All projects: Gel, Good Todo, Games, Uncle Mark, Bit Literacy
Archives / February 2012
Kirby Ferguson finishes Everything Is A Remix
Gel 2011 speaker Kirby Ferguson (here's his Gel video) has posted his fourth and final episode of Everything Is A Remix. This four-part series on creativity is a small masterpiece of writing, editing, and yes, remixing - and the final episode makes a strong case for getting back to the common good. Highly recommended: watch it!
Kirby's new venture is a Kickstarter project called This Is Not A Conspiracy Theory, which he describes as "a multi-part series that will explain the major ideas, events and human quirks that have shaped where we are right now politically." I'm a proud backer of the project.
P.S. For more on copyright and patent issues, required listening is the recent This American Life episode (hosted by Gel 2007 speaker Ira Glass) called When Patents Attack:
Getting creativity flowing with Noah Scalin's "Unstuck"
Any recent Gel attendee knows Noah Scalin, the designer and creator of the Skull-A-Day project (see the video). I was happy to be included in Noah's new book, Unstuck: 52 Ways to Get (and Keep) Your Creativity Flowing at Home, at Work & in Your Studio
The book is full of assignments you can take on to get "unstuck" in any project you're working on - often in the form of two-minute assignments.
My favorite section is "Creativity vs. the Inbox," pages 186-187. (Just zero the inbox!) But that's just one of many ideas for getting unstuck. Suggested assignments range from multi-hour projects to actions taking just 30 seconds. Example: write down columns of adjectives describing each of the themes you're working with. Now mix-and-match across columns - you're literally forcing lateral thinking.
You can buy "Unstuck" from the Amazon link above, or from your local indie. Let me know what you create!
How Bit Literacy helped build the Minnesota Twins stadium
From a reader review of my book Bit Literacy:
I was at a conference where the construction and development team responsible for putting together and constructing the new Minnesota Twins baseball stadium gave a detailed presentation on the project. One of the first things they mentioned is that they required their entire management team to read "Bit Literacy" prior to starting the project so they could come up with a communication system via email and task list tracking system that was fast, efficient, and effective. There was no room for time wasting procedures and methods. The new stadium project was one of the more complicated professional sports stadium constructed in recent history.
Read the whole review.
(Bit Literacy is now a free ebook on the Kindle store and the Apple iBookstore.)
