Creative Welly Season Two | Connecting Humans In A Beautiful Way

Reflecting on the journey so far.

Last week, the 20th episode of Creative Welly: courageous conversations with bold humans, went live.

The purpose of this unconventional endeavour is driven by the desire to produce something beautiful and intimate—exploring through conversation, the emerging intersections of interest with two people who have never met before—done by pausing the melee of life and intentionally crafting a space to be human through stories and in time.

“I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone.”

Rainer Maria Rilke

Visually, there’s nothing like it on the planet.

The completed twenty discussions featuring forty intriguing humans equate to 1943minutes / over 32hours, and in terms of the metrics of watches / listens: don’t know, don’t care*. That’s not the reason I started this (see above).

It’s also a wholly commercial free venture and costs time and money in the chunky pre-production investment organising the people, the space, the camera / lighting / mics, hosting of content plus post-production commitment to editing, audio podcast formation, uploading everything, posting online and crafting the subtitle snippets.

But when something so pleasing and unique manifests the effort is justified.

More episodes will follow, although for now we’ll take a break for a couple of months. Feel free to explore the growing back catalogue here plus subscribe in the way most pertinent to you.

Epilogue

This simply wouldn’t have been achieved if it wasn’t for:

I recently organised an exclusive gathering just for those who have participated in the project to celebrate and connect them i further conversation with the growing community:

*Postcript: Back in 2006 I started the MediaSnackers podcast. In 5 years I produced about 200 podcasts (which included a few dozen for other clients at the time). The stats were in the high hundreds per episode and it drove traffic to the website into the thousands per month. 15 years later, what success looks like is very different.
Published

#31 July 2021 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

Go for a digital adventure by following some / all of the links below which I tweeted last month.

READ

Venezuela exodus reaches record levels: “More than 5.6 million have left the country since 2015, when it had a population of 30 million, escaping political, economic and social hardships.”

How in Argentina, cheap government-issued netbooks sparked a musical renaissance.

Be careful what you say to Baby Boomers, they are more sensitive than Millennials (study showed).

WATCH

EXPLORE

Google / Android are making it harder to opt-out of targeted ads (tracking, basically) so here’s how to do it.

An all-in-one browser called Vivaldi.

Slide Ace Ventura is why the web was invented.

An illustration of how we grow around grief / trauma.

Two audio episodes which are delightful: On Being discussing the new Rainer Maria Rilke translation of Letters To A Young Poet and Monocle chatting with Sir Tom Jones about his new album ‘Surrounded By Time’.


Image credit: “Pontty ty praid – the New Bridge over the River Taaffe in Wales”, former owner: George III, King of Great Britain, 1738-1820.
All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
Published

What Are You Willing to Be Bad At? | Designing Differentiation

What you don’t decide to do is as important as what you do do.

Scott Belsky (Adobe’s Chief Product Officer and Executive Vice President, Creative Cloud plus co-founder of Behance) gives a stunningly insightful talk which I revisited recently. It challenges us all to think about how to design / assess businesses and / or understanding our own business potential based on using a differentiating what we decide to do / don’t do:

“Self-awareness is the only sustainable competitive advantage you can find.”

Am hoping Mr Belsky won’t mind that I took the model discussed and made it available for download below as a blank template (just right click and ‘save as’)—it certainly helped me in some of my thinking about new service offerings:

Via 99u.com
Published

The Fuel Which Drives Community | The Company You Keep

Exist as an act of love.

Watching a Shirky talk always means leaving with a huge amount of pearls, but check out the above plus the quote below and tell me it doesn’t resonate with any creative endeavours you have been involved with:

“…they don’t care that they saw it in practice because they already knew it couldn’t work in theory.”

If you work with a client or in a corporation / organisation which doesn’t get what you’re trying to do even though you have showed them the solution, forget changing minds, time to change the company you keep!

Then surround yourself with people who take care plus improve each others output.

Video link if not embedding above.

Published

#30 June 2021 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

Take a cyber-ramble around these jumble of things below.

READ

In a chilly foreshadowing of events to come, New Zealand’s foreign minister warns China ‘storm’ could be coming.

Greenland ice sheet on brink of major tipping point, shit!

How private is your Gmail, and should you switch? ANSWER: it’s not and yes (I use Fastmail).

WATCH

EXPLORE

This online Lofi streaming site coupled with the audio-based effects and rainy vibes for when you want to chill or for background music accompaniment.

So pretty, meteor showers as seen from space.

Simple and free, “do wtf you want with” pixel-perfect icons.

More for your ears, a generative music platform for ambient background audio whilst you work.

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
Published

#29 May 2021 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

Delight in some random things I tweeted from the world wide web.

