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Contact Mel and Kieren
July 3, 2009
Re reading the chapters in Presentation Zen and Slide:ology on design and the Rule of Thirds.
Viv and I will make use of this picture in our Insanely Great Slideshow Training me thinks …
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July 3, 2009
A question put to me by my 4 yo son the other day …
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July 1, 2009
Harrison Owen’s latest book (Wave Rider - Leadership for High Performance in a Self Organising World) has a great title and I, being a novice surfer, was drawn to the title. Here’s some quotes from Chapter 1 …
“Wave Riders are curious people possessed of an innate capacity to go with the flow, constantly seizing upon opportunity when others see no possibility, or even disaster. Their level of performance is consistently high, and projects are often completed in breathtakingly short periods of time, with a degree of excellence that may seem unbelievable.”
“The times have changed. The anomalous behavior of the Wave Rider holds a critical clue to new ways of surviving, and indeed thriving, in our chaotic world, enabling all of us to achieve levels of excellence and high performance previously unknown.”
“The second lesson (we learn from Wave Riders) relates to the subject of control. Stated bluntly, any surfer who ever thinks, even for an instant, that he or she is in charge of the wave, is in for a profound shock, delivered in most memorable way. Assuming, of course, that there is any memory left to capture the moment.”
This last quote is a nice lead into some magnificent footage of Wave Riders off the West Australian coast this year. I’ll let the video do the talking and encourage you to read more of Harrison Owen’s book Wave Rider - Chapter 1 can be read here
The Right - WA June 09 ‘For all - the RIGHT reasons’ from Tim Bonython Productions on Vimeo.
Here are some words from Tim Bonython who shot the film.
“For all the RIGHT reasons…By Tim Bonython.
“After get just getting back & recuperating from epic filming trip at Choppes in Tahiti, I glazed onto the LOLA swell map that shows a storm that has a spread as big as half the planet. Not so much a monster super storm but a storm that grew from below South Africa that continued to mutate across the Indian Ocean that went from Pakistan all the way to New Zealand. And right in the middle of its path was my new favorite new spot on the globe, the Right – right in the middle of its path!
So as per usual I was hot on the phone to all the usual suspects & all of them were all eying off the potential. Great minds think alike!”
Cheers
Geoff
ps. Hat Tip to Rob Graham for putting me onto this video
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June 30, 2009
Every now and then, someone posts something on Twitter that captures your attention and ends up being the highlight of your week.
Holger Nauheimer lives in Tehran (over at the Change Management Blog) and posted this Tweet …
“A must see video (60 min.) on world change effected by social media: http://watch.usnowfilm.com/ #usnow (via @acwagner)“
Well I’ve watched ‘watchUsNow‘ and it communicates the ideas that I’ve been trying to get out to the world over the past 2 years. As I was listening this sketch fell out in the first 15 minutes …
Here’s watchUsNow …
Us Now from Banyak Films on Vimeo.
Recently I spoke at a Conference in Melbourne where I blended together topics such as behaviour change, complexity and social media. One of my key messages is that the revolutionary change that we (the world) in undergoing is not because of the social media TOOLS … instead, it’s the new behaviours that the use of these tools (eg. Flickr, Twitter, Blogs) are driving.
Geoff
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June 28, 2009
I am on a Melbourne bound train and just watched another TED presentation - seems to be my favorite commuter activity these days 
In this TEDcast, Clay Shirky (author of Here Comes Everybody) reinforces my belief that we are living through a revolution in the way people interact and collaborate with each other.
I’d love to hear what Clay has to say about the impact that Twitterers within Iran are having right now. Like in his original TED talk, new social media is changing the media landscape and giving the man/woman/child on the street a voice to the world … instantly.
Taking Clay’s message to Community Change Projects - this little ‘rant’ links back to Twitter and Social Media at he bottom of this post
Last night I helped the Australian Conservation Foundation to run another of their GreenHomes workshops with a great bunch of people from Geelong, Victoria. Our topic was water and our focus was to bring people together to learn from and inspire each other. In most workshops, it’s easy to get everyone feeling motivated and inspired to change the world. When you bring people together into a supported space and give them something to do, I find that most people seize the moment and get involved. What else can we do, as project coordinators, to support ongoing social connection (and support) after the workshop?
