honoured to have delivered some training for Otautahi Youth Council (OYC) (who are supported by the fab Christchurch based White Elephant Trust).

“DK’s training not only opened up a new world of social media to us but motivated and empowered the young people participating to take action in their community with their new found tools.”

Netta Egoz, Project Coordinator—Otautahi Youth Council/ WE Care White Elephant Trust

The focus of the day was on several social media platforms as well as the strategic side of implementing their use. The following were the fundamentals (Golden Rule, Storytell, Digital Takeaways, Process):

If you’ve ever had the privilege of working with young people you will know of their quick adoption of these online platforms—the button theory in action—was a fun day.

Pay me to do something similar.

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Designing Processes / Experience / Brand | Closer To Launch

wireframesmall

Shaping the online offering (above is the wireframe of the site design)

Getting the product right is half the story, the overall brand experience and even the process of checking out needs due care and consideration.

Taking notes and learning from inspiring folks such as generalassemb.ly and:

“If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful.”
Jeff Bezos

Related to The Best Damn Public Speaking Course On The Internet (Even The Planet) and Why Develop An Online Speaker Training Programme | The Purpose, The Why, The What
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The (Social Media) Lick

On the one hand echoes never tell you anything new.

On the other, they reinforce a fundamental.

The wisdom comes in knowing the difference between the two (in the cacophony of social media discourse).

Btw, the blog post above was more for me than you.
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KONY 2012

Lets make the bastard (in)famous.

For six years I’ve been telling the story of the Invisible Children in nearly all of the social media training I’ve delivered and some consulting sessions as well.

I do this for three reasons:

    • 1. it’s a story which needs to be told
    • 2. it highlights the idea of collective positive action to change the world
    • 3. it illustrates the power new media and social technologies can aid distribution of the story and idea.

Even after all this time it still makes me cry!

Watch the film.

Support the cause.

Marvel at the boldness.

Note the new visual political discourse.

Celebrate the audacity and more important than that… share it wider!

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