The Challenge is Shared Vision

May 10, 2012 //
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“The challenge is making sure that everyone has a shared vision of what is being built and why throughout the development process. ”

http://www.projectsatwork.com

Yes, that is the challenge, isn’t it, for all our projects as thought workers? Not just accessing a vision, as in top-down “here’s the vision”-vision, but a shared vision.  In the ideas economy, it’s no longer enough to develop a product.  You are also in parallel developing the shared vision of the product and why it is being built.  In other words, you are producing a story about its cultural significance.

To get at shared vision, an organization has to invite probing questions and make it authentically safe to ask and answer them.  Here are some…

  • Who has input into what is being developed/built?
  • Do different types of stakeholders get to talk with one another?  Do they want to?
  • Do people get to see each other’s work and how it fits together?  Are they curious to want to?
  • Are people – including workers – invited to add their own meanings about what is significant to them personally about the product?
  • How often is it discussed why we are developing/making this thing?
  • What does “throughout” mean to us…daily, weekly, monthly, formally, informally, over coffee, at certain critical checkpoints, whenever we log-in, at different times according to their  functional schedules?  Does “throughout” have a beginning, middle and end?
  • How does this story get told?
  • How does it feel different to produce something that has cultural significance?
  • (How) do we recognize cultural significance as a part of quality?
Categories E. Slomba Arts Interstices, National Trends, The Agile Story

Johnny Agile-Seed

May 10, 2012 //
0

This August I’m taking my two boys cross-country, stopping at organizations along the way to share and discuss Agile practices.   In our family, having a blast is never mutually exclusive with getting things done.   Quite the contrary!

Departing from New Haven on July 25, cities along our proposed route include: Portland, ME; Montreal; Ottowa; Minnesota/St. Paul; Helena, MN; Seattle; Portland, OR; San Francisco; Salt Lake City; Boulder; Kansas City; Chicago; Detroit; Buffalo/Toronto; and Saratoga Springs.

Please let me know of a manager I should look up,  or if you’d like to discuss materials to include on the memory sticks.  Linked In is the best way to get in touch.

Let’s see what grows from this rapid velocity, face-to-face exchange.   As our pediatrician once remarked, sometimes things are just so old school they’re innovative!

Categories E. Slomba Arts Interstices, National Trends, Regional New York / New England, The Agile Story

Healing from the Industrial Revolution

May 9, 2012 //
1

It appears that “getting to be human again”* tops the list of intrinsic rewards for working in an Agile way.  Putting people at the center instead of the usual – process at the center – enables the creation of platforms for visibility so experts can practice more of what Fast Company columnist Scott Anthony calls  “associational thinking,” that is, the ability to make surprising connections.  Inviting people to step up onto this platform so their work can be better seen and they can claim a more effective vantage point from which to see the work of others is key to the Agile mindset and workspace.  In fact, in the Agile framework the workspace reflects the mindset, and vice versa.

I’ve written before about the concept of unrepeatability, but yesterday in conversation something clicked.  Every task to which today’s knowledge workers apply themselves truly is, in essence, unrepeatable.  There will never be an exact set of problems like the one you’re facing today.  Documenting the story of how you define, approach and tackle this unique set of circumstances, not by checking boxes on a form but by setting up transparency so that the narrative is evident to all stakeholders creates a culture of shared meanings.

The freedom to follow an idea from concept to prototype and then improve upon it in a close-knit group is the natural high of innovation.  Access to a tribe of people who either contributed with you to solving commonly-identified problems and/or understands the effort that it took to study and innovate and make an attempt is the trade-off when you give up working in a silo.

The opportunity to create – and partake in – culture as we work is the opportunity to heal from the Industrial Revolution.   I see that Agile is, at its core and throughout its DNA, artfully human, and I am glad.

*More on this coming in an interview on Stealth Agile with Devin Hedge of Big Visible Solutions – stay tuned Friday for TGIF!

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Categories E. Slomba Arts Interstices, Insights from Leaders, National Trends

ProtoZones

May 7, 2012 //
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The Center for Contemporary Culture in Barcelona has established a prize to recognize and promote  “public space that is at once public (open and universally accessible) and urban.”  In highlighting the “relational and civic aspects of the typically urban space, it differs from other initiatives that are focused on the figure of the architect, and from awards given for landscape-centred projects.”

http://www.publicspace.org

A recent discussions on the Technology in the Arts group on Linked In spurred me to explore links to a project called Rebel Cities.   It details recent work by a French sociologist building on Henri Lefebvre’s work on “the right to the city,” urban regeneration, and the shaping of social interaction through urban planning.

The topic of the discussion was “Are Virtual Worlds Dying or Evolving?”  started by Tessa Kinney-Johnson, COO & Founder of SpotOn3D in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area.   I told her I see virtual worlds evolving into powerful tools dedicated to creative problem-solving, with inputs for citizens to co-dream with local officials about the shaping of their places.   The gamification of urban planning makes good sense given the shortening loop between customer feedback and innovation in other spheres of development.

I also see artists lending their skills to the design of virtual model worlds so that people who do not see themselves as “creative” can still be participants rather than spectators in crafting the design and master narratives from which their urban world(s) are constructed.  The focus is urban – because the city, with its layers of shared meanings – is psychogeographic realm set apart, a distinct kind of human invention.

These virtual worlds would, in essence, become cognitive maps or “protozones.”   That, is urban zones-in-the-making that might  exist – and even become fully-realized – in psychogeographic terms first, not by planners, but by people who then hire the planners – who maybe then need to subcontract artists – to make them occur in actual fact.

http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/people/a.evans/psychogeog.html

The situationists dreamed of an urban life in which public spaces were injected with new life, enriched meanings, and unscripted social interactions through participatory play.    The group PublicShape is dedicated to Winston Churchill’s notion that “we shape our public spaces, therefore our public spaces shape us.”

