Category: opinion

2021 Annual Review | 2022 Strategy / Guesswork

After 8,760 hours of 2021, my take on that which made me smile / think plus some ‘finger in the air’ stuff on what’s ahead.

2021 OVERVIEW

Well I’m patting myself on the back (and you should also) for making it round another orbit of the sun. Putting, the global situation of the continual pandemic, terrible institutional leadership regarding climate change, crypto capitalistic insidiousness, global elite tax avoidance which went unchallenged, silly Web3 proclamations, aside, this year has been one of exploration and action, misery and laughter, heartache and gratitude.

From moving between the different domains of my clients disciplines to some explorations of my personal creative agency, storytelling has been the thread between all the activities, along with the desire to add value to the world through collaboration. It’s been a year of internal revelations and a renewed hunger to try new things in a future which is starting to glisten with potential.

CLIENTS

To enable me to pay the rent, services were delivered to the following superb array of entities:

…plus individual speaker coaching sessions took the total to 35 clients for 2021—an honourable haul in current climes and very much appreciate deeply each and every opportunity.

In terms of what services were delivered, it comes out something like this (‘speaking’ includes talks as well as my ‘purposeful storytelling’ beginners and advanced full-and-half-day masterclasses for leadership groups):

How that equates to monies earned:

A couple of the choice highlights have been:

MC’ing the monthly online Teulo Talks whereby I get to interact plus learn from internationally renowned architectural and construction industry talent. Hearing how these leaders are exploring new computational approaches plus putting the climate crisis at the heart of their designs is wonderfully hope inducing.

Producing a three-day ‘purposeful storytelling’ learning experience with the good librarians of the Christchurch Libraries was a joy. Spending a repeated amount of time with clients is rare so it’s very much cherished when it occurs. And hearing after about the positive impact of aiding those to embrace their stories with the skills to share them makes me soul sing.

And here’s what a few folks said about me in other realms of my delivery (which makes me shift in my seat and feel odd although am trying to get better at celebrating myself more):

“I recently had DK run the ‘presenting engagingly online’ session at a virtual conference I was managing for our organization. We had many great speakers, but based on the feedback (and my opinion too!) DK’s was the highlight. The session included tangible take aways that I use daily while presenting and was fun and energetic. Coordinating the session with DK was a breeze (even with the time difference), and he tailored his approach to fit the group I was working with. Could not recommend enough!”
June Kinloch, Lead, Digital Products, The HIVE at IBI Group

“When in lockdown, at Pharmac we asked DK to deliver a zoom presentation on ‘presenting engagingly online.’ Our objective was to give staff an opportunity to connect virtually after we had all shifted to working from home and we had few opportunities for a shared experience. We used DK’s prepared session to shift from presenting in this new medium (zoom) to how we adapt generally, with shifting mediums as a metaphor for the broader pressure on all of us to adapt and change in response to our external environment. The latter part was progressed via a moderated Q&A session. Staff really enjoyed the session – both parts – and I consider DK’s role as catalyst to have been really helpful.”
Mark Woodard, Director of Corporate Services/CFO, PHARMAC NZ

“I have had the great pleasure of inviting DK to work with our team for 2 enjoyable and valuable sessions so far: an in-person (those were the days!) public speaking and storytelling workshop; and a virtual Presenting Engagingly Online session.
These were both very highly rated by our team and we’re looking forward to having DK come and share more magic with us to help us continue to hone our skills and confidence. On top of that, DK is one of the kindest, most compassionate and generous people I know. He builds an environment of trust, confidence and care, role modelling respectful feedback and gently supporting people to build confidence and strength with public speaking, storytelling and presenting. I cannot recommend DK highly enough.”
Kimberley Gilmour, People & Culture | Health & Wellbeing, Uneeq

TED

A layering of operational challenges on top of the extremely uncertain COVID situation meant the team decided to cancel TEDxWellington 2021 and I also took it as an opportune time to ‘retire’ from the license holder position plus step down from the charitable board established to oversee the endeavours. It was a very bittersweet decision for many reasons.

The above was my first pass at the ‘delegate experience’ which was a result of a few sessions with the interactions team which I was leading this year. My aim was to inspire and guide the group to craft a creative experience for the 2,000 attendees which surprised and delighted whilst tapping into the subjects explored by the speakers and also literally recording plus increasing the nature of the chosen theme of the event, which was ‘hope’ (the speakers were already chosen by this stage as well as the theme, and after the event was cancelled were ‘gifted’ over to a new license and event TEDxPipitea to continue with).

