Iain's figured it out.
quantity equals quality
Sam points out this splendid contribution to the big ideas/little ideas debate. It's a pottery parable from Art And Fear quoted on LifeClever.
The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.
His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot—albeit a perfect one—to get an “A”.
Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work—and learning from their mistakes—the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.
hunkin
Going to Kinetica (picture above is from kinetica) the other week reminded me about the Cabaret Mechanical Theatre, specifically the work of Tim Hunkin, who will be a fondly remembered hero to many (which makes it sound like he's dead, he's not). He used to do a brilliant cartoon in The Observer called The Rudiments Of Wisdom, and that's now collected here. He made a fantastically quirky series called The Secret Life Of Machines - a lot of which has made it to YouTube. The piece where he demonstrates how video tape works with sticky tape and rust is typically, quietly brilliant. (And you can see almost every thing from the series here on google video.)
But the moment that caused my biggest grin while re-discovering Hunkin was finding that he's installed loads of his arcade machines on Southwold Pier. I'm especially excited about The Quantum Tunnelling Telescope.
I'm thinking this makes Southwold Pier the perfect winter weekend day-out destination. Anyone fancy coming along?
support org
Once you start blogging a lot you quickly get confronted with issues of copyright and digital rights ownership. And it's impossible to be involved with this stuff and not realise that we're in a period where individuals and large organisations are tussling about who should own what. And how things should work for the next few years. If you were going to look for sensible but radical guidance on those issues you could do worse than pay attention to the UK's Open Rights Group. And if you were looking for a cause to support with some of your New Year's Resolutionary spirit you could do worse than becoming a supporter.
this community and goodness
One of the best things I've ever been involved with (tangentially) was the setting up We Are What We Do. WAWWD is lead by a most inspiring man, David Robinson, who also set-up a splendid organisation called Community Links, based in East London. We met because David was intrigued by the way brands can create a sense of community - for their own benefit and sometimes, perhaps incidentally, for the benefit of their customers - and wondered if that same idea of brand-based community could be extended into the creation of a brand whose 'product' was social cohesion. ie Could the skills of brand-building and brand-based creativity be used to build community and social good? I'd say that the work of We Are What We Do so far has proved that he was onto something.
Anyway, he's now asked that I write something for a book they're going to publish to celebrate their 30th anniversary. It's a follow-up to this book from their 21st anniversary (you can read it all online as pdfs). And I've just had a look and it's rather dauntingly clever and insightful. So I'm going to need help.
I'm inclined not to write anything too much about brands and community because that argument has been made better elsewhere by other people, I'm thinking I'd like to write something about the community that gets built via blogging and my instinct that it is a new and positive force for social cohesion and general goodness. That's about all I've got so far, but I was wondering if any of you lot had any thoughts on it. I'd be very grateful if you did.
rainstorming
Spent this morning tiptapping away on the webbynet. Gave myself a headache. Went for a run. The run wasn't that good, but being outside was a tonic. Then I saw this story in The Metro about a school that's given all its pupils rainsuits; they aim to do at least half of their lessons outside within the next two years. And that's what we've all been missing. The outdoors. That's the best creative space.
I'm thinking I'm going to do more working in the park, will need to investigate ruggedising solutions for m'Mac. But I'm also thinking how interesting it would be to try and do brainstorms and stuff outside. Things to think about:
you'd have to find waterproof versions of those huge post-it notes.
you'd have to think hard about terrain. If you're going to be sticking lots of post-its up you'll be needing lots of trees. Or a hedge.
you'd have to organise your agenda around the light. Brainstorming during daylight, powerpoint presentations before dawn or during the twilight. You could do it like one of those outdoor cinema things, with everyone in deckchairs.
I like this idea. Anyone want to try some outdoor meeting/brainstorming something?
johnson v eno
I've just got back from the Steven Johnson and Brian Eno thing at the ICA. It'll be a very blogged event, the London twitterati were all there, and this'll be the picture everyone'll have. (Except they'll be better because I was at the back, shooting it with my phone.) It was really good. Entertaining and stimulating. And I suspect every blog will have a completely different refraction of the story, because of the range of stuff discussed. One of the dynamics in the room was the division between people who wanted to think about living in cities and the people who wanted to think about living in their computers.
So I thought I'd offer my little tangents by referring to the three things I noted on my phone:
Steven Johnson talked about John Snow as a typical Victorian amateur dabbler. Which struck a chord with me. It's another definition of the creative generalist. Someone who's interested in all sorts of things, the arts and the science. And he talked about the idea of consilience and how John Snow was able to think at all sorts of different scales about the problem of cholera - the microbial one (sort of, they couldn't really see germs then), the human one (he was trained as a physician) and the societal one (he could see and understand the effects on the city as a whole). This is a good thought. Because I bet a lot of the stuff we make that's no good; whether it's an actual product or a media product (like a brand) is no good because we've only thought about it at a single scale. We've only thought at a product level, or a target audience level or at a cultural level. But we've not hopped about from one scale to another. Whereas I be the stuff that actually works well is made by people who can naturally integrate all these different scales - individual, audience, culture. Just a thought.
When talking about the rise of the city, and of city-based social identities Mr Johnson also discussed the period after 9/11 in New York where there was a desire to make some kind of statement of solidarity but not exactly national patriotism. People didn't want to fly the stars and stripes but they wanted to fly some kind of New York flag. And I instantly felt like I'd like to fly a London flag. (And a Derby flag). Is there a London flag? There must be but I don't know what it is. Wouldn't it be good if there was a London flag we actually cared about? Must get one in time for the Olympics.
This is me paraphrasing Brian Eno paraphrasing Danny Hillis. But it's good isn't it? That resonates with me. (The quote direct from the man's mouth is here.)
finishing third
Camiel reminds me of something I meant to post about - this brilliant piece from The New Yorker about Wii and the power of being third.
inside the bald head of business
Rob Campbell's had a good idea. He wants to use the conference notice boards you see in hotels to track what global business is thinking about. Help him out. Learn more here.
But Rob - wouldn't it be easier to do it as a flickr group?
someone at nike or rga...
...or even snipperoo please tell me you're working on some way to get my nikeplus run data onto my blog more easily. I'm getting a little fed-up with screengrabbing and pasting these little graphs. It'd be lovely to have a little 'send to blog' button. Or a widget I can have running on the blog that would grab data from the nikeplus site. I can't be the only runner who desperately needs some public affirmation for every run he or she does.
Or does it already exist and I'm an idiot?