Archive for the ‘photography’ Category
Obviously.
To spell out the obvious is often to call it into question.
–Eric Hoffer
Though “obviously” can never be rehabilitated.
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Image credit: Kirk Livingston
Try “Yes, and…” Today
Let there be a Science of Deep Collaboration
When I hand out a group project in my writing class I hear audible groans.
It’s because we’re trained to work at things on our own—that’s how scholarship and schoolwork and academics have worked for a long time. The groans come from all the extra work of communicating and all the expectations around not knowing if others in the group will keep their end of the group-work bargain. The groans come from the anxieties that hover around roles and responsibilities and knowing you’ll have to sell your ideas.
I am eager for new and deeper research into collaboration. Let’s call it a Science of Collaboration. Maybe it is a social science. People like Keith Sawyer and Edgar Schein are moving this science forward—along with many others. I am fond of the work Patricia Ryan Madson has done around Improv, which seems the perfect gateway for anyone to learn the fun of collaboration. And Keith Johnstone seems to have spawned many thinkers along these lines.
I’d like for this science to do (at least) two things:
- Invite people in who have been working alone for forever. But gently, and independent of the introvert/extrovert divide. I want the invitation to show the fun of the process. I want that invitation to promise more aha moments and then to quickly deliver on that promise.
- Show next steps to working together. What can an ad hoc team do to quickly get grounded enough to toss ideas that build on each other? There are techniques out there, certainly, but I’d like this to be second nature, part of our emotional intelligence, something we come to expect. Something we’ve grown up with.
“Yes, and…” seems a perfect place to start. This is the old improv notion of building directly on what the last person just said. And quickly, without lots of deliberation. It requires a certain fearlessness.
What if “Yes, and…” was built into our educational DNA from grade school up?
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Image credit: Kirk Livingston
Ratcheting Expectations in World that Demands Viral
Again: what does success look like for my project?
Do you have outsized notions of what is important?
Of course you do.
We all do, because we assume (wrongly) that what is important to me is important to everyone. Turns out that is not the case. For all the videos or stories or songs that go viral, there are countless that arrive stillborn—at least as far as numbers go.
What shadow will your project cast?
It’s easy enough to see that not everyone shares our passions and drives. Not everyone is fascinated by Star Wars or Wes Anderson films, for instance. Not everyone longs to spend hours tinkering with their lawn, or building perfect pectorals or diagramming the stars in the night sky. Not everyone asks “Why?” Not everyone asks “How can I do that myself?”
So if we are looking for our idea to go viral, we had better negotiate together what we consider viral. Will my idea get 3 million views? 3000? 30? And which am I satisfied with? What can we be satisfied with? That’s worth talking about before a project goes out the door.
I’m reminded of that bit of faith that writing will find its audience. As we prepare to launch our idea, and as we talk about who is open to hearing/acting on the idea, some frank talk about what success looks like will help immensely. Realistic expectations at the beginning of the project will help set the stage for the eventual self-scourgings or pats on the back, in a week or month or year, when you see how the project did or did not do.
And for the artist or writer—just doing the work may be enough.
And maybe that is not a bad place to dwell.
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Image credit: Kirk Livingston
Anxiety is the experience of failure in advance–Seth Godin
There is no better apologist for freelance than Seth Godin
If you find yourself asking “What is my work?” listen to this interview with Seth Godin:
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Via Brainpicker
Image Credit: Kirk Livingston
Please Read Dave Eggers: The Circle
In a world where everyone sees everything…
If you’ve ever wondered where complete transparency might lead—as I have—consider reading Dave Eggers’ excellent novel The Circle.
Don’t worry–no one’s watching.
Mr. Eggers has created a very comfortable world (for some) of deep collaboration, where everything is provided to those lucky enough to work for the Circle. The Circle, the corporation at the center of the story, looks more than a bit like our most celebrated high-tech companies brimming with smarts, cash and outsized ambition. Think Google or Apple or what Microsoft once was—and then add in a cast of characters each with an overweening and boundary-less high EQ—and you’ve got a world that is totally supportive—as long as you move in the same direction. The novel traces the story of Mae Holland as she “zings” (tweets) and “smiles” (likes) her way from outsider to the inner circle.
The story gets uncomfortable at times, especially when it shows the intent behind the use of social media and the social pressures applied. Especially when you start to recognize product placement on a very, very personal level.
Mr. Eggers has me rethinking my eagerness for employees up and down the corporate ladder to use their outside voice. I’ve been advocating, among my clients and when teaching Social Media Marketing, that helping employees reveal their work to interested outsiders is a move toward a new kind of marketing that looks less like selling and more like a conversation among interested parties. I still think that is a good move, but Mr. Eggers has explored the boundaries of that notion, and it is a bit, well, totalitarian.
I will consider using The Circle as a supplemental text for my next class on Social Media marketing. Well-written and consistently engaging, Mr. Eggers’ book is well worth your time.
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Image Credit: Kirk Livingston, just before a recitation of photography rules within a non-public space
Northeast Minneapolis Art-A-Whirl
Wandering through the artist’s workspace is at least 50% of the fun
Urban Garden in Mill City
Six floors of art studios in the California Building
The top photo shows how Minneapolis begins to blossom in the spring.
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Photo credit: Kirk Livingston
Writing finds its own audience
Except: Even God had a hard time holding an audience for long
My cousin is a big cheese in the world of women’s studies. She’s published a number of books and teaches some pretty astute, high-level stuff to aspiring Ph.Ds. Once we talked about why anyone would write and what’s the point, after all, since fewer and fewer read. (By the way: I always say this to my classes, that even a paragraph of copy scares many of us. All those words, they’re just, well, so much work.)
My cousin said something to the effect that you’ve got to believe your writing will find its own audience. That is a perceptive statement and I’ve wrestled with it since. I think it is true. I hope it is true. And I know it is false—at least immediately.
Meh. Another Sunset.
Social technologies and search let more of us find our long-lost cousins and brothers and tribesmen—the ones we never knew existed. We find them because they speak our language, possibly with our own words. And we know them because they are passionate about our topics—the stuff we think on constantly. (“You write about garlic butter too? You are my brother!”)
It’s just that it may take a long, long time for that audience to co-locate to your web address or your part of the bookshelf. Of course we hear and read stories of the overnight success folks, who start a blog on Saturday and by Tuesday they are talking with Oprah. But for more of us, we tell our stories and organize our arguments and spin them out into silence. But we must continue on with diligence, continuing to tell the story, as if keeping the porch light on, waiting for that audience to show.
There’s an old story about God giving his words to a guy and telling him to say the words. But know that no one will listen—you’ll be banging your head against a brick wall most of the time. And it’s all going to end badly. But those words will take root. And those words will blossom.
Eventually.
And over time the audience did show up.
And we’re still reading those words today, lo, these thousands of years later.
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Image credit: Kirk Livingston
conversation is an engine 