TEDxWellington was so aligned to my purpose and I gave nearly a decade of pro bono time to it. Even though it nearly broke me a few times and constricted my ability to explore paid work, what an amazing 9 years selling out every event, giving many an opportunity to speak on a TEDx stage to catapult their stories into the world and a chance for many more to volunteer on a world-class initiative (many of which have leveraged in their own personal / professional journeys). I feel blessed to have had the experience which included:

HEART

Image credit

“My heart is a beautiful mess of things, like an Hieronymus Bosch painting, full of magic and weird characters plus brilliance and terror!”

Something I tweeted

Have been taking the time to go inwards and explore spirit versus ego, values and character, trauma and healing. It’s been long overdue and I know will never be a completed exercise as my ‘bastard brain‘ still pops up and does its usual thing. But there’s an emergence state occurring as a wider range of literacy regarding my emotions are being accessed.

There remains a deep reverberating ache for companionship, and that’s okay. I have a high level of trust in this longing which sparks an odd but familiar hopefulness in me. I have bared my calon and the outcome was the opposite of what was hoped for but I am proud of me for making the it known:

CURATED / CREATED

As evident in the 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36 digital breadcrumbs offerings⁠⁠—the good stuff I tweet collected into cohesive and more snackable monthly blog posts⁠—my curiosity is still sharp and I delight in having a wide view on the world. Between those and a modest blogging offering this year I will continue to seek out a wide-ranging media diet and delight in the brilliant intersections I see in most things:

first 25 Creative Welly episodes image

This year I continued my Creative Welly activities along with my collaboration partners, and produced fourteen episodes featuring 28 bold humans (read the end of year review here). It continues to be a unique visual approach to the medium and keen to build off the wholly independently produced venture as still have a big list of people to get to.

Earlier in the year I got to making⁠—have designed and developed a working prototype focused on amplifying human connection (born out of a failed attempt at an ebook on the same topic which I’m revisiting for the new year in a different form).

After lots of cardboard cutting and glue gun fun, a friend helped with the final ‘cut file’ to get it fabricated, and over a thousand bucks later I had the chance to fit it all together and… it works!

Have pitched the concept to a couple of agencies for use in the New Year (fingers crossed).

LESSONS LEARNED

Extrapolating from the types of services plus financials more speaking opportunities will be sort along with consulting, however, I’ll be dropping the in-person MC offerings (as actually know better practitioners out there I can pass on my inquiries to).

The self-care and self-awareness values have been ignited after being in dormancy which has sparked so many cognitive and emotional reactions in me that I know it’s important. Tenderness, kindness and grace have become often cited and lens by which to navigate this crazy life.

2022 ACTION STRATEGY / THE NEXT 8,760 HOURS

We’re all grown-ups and know that planning is guessing, shallow attempts to manifest best intentions, action is key.

Throw in a layer of doing things which serve my spirit and purpose, plus creative collaborations with other impressive people, then that’s an action list I want to chase down.

My purpose remains the same:

“I’m driven to enable people find and have voice.”

via justadandak.com /about

Beyond continuing to offer my current speaking / coaching services, my desire is to give attention to projects which raise eyebrows, both individually and in collaboration with others (centered around the above purpose statement). This will manifest in the following actions (no particular order):

  • as described above regarding the prototype, been researching for about 9 months and developing out a product around augmenting gathering experiences, so intending to go live in the first quarter with a few paid service offerings and one free informational offer;
  • also in the first quarter, will launch a series of online course offerings relating to presenting online (a deeper dive from what I’ve been delivering this past year or so to many clients);
  • Creative Leadership NZ (which ran in 2017, 2018, 2019 then paused due to the pandemic) will make a return at the end of 2022 to “connect visionary humans and creatives into a community to solve contemporary challenges” and is already in development mode (venues, curating speakers, exploring partnerships);
  • Creative Welly will continue to be my pro bono project and more episodes will follow soon enough (as an aside, the “Welly” in this title does not stand for “Wellington” as most assume, read about it on the about page);
  • artistic expressions through sound, artifacts and visuals (not NFTs because they are mainly a ponzi scheme which hurts the world);
  • and finally, have an audacious moonshot documentary project brewing which is titillating the senses and aiming to close the deal this year.

Also want to throw a big hope and that is to visit the family back in Wales and then other friends in other countries during the trip. With the current state of the virus who knows, am doing my best not to miss people / places and recognise in gratitude where I am and what I have also.

As for the more personal side of things, am keen to craft a ‘theme’ for the coming year and have settled on:

Radical creativity responsibility.

Towards the end of the year I unfollowed a bunch of people and entities on Twitter / Linkedin which were constantly creating a negative response in me and it triggered the realisation that it is up to me to define my state (or at least do my best to react to the world in the positive). Integrating traumatic experiences and sad-inducing moments I will take personally and treat them like adventures to be grateful for.

So, how was your year and what guesses / actions do you have for 2022?

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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.

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Why Mentors Matter | A Thank You

In gratitude.