What if we ran a series of Community Change project where the goals are re written. MOST community-based, behaviour change projects set goals like these:
Now don’t get me wrong, these goals remain central to our efforts to save the planet. BUT! These goals also drive the project’s focus and activities. As a result, the activities and tactics remain focused on information transmission about the why and how - build knowledge and skills as a foundation for change. What if that’s wrong?
Many people are now recognising the importance of building the capacity of individuals to lead their own projects. Some are also using the time at workshops to connect participants and encourage relationship building and support - build relationships and help participants to recognise the wisdom and skills to change are in the crowd. The Castlemaine 500 project, the SLAH program in City of Port Phillip and the ACF GreenHome program are doing all of these things.
What if we changed our worldview the project goals?
Let’s assume that being able to predict and control behaviour change is complex. In other words, the links between cause and effect are not know-able ahead of time AND even in hindsight the links are just as fuzzy. Let’s also assume that people don’t really care much about you or your project (eg. C500, SLAH) and let’s assume that most people want to belong to a group (or a Tribe as in Seth Godin’s book Tribes). So … what your participant’s really value and care about are the relationships between each other. What if behaviour change is driven by primarily by the influence of people/peers around us and is not an individual process based on the acquisition of new knowledge, skills and confidence?
Here’s a new set of goals that we could start to embrace in Community Change Projects: We could also start by doing some Social Network Mapping of a community first and worry less about social demographics.
More on these thoughts later … I can feel an essay/guide book coming on!
Geoff
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June 16, 2009
This post is for all those people who have heard me talk about the benefits of Twitter lately. Lee and Sachi at Commoncraft have created another great video that captures the potential ‘power’ of Twitter to bring people together around topics that they are passionate about. When you make it easier for people to connect and communicate … great things can happen. Enjoy!
And here’s a few interesting articles about Twitter … and yes, I picked these up directly from Twitter:
How Twitter, CellPhones and Facebook can make history - TED Video of Clay Shirky
Geoff
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June 14, 2009
I’ve been on the road lately … facilitating lots and lots of conversations with lots of lots of people. Big groups and small groups, mixed and unmixed groups.
The conversations have been about learning from our past and working out ways to ‘do it better’ in the future.
When you accept the offer to facilitate day after day, there is such a great opportunity to practice the art of being present … to enter a space with purpose yet being able to ‘let-go’ of how/what/when and respond to the group’s needs.
With each workshop I got better and better at getting out of the way of the group. By connecting people and ideas through conversations the group knew what mattered most, took responsibility and participated fully.
As for me … I simply opened up a space and then got out of the way of the group when I could. Occasionally leaning back in to offer something … and then stepping back (but not doing nothing - as Seth would say in Tribes).
My big Ah-ha learning was about rediscovering and seeing the power of conversations. Through conversation, the important stuff bubbles to the top and a shared understanding emerges. Relationships and networks between participants strengthens. As facilitators we need to remind ourselves that ‘it’s all about them’.
Cheers,
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June 9, 2009
I work for myself and vowed last year to collaborate more with other people. It can get lonely and sometimes you fool yourself into thinking you can do it all!
Design and art is a growing passion of mine and, through my sister (Janette Derrick who’s Organic Fabric business website is very cool), I met Kieren Tobin and Melinda Chapman of 3D Model Studios.
Mel and Kieran are graphic artists with a long history in 3d art, computer games, architectural visualisations, illustration and 2D design.
I approached Mel and Kieren to help me turn my ideas into a design for my website. I had no idea where it would end up.
The process of collaboration …
We decided to meet over a coffee and using felt tip markers and a big piece of Butchers Paper, we started to talk … and draw our ideas (By the way, Mel makes a great brew of coffee!).
At the outset I said that I had no pre conceived ideas on what the design could/should look like. It was to a process of trust and we used “Yes!And” as a principle of accepting each other’s offers and building on them. In that 90 minutes I can’t remember a single “block”.
