JamesEd.com » idea

Idea Space… DIY!

James — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 07:49:24 +0000

I love the idea of Idea Paint.

The 1st thing I love is the site.

When you go watch the upload counter and stop it to see the words!

00=limitations or zero limitations, very cool!

The second thing I like is the institutionalized idea of breaking the rules and thinking out loud all over the box, the box of your environment.

Idea paint is whiteboard paint that can be applied to any surface!

Imagine the ability to transform your office walls into idea space!

A hallway into idea space!

A floor into idea space!

Every surface becomes a creative tool! Institutionalized and encouraged use your environment to succeed.

Clever and cool!

Does a University need a Chief Experience Officer?

James — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 10:55:59 +0000

I spend a lot of time reading business publications and blogs.

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?

To be young and foolish!

James — Thu, 06 May 2010 07:18:24 +0000

I often ask myself if it was a perfect world how would I build a team to actually make change happen!

And I keep coming back to the idea of being young and foolish!

The people who we charge with making change, on the whole, are old, tired, jaded and pretty much worn out as far as creative thought goes! But the old goats have a whole bunch of experience.

The young on the other hand have no experience and pretty much no fear!

So, how do we change the world, start with something small of course, we need to bring the old and young together!

Sounds simple but it does not happen that often, and look at the mess we are in!

Gemma Sisia set up a school system in Tanzania that is the product of being young and foolish and well, it is amazing to see what has happened!

Free education for the poor and a chance to make a change in Tanzania for Tanzanians!

BUT if Gemma had asked a school head in Dubai about doing this what would they say?

IMPOSSIBLE, money, students, teachers, politics, can’t be done.

Gemma is the example of how being young and foolish and not having baggage can actually facilitate global change.

Yes global change!

But you need to start with what you can do, you need to start!

Gemma Sisia and the school of St Jude, be amazed at the power of acting on your ideas!

Content is king!

James — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 08:32:40 +0000

Last night on Nightline I had a great conversation about content syndication!

I am not talking RSS but how you can get content that is market ready into the market!

Imagine that academic paper that can be reformatted and become a valuable business piece.

How does this effect you? Are you a person who writes? Do you have stories or articles that could be made market ready in a pinch?

If you are like me you are saying YES but how and what to do?

Listen to this interview.

Maddy and Ram are really on to an idea, B2B service, that could have wide implications on the content we consume both in our media and even through newsletters!

Content is king!

Pick up the phone!

James — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 08:33:27 +0000

I think, just maybe, with all our text, tweets, SMS, MMS, facebook, Qik, blogs… we have forgotten how nice it is to just pick up a phone and tell someone something, anything!

I think, just maybe, we are hiding behind technology when it comes to communication today!

The old voice on the phone can be fast, effective, and definitive!

Today, everyday make one phone call when you would normally send an email or text or SMS or otherwise engage technology!

How to start!

James — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 06:32:15 +0000

We are bombarded with suggestions about what is the matter with the world and what we might want to do about it.

We are buried in possibility really!

After watching TED 2010, no I was not there but really did wanted to be, I realized that part of our personal problem with activating ideas t is the start button!

There is no start button for many people they do not see the first box on the grid!

Or we are too scared to start the process of change!

What is going to get in the way of Jamie Oliver’s TED Prize wish, the average person in their home starting to do food differently.

Talk is cheap and so is TV but the start is expensive, it involves faith and buy in.

As Oliver said his idea is not hard, it is obvious and it is needed. WE NEED TO START.

As with all great things we need a push and maybe the school education scheme is the push. Oliver’s wish might be the start button on a personal manageable scale

Or maybe it is less to do with the start and fear of not being able to turn off the process, as is the case with most great ideas.

There is always the fear of the unknown.

So how do we start?

1. think small, like breakfast small.

2.think about a finish point you can see, making the food and eating it for one meal.

3. think of the engagement, not just doing but living with the food and the process.

4. be selfish and think about you, why you are doing this not the whole world.

This idea of making actions, tasks, idea-activation tiny is they key to success in any endeavour! If we can not see why and how and take ownership for ourselves then it is a nameless, faceless activity which is easy to ignore!

Thinking 2010

James — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 08:21:17 +0000

I stumbled on this nice little piece from TOM PETERS today.

We must destroy “departments”–and create aggressive, imaginative, entrepreneurial Professional Service Firms in their stead.

Two words that we need to infuse into our organizations in the New Year, education through plumbing, IMAGINATION and ENTREPRENEURIAL.

We are living in a changed world, it is no longer on the cusp of changing, it is changed.

Yet we are using the same old tools the tackle new and blindingly fast maturing situations.

We not only need to teach people how to re-engage their imaginations but how to use that tool in a way that they can help others, make a viable industry out of their talent.

I have no doubt that we can all be imaginative and entrepreneurial, but many people would rather ride than run ahead, SO LET THEM!

2010 is the year of doing it, flying in the face of conventional thought and putting your imaginative solutions, ideas and thoughts to action.

Imagine what will happen!

The what have you published mentality

James — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 09:57:30 +0000

Today I was talking to a group of academics about convergent media.

What I learned, to my surprise, is that even though I practice convergent media, see my nightline site, this does not count because I have not invested the painful time to write about it for some redundant academic journal.

