If you put in a day digesting Seth Godin, Tom Peters, ChangeThis and then throw in IDEO, Diego Rodriguez and for good measure Mark Hurst you not only have a very sound reading list on business, creativity and leadership but also a question on your mind!

One of the common themes that is woven through all the blogs and sources I just listed is thinking about  the experience you are   engaged in with something.

Is the EXPERIENCE at the center of  everything you do?

If not why not? Because….. is the typical answer.

Take almost any university.

Is there a Chief Experience Officer to guide the way faculty, students, staff, visitors and the average person who happens on the ivory tower interact with the academy?

We spend a lot of time thinking about publications and ads.

We spend a lot of time thinking about how a stage looks for graduation.

We spend a lot of time cleaning floors, windows, parking lots and even lagoons.

So obviously there is an element of experiential thought taking place in many offices, but is there any coordination?

Why not?

When how we fall in love with the experience of an Apple product is a big part of the iPhone or iPad environment why are we not saying the same about our education environments today and especially the university?

To put the academic experience in the hands of an HR department or student services department is thinking too small and too narrow.

What every university needs, especially today is a Chief Experience Officer to guide, mould and roll out a consistent experience for everyone who comes in the door of the academy, how hard would that be?

I wonder if we haven’t gotten it all wrong?

I was at the Dubai Fish Market on the 24th of December and the 1st thought that went through my mind was how do we make this better!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Better in what sense?

My initial thought was more organized, easier to navigate, maybe more pleasant.

The actual question I needed to be asking was how was the experience of the Fish Market and how could that be better?

The reality is the experience was an out of the park home run.

The reality is we live in an era where we think we need to change things, stamp them with our piece of thinking, to feel that we have had an impact.

Maybe we need less change than we think!

What the Fish Market really needs is a couple of guides to bring people through and tell them about what they are seeing and talk about how we got to this moment from the past, a tweak.

The Dubai Fish Market is a living monument to a culture and it is all about experience not change.

I think we spend too little time thinking about experience, the subtle nature of it, and that is where we fail in our endeavours big and small.

We need to be thinking with our senses and not only about process.

We need to be thinking about the complete experience.

As we address the change around us we often think about cuts, re-deployment, product delivery, those things we tend to be able to monetize.

I think we are being distracted from the one thing we can deal with, change and develop, the experience we have in commerce, politics, education our lives in general.

Mark Hurst, the author of Good Experience does a great job of reminding us how important the experience we have is on a weekly basis.

For Mark, this week, creating a good experience on the web, in a shop, at a conference all comes down to listening to those who are consuming what you have to offer.

Now sit back and think, think hard, how well do you listen and when you are listening do you actually use that information to develop the experience you are delivering?

Exactly, we need to listen and we don’t.

Shame on us!

We spoke about the 1st United Arab emirates based action film called Abdulla Omar and the Lost City of Sand. (the link to the audio is below)

Why this conversation was very interesting to me was becasue it was the issue of bridging culture and commerce in the film industry that occupied a 9 year span of my life as I completed my doctoral dissertation.

The question I have been asking ever since successfully defending my doctorate is very simply, ‘what stops us from wanting to outright fuse culture and commerce in a popular format?’

Nothing I suspect, but, we tend to feel that culture is a protected ground and to fuse it to commerce is in some way cheapening it.

You tell me? Is Michael-Ryan Fletchall on to the way to make culture relevent in a popular and profit generating format?

There are many ways to create relevant cultural expression and there is no time like the present in the UAE to start experimenting and inventing those means.

It has been 8 years since I gave any real thought to what and why I wrote my doctoral dissertation and thanks to Michael-Ryan Fletchall and Abdulla Omar, the soon to be movie, it has all come rushing back with reason, purpose and need.

Why is it that everything we do does not embody the spirit of Cirque du Soleil?

In particular, but not exclusively, I am thinking about how I teach at Zayed University or broadcast at Dubai Eye.

Wait a second why can’t everything be like Cirque?

And I mean everything!

My children saw Alegria recently and my wife and I did not prepare them for the experience we just let it happen.

My 2 sons summed the experience up in one word, WOW!

Maybe that is the problem with the way we construct and interact with the environments we touch daily.

And I do believe we have our own environments and then we nudge the environments of others on a regular basis.

The environmental issue for Cirque du Soleil is they create a complete experience!

And what you and I do is pay little attention to the experience thinking more in terms of content and not the coexistance of the two.

How can you separate content and experience anyway?

You cannot BUT we do our best to try and I think successfully sabotage our endeavours!

So if it is thinking 100% about experience that makes Cirque du Soleil work, and TED as well for that matter, where do we get trained to do this?

Why is experience conceptualisation absent from our education?

Why is planning for experience the last thing we think about when it comes to meetings, activities, business, politics and education in general?

1. takes to much thought

2. requires a team effort

3. requires extreme optimism

4.requires being willing to suspend reality

5.needs the acceptance that things might fail

6.cost

7.we work too slow

8.we change things when they work too often

9.trust

10. we strive, and are happy, for mediocrity and not the exceptional every time we do something

It is not that I wanted to leave, I didn’t/I don’t, but I must.

I must leave because I need to take these connections, ideas, energy, feelings, impulses, things we at TED 2009 felt but may not know how to draw for others to experience.

But the curious thing is I could not get to the door!

It took me an hour to get from a farewell hug with an extraordinary woman who somehow, to this moment feels like a long lost sister, to actually make it out of the door!

And along the way, to that door, I continued to meet new people and hear new stories. Connections were even made with the wait staff, extraordinary!

I finally made it out of the arena and there, like magnet pulling me back was Jim, a long time TED donor maybe the only person with a whole family in TED, again we broke into conversation and made an extraordinary connection!

20 minutes later, walking towards the hotels, with a TEDster, I broke free.

I was walking alone for 5 minutes 43 seconds before I was pulled back for a final TED experience as I reached out and spoke to yet another delegate who was also making the break.

When I was let go from TED, I know this sounds like a scene of Star Trek, I felt strangely different.

What is that difference?

I can not explain how it is that I have met a handful of people that I feel like I have known all my life.

I cannot explain how it is that to see these people, watch them, listen and interact strangely felt like a reunion.

But how do you have a reunion with people you have never met? And may not see again.

The point is the door has been opened to a social, intellectual, philosophical bond with a group of people I will use all my energy to keep that door open!

It is a rare time and place to connect with people on so many levels once the social constructs we live in are removed and it is just that environment I have lived in for 4 days.

Unconditional interest.

Unconditional friendship.

Unconditional…

TED has for me started a ball rolling and I cannot see how it will stop and don’t want it to stop.