“Accepting an offer is usually accompanied by adding a new offer, often building on the earlier one; this is a process improvisers refer to as “Yes, And…” and is considered the cornerstone of improvisational technique.” from Wikipedia here
I offered my ideas to Mel and Kieren which included the values that drive my work as a facilitator. I wanted the design to visually display concepts like collaboration, network connection and a sense of playfulness and fun.
I also wanted something different and unexpected and a site that invited visitors to explore. I needed to connect my Tangent Consulting space with my other online spaces - the Yes!AndSpace blog, Winkipod and the Training I offer.
Viv McWaters is a facilitator I collaborate with regularly and I wanted to show my connection to Viv through the design.
I love Rob and Gary’s On Your Feet website and the clever use of movement, color and interaction they have achieved.
I also needed a design that could be added to over time … as new strings to the Tangent-Bow get added … I wanted to refelct this is the design.
And so the design evolved like this …
and ended up here …
with a series of banners for the consulting, training and blog spaces …
Once we had the design sorted, it was all sent to Ron Rogers at Weby who did all the Flash animation and got the whole thing to go-live last week. Thanks Ron!
All in all and really enjoyable process … it’s much more fun working with others on design and the end product is always better.
Cheers
Geoff
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June 5, 2009
I have enjoyed collaborating with designers and a web guru to create a new design for my blog, consulting space and website. More on the design process and people who helped me later.
The Home Page
At it’s core this page is designed to be playful and convey a sense of ‘connectedness’ and integration. Linking people together through ideas is what I do best. This blog post over at NESTA influenced my early thoughts on this page too.
This design is also about ‘keeping our eye on the ball’. The faces are interested in where you are looking.
Meet the Cast - The design has cast of actors with their own little personalities …
Meet Yes!AndSpace - my blog of daily thoughts and learnings
Meet ‘Insanely Great!‘ - my training space
Meet ‘Tangent‘ - my facilitation consulting space
and finally ‘Winki-pod‘ - my podcast blog that I share with Viv McWaters
More on the story behind this site coming soon!
Geoff
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June 1, 2009
Garr Reynold over at Presentation Zen spotted this video called ‘Built to Last‘.
“This 3-minute video presentation called Built to Last won first prize in The Congress for the New Urbanism video contest a few weeks ago. The rules for the contest were simple: “Create a 3-minute maximum video that illustrates how the principles of New Urbanism - density, design and walkability - can effectively respond to current environmental challenges that we face.” Watch the video.” Garr Reynolds.
Here is another great example of creative communication. Built to Last combines a great mix of music, large/bold text, images and story that helps to convey a message. In it’s own right it’s a great example and it won the video contest … BUT … what’s even more important is the ’spreadability’ of this story. With Web 2.0 tool like Slideshare, YouTube and Blogs, we can now take ‘consumption‘ of media to a new level … that level is ‘sharing‘ with others who want to follow and be part of this Movement.
This video will not change ‘everyone’ … in fact most people won’t even watch it to the end. That’s not important though. As Seth Godin in his book ‘Tribes’ (and Clay Shirky in Here Comes Everybody) points out - if you try lead/convince everyone you’ll end up leading /convincing no one. Just like Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth movement, he didn’t change everyone’s mind … he simply stepped up and lead a worldwide group of people that wanted to be lead.
Clay Shirky likens the Social Media revolution to a Triathelon. Last century we were all running a single leg of the race … that leg was called ‘Consumption‘ of media. You know … billions of hours of human thought wasted every weekend watching TV commercials (Clay calls this our Cognitive Surplus).
In the past decade, masses of people (millions and millions) have taken up the Triathelon and added 2 more legs to their race. Those 2 legs are the ‘Production‘ and the ‘Sharing‘ of media. What has emerged is an explosion of new ’stuff’ on the internet and the creation of vast amounts of new knowledge. Wikipedia is a classic example of this. Wikipedia is what happens when people start to apply that ‘Cognitive Surplus’ to the Production and Sharing of videos like Built to Last.
In Sum
Watch (Consume) and enjoy this video …
Send it to your friends (Share) who might care about it … and start to (a challenge to you all) …
Create (Produce) your own sideshows and videos and that communicate stories for which you are passionate about … you never know, you might even start to lead a movement and make the world a better place!
Cheers
Geoff
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