READ

The knicker throwing started in the Copacabana in New York in 1968’ via Tom.

Google is testing out its controversial new ad targeting tech on millions of Chrome users, sighs, check here if you’re worried.

Another whistleblower personal account & another reason to leave Facebook whilst you can.

If you’re in Ireland, thousands are urged to sue Facebook in mass action over leaked data.

WATCH

EXPLORE

A site to see a satellite tonight.

A growing list of those being brought to justice for the ‘Capital Breach’ of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C, on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021.

This guessing game pops you into the ambience of a random city and you have to guess where you are.

BONUS PICS

Image credit: Soon She Was Lost to Sight, Arthur Rackham via Old Book Illustrations.
All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
Published

#28 April 2021 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

Lets your digits do the clicking with some curated niceties.

READ

TEDxWellington 2021 cancelled (ouch).

How Kenya is harnessing the immense heat from the Earth, seriously.

How the Prime Minister of the Faroe Islands thinks they got rid of COVID19 by competence and luck.

WATCH

EXPLORE

Keep Being Human poster.

Listen to ambient sounds inspired by movies & TV.

Here’s an infinitely-zooming in or out painting.

A tool to explore the view of Earth’s globe from 750 millions ago until today.

The whole of the Louvre collection is now available online.

Image credit / check out Olga’s other colourisation work.
All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
Published

TEDxWellington 2021 Cancelled & License Hibernated | A Big Hole Appears In My Diary

For nearly a decade, a huge part of my life has been devoted to a pro-bono endeavour of producing the community TEDx events here in the capital.

The decision to cancel this years event really hurt—read the full announcement here—as the 2021 event was going to be my last and boy I was aiming to go out on a high (with a 2,000 person event plus some wicked delegate experience ideas to boot as well).

However, after:

…my time as the kaitiaki of the capital city license has ended.

SO, WHAT’S NEXT?

Rest.

Then explore new paid opportunities which align to my skill set and serves my individual purpose regarding enabling people to find and have voice through delicious learning experiences.

Am looking to work with kind humans who reach beyond their grasp and have complex problems to solve—I like intersecting disciplines, leading on collaborations and crafting outcome-based connections through content creation.

Big words for basically saying making cool and complicated stuff with nice people!

As way of an illustration, I recently developed and delivered an in-studio learning experience for Teulo which is an online platform for architects and designers.

Let me know if you are in need of a DK-shaped human to assist in any creative project directing / producing.

And I will continue to offer and deliver speaker coaching (one-to-ones and group masterclasses) for select clients as well as developing out the fourth Creative Leadership NZ 2021 conference for the end of the year.

Published

#27 March 2021 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

A gathering of things found which has surprised and delighted.

READ

Fears over DNA privacy as 23andMe goes public in deal with Richard Branson.

Bebo reveals plan to take on Facebook & Twitter.

Facebook asks users to opt into activity tracking ahead of iOS 14 changes.

WATCH

EXPLORE

Check out this massive amount of ZX Spectrum games online.

GutenSearch: Looks inside the books of Project Gutenberg.

This jungle wilderness simulator for relaxing, sleeping or working.

Comprehensive list of templates for Paper Mechanisms.

There’s a new hugging emoji (Unicode PDF details) 🫂.

Image credit: that’s a photo of the first roundabout under the Atlantic Ocean / read more about it here.
All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
Published

Developing Collaborative Learning Spaces | Teulo Expert Series

As a creative producer, I craft delicious learning experiences

…this cute line is my attempt to describe the intended impact beyond the generic title, and last week I truly got to manifest this goal.

Teulo has been a fantastic client: inviting me to MC their twice monthly global online talks (which garner on average about 350 souls), record and edit down their podcast series, as well as produce the above.

The brief was to develop an ‘in-studio’ recorded interview experience with a a specific topic-expert which would become the fifth module of a five part in-depth online series for architects and designers.

The process of developing the idea from brief to concept and then to product is a wonderful journey—with my propensity for details (have been told by more than a few how ‘particular’ I am), it amplifies the potential of achieving an output of the highest quality.

“Love how DK can hear my creative ideas and vision, then bring them to life. I have huge trust and respect for DK and really enjoy working with him, as he completely understands what I want to achieve with Teulo. Thank you!”

Jay Fenwick, Teulo Founder

It all starts with client who trusts, then collaborators who embellish your plans with their own mastery (thanks FlashDog Studios and Mike Potton), on top of trusting in ones own ability to convert a shared vision into actuality knowing that iteration and deviation are oftentimes positives.

Am now hungry for more experiences and opportunities like this…

Photo credit: Jay / Teulo Founder.
Published
PRESENTING WISDOM RELAUNCHED—1ST COHORT SOLD OUT IN ONE WEEK!