I have even taught and continue to teach my students how to take audio and contextualize it using blogs and print media, the ultimate convergent activity.

I am not even a convergent media novice in the eyes of those who live and breath convergent media, because I do not write about it.

So here is my plan.

I am going to write up my take on convergent media for 2010, just one year because a lot changes, and seed it on this blog, in a knol and even create a bit of a audiolog about it.

I am hoping that these minor activities will at least point in the direction of me having half an idea about convergent media and where it is going because the stuff I am doing is really cool, the livestream alone makes me question the need for conventional TV or media distribution at all.

Clearly doing is no longer acceptable today when it comes to talking about an idea you have to be able to write about the ideas as well to have any credibility.

So, if I write about convergent media but don’t actually do convergent media is that ok?

Journalists need retraining, sort of!

James — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 12:12:04 +0000

Today more than ever journalists need to be retrained on how to connect their stories to their multiple audiences.

The problem faced by journalists today is very simply that their occupation is transforming and they do not know how to transform along with it.

When we academics talk about the changes taking place to journalism we love to use the word converging!

I hate to break it to those academics but the convergence had happened and we are already on to the next thing!

One academic I spoke to today suggested that there are different understandings of convergence, no there is not!

Convergence as the 1st hit on a Google search suggests is a simple and I might add dated concept!

Search Results

Technological convergence – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to Media convergence?: Convergence of media occurs when multiple products come together to form one product with the advantages of all of them, …
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_convergence – Cached – Similar

In 1990 YES convergence was easily a newspapers website with audio, video and links on it.

Today we have a whole new journalism emerging because technology has advanced in a way that was never expected, control and creation have been very broadly moved from the hands of the few, the controller’s, to the hands of the many, the consumers.

And then along came WEB2.0, the whole convergent model was then thrown into the wind!

But there are plenty of academics and media organizations who are holding onto the old school convergent model much like a security blanket.

I would suggest the reason we see journalists and journalism organizations holding onto the old ideas of convergence, remember I am suggesting we already converged and have moved on, is because they are unsure what this means for them.

We hear a lot about citizen journalism, which is not convergence but a means of communicating information among the mass audience.

We read a lot about WEB2.0 and which is also not journalism but a delivery system for conversations and stories.

So where are we if convergence has come and gone?

We are in a new place, a place that sees the simultaneous existence of old media (with their converged offering), citizen journalism with everyone telling a story and what I am calling the iJournalist.

So where are we today then?

We are in a place where the writing, research, editing and presentation skills of journalism are as important as ever.

We are in a place where the variety of sources available to the journalist have changed and now include the immediate interaction of the public on the ground, the citizen journalist.

We are in a place where speed is important and deadlines have gone from being in hours to literally in minutes.

We are in a place where editing and production takes place during an event and the story is posted before, during and after that event.

We are in a place where there are multiple and simultaneous delivery systems that may but often do not reside in a single place although they can and often are collected.

We are in a place where journalism takes place using a smart form and is consumed using that same phone.

So what does this mean for journalism and where does the retraining fit in?

Journalists need to be trained for speed.

Journalists need to be trained on the new art of sourceology.

Journalists and editors need to be able to communicate fast and efficiently and both might today find themselves in the field.

Journalists need to understand the different delivery systems for their stories.

Journalists need to understand the new configuration needed for stories and the fact that this will influence the audience.

Journalists need to understand that their audience is no longer static but dynamic.

Journalists need to understand that their work is being consumed,in many cases from a phone!

I believe what we are about to witness is the resurgence of journalism as a career!

And for those who are not part of the 4th screen generation, wed to paper, it is time for a bit of retraining!

The Art of Travel.

James — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 17:06:18 +0000

I have just arrived back in Dubai from a 6 day trip to Canada, yes that was 15.5 hours in the air and a 9 hour time change for me.

And don’t let me forget to remind you that we transited through Europe, where we did not stay over, so the door to door trip was 24.5 hours, all for 6 days.

Was it worth it? No question, yes.

What this trip reminded me of though, is the simple fact that today so many of us have lost the connection to travel as an art and travel has become only a utilitarian function.

Part of the problem with the disappearing ‘art of travel’ is we get onto aircraft for sometimes as long as 17 hours to get from A to B, where in the past that would have involved multiple connections and the obligatory stop-over.

Today a stop-over is no longer a gift but a dreaded travel torture technique.

I beg to disagree about the stop-over as a bad thing and where possible try to create the time for these to get out of the airport and into a city/country for a mico tour of that place.

I love the smell of the air in a place, it tells a story that sometimes you don’t want to hear but you do anyway.

Food, people, reality, global-connectivity are all pieces of the allure of a stop-over and have for a very long time been a way to relax,explore and connect with people and places that we might not otherwise connect to.

But today in our fast paced need for speed lives we are failing miserably to live in the moment because that moment is being radically morphed into a working space, a utilized space, a thing to use as opposed to a time to invest in ourselves.

How disconnected can you be when traveling? To me that is the measure of the use of your time!

Too bad we rush from here to there without taking a little bit of time to see things from another focus, most of the time we see things from an aircraft window at 37,000 feet!

In a 7 hour lay over in Paris I ate breakfast beside the Eiffel Tower and wondered why anyone would not opt to take a break in their travels to do just the same?