In 2004’ish we connected through a comment I left on your blog. You called and we chatted. You had a lot to say and I was hungry to learn. You shared stories, highlighted people and ideas I should be aware, plus taught me to explore ‘better questions.’

At the time I had just come out of working in the public sector and failing at my first business in the youth work and corporate social responsibility space.

In 2005 during one of our long phone conversations, we were discussing the intersection of my youth work and growing interest in the new media landscape. I referenced young people as ‘media snackers’ and on the call you purchased the domain and challenged me to do something with it.

It took another 6-9 months but in June 2006 mediasnackers.com was launched focussed on ‘how young people create and consume new media.’

Five years later it would have a supporting staff of seven, over a hundred podcasts, dozens of video podcasts, authored a book, have worked with a vast array of clients from local /national government, UNICEF, executive leadership bodies, Ubisoft, marketing agencies, charities etc. plus have delivered on multiple countries on five continents… all because you bought a domain!

Throughout the years since, you have continued to champion and challenge, commend and berate—our long discussions about tepid and sigh-worthy institutions plus traditional business models / thinking always igniting my creativity and amplifying my intentions—and I delighted in how you uncover insights utilising superb lyrics to make a point:

There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in

Leonard Cohen, Anthem

Thank you g for all that you have revealed and amplified for me.

For being my mentor.

For being a friend.

Mentors matter.

Good ones listen then uncover. Help you move forward or pause to think through a tough decision. They highlight pathways based on experience and intuition, revealing pitfalls and dangers along the way which more untested souls wouldn’t have understood existed.

I’ve been lucky enough to both have wonderful mentors in my life as well as also being mentor for 3 years on the Culture Hive Digital Marketing Academy plus on many occasions with new TEDx license holders in New Zealand.

Mentors can be friends, bosses, colleagues, family. Sessions can be structured or not. Often or little. What matters is that they add value. Reveal and compliment.

Mentors matter.

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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.

READ the FULL ANNOUNCEMENT, reflections & thank you / LOVE LETTER post VIA TEDXWELLINGTON.COM

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.

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Hosting A SPADA Masterclass | The Business of Creativity

A conversation on growing robust businesses in the creative sector.

Had the esteemed honour to host the above panel for the good people at SPADA. It’s always a joy connecting with humans doing wonderful things and from a very selfish reason was very much needed that afternoon.

So if you’re interested what a few producers here in Aotearoa are up to press play and have a watch / listen.

Thank you Aliesha from StapelsVR, Dan from Gamefroot plus Rhonda from VoiceQ for participating in such good humour and openness.

Oh and check out my new video studio set-up in the video as doing a lot more online MC’ing and hosting these days for other clients.

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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.
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2020 | End Scene…

Reflecting and future gazing.

As the world continues to hobble forward through it’s pandemic / environmental / corrupt leadership crisis, please do take the time to watch the incredible video essay above on what I’ve always held dear: humans are innately good.

LESSONS

Be fiercely kind because…

There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” ― Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

2021

Will be focused on the following:

  • Online production: have 20+ events already booked to MC plus producing podcasts for a couple of clients as well so building out the home studio to up the production values in these areas
  • Masterclasses, coaching and speaking: continuing to deliver in-person internal sessions on ‘purposeful storytelling’ whilst taking on 1-2-1 speaker coaching clients and also be open to speak on stage a few times as well (truly miss this)
  • RemoteTogetherNZ: continue my curation role for this Queenstown-based endeavor happening March 2021 (buy your passes here)
  • Online course: putting together a virtual offering with the hope to launch mid 2021
  • TEDxWellington: my pro bono to bring the largest ever TEDx to the nations capital (going to be a 2,000 person live event) and shine a light on the incredible talent we have in the region then amplify them through the TED platform
  • Creative Welly: continue to hone my side passion project and curate amazing people doing wonderful things in capital (read the review here)
  • Production pitches: have a couple of proverbial ‘irons-in-the-fire’ regarding NZ based content for distribution for a global market
  • Creative Leadership NZ: aiming to produce the fourth iteration of my little conference for the end of 2021.

BLOGGING EFFORTS

What I posted this year:

NEW SITE DESIGN

Spent some time sprucing this website up a little using the new Twenty Twenty-One WordPress theme to really minimilise the design and visual clutter. Am still working out a few extra tweaks although on the whole nearly there and so much slicker.

So here’s a 2021 which elates, brings joy and softer changes.

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Creative Welly Episode #4 | The Power Of The Breath

Another two impressive humans sharing stories and colliding ideas.

Truly enjoying the combination of differences during these conversations and how you never know where commonalities will occur.

There’s audio if that’s how you roll:

For full bios and sign up plus subscription options go to creativewelly.com

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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:

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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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:

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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