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Publicshape/297062620349581

Welp, artists, gamers, citizens, planners…we can do that now!

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Categories National Trends

Informatics: Art of Our Times?

May 5, 2012 //
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The lesser-known academic discipline of Informatics is rapidly gaining relevance in the space between art and business.  It is essentially the study of how information is organized and distributed through human systems and so, in the bigger picture, how meaning can be captured and accessed through technology.

  • The Indiana University School of Informatics (Bloomington, Indianapolis and Southeast), defines Informatics as “the art, science and human dimensions of information technology” and “the study, application, and social consequences of technology.”
  • The University of California, Irvine Department of Informatics  defines Informatics as “the interdisciplinary study of the design, application, use and impact of information technology. The discipline of informatics is based on the recognition that the design of this technology is not solely a technical matter, but must focus on the relationship between the technology and its use in real-world settings. That is, informatics designs solutions in context, and takes into account the social, cultural and organizational settings in which computing and information technology will be used.”
  • The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Informatics interdisciplinary major  defines Informatics as “the study of information and the ways information is used by and affects human beings and social systems.”

Seems to me there is a place where the business of conceptual art and the art of creative businesses start to look, project for project, as if they are undertaking parts of the same human enterprise.    How to make things mean things, to large groups of people, and then organize and disseminate those meanings in ways that continue to keep the meaning-makers and partakers engaged.   Hmmmmm……

Categories E. Slomba Arts Interstices, National Trends

Exact Change

May 4, 2012 //
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Tomorrow, Elm City Dance Collective and other indigenous, urban Connecticut performing artists – including Verbal Slap and Kings Band of Harmony Brass Shout Band – will be rocking city buses across New Haven, live.   How cool is that!?  Not just that it’s happening, but that we know it’s happening..

MANY THANKS to the Arts Council of Greater New Haven and CT Transit for presenting Exact Change.  Here’s to more ambient art situated at street-level in the urban environment, sponsored and otherwise.

Details on this round at http://www.newhavenarts.org.

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Categories Local CT

Games of Choice and Chance

May 3, 2012 //
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Last Friday, Yale Dance Theater presented The Legacy of Merce Cunningham in a great big open space – the university’s Payne Whitney Gymnasium.  This Friday, I’m still thinking about it.

Merce Cunningham is dead, and his company formally disbanded.  Yet a unique choreographic approach dedicated to highlighting qualities of un-repeatability and randomness in the universe persists.   Cunningham’s work pokes holes in the way we always try to locate beginnings, middles and endings in the harsh neutrality of ever-flowing occurrence.

The gym was an unusual venue for seeing modern dance, despite the obvious kinesthetic connections.  It made me recall how  my own first exposure to the art form was for phys-ed credit in college, where we learned to slowly curve the spine down vertebra by vertebra, a classic Cunningham technique.  The dancers had a chance to tell us afterwards how dwarfed they felt moving from their rehearsal studio to this grand hall of physicality, performing movements that seemed to carry very different qualities with no walls close around them and no mirrors to look in.   Enhancing the openness they were experiencing viscerally and making it more intense, the dancers were called upon to exercise choices provided for them within the choreography.

This kind of Choice – not “improvisation” per se but a vein of spontanaeity embedded within a defined set of choreographic instructions – consists of, for example, what corner to head towards, or whether to start off on a 45-degree or a 90-degree angle.   The result of each dancer exercising their options in this manner created – as it creates each time it is performed – an “unpattern” of graceful inevitability, composed of bodies that cut dislocated trajectories yet somehow managed not to collide.  The total effect gave the appearance of swallows on the early evening sky above the autumn river in Connecticut, the way they gather and swell and then pull away, exposing rhythms within chaos.

The program featured a “MinEvent,”  an uninterrupted sequence of excerpts drawn from full-length pieces produced over the years.  Each MinEvent is unique; this one included parts of Pond Way(1998), Rorotorio (1983), Numbers (1982) and Canfield (1969).  Pond Way had premiered at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival when I was working there, another small gift of coincidence.

Meg Harper and Jennifer Goggins, both former principal dancers with the company and now legacy-bearers who had worked all semester with the Yale students, spoke about the working process as well as Cunningham’s intent.  They explained what the audience members who gathered for this experience would NOT see.

First and foremost, we would not see narrative.  No story was meant to be conveyed by the movement, no build up of tension and then struggle then cathartic release, no cause and effect.

Along with structured Choice for the dancers, Cunningham was extremely keen on incorporating chance operations in building up his choreography.  He and his long-time artistic collaborator, composer John Cage, used the I-Ching as an instrument of Chance to dictate how they would put together particular forms and sequences.  In performance, the dance and music created in this manner were meant to take place within the same physical space, but be unrelated.  For the presentation, we were treated to a Cage composition performed live alongside the dance by Yale School of Music Musicians.

It is this break from narrative that is one of the most seductive qualities of the work, in my opinion.  The mind is thwarted in its pattern-seeking.  Cause and effect is limited to muscles pulling bones, a torso falling over the hips, an arm twisting,  a sound being made, and then another sound…

Cunningham and Cage, as collaborators playing together, setting up rigorous conditions for Games of Choice and Chance, exploring their limitations and possibilities, seemingly made space happen.

It’s still happening.

 

***

Over the course of the semester, the students of Yale Dance Theater reflected on the legacy of Merce Cunningham’s ideas on the YDT blog at   http://ydtp.commons.yale.edu

Categories E. Slomba Arts Interstices, Local CT

The Soul of Design

May 3, 2012 //
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New from The Stanford University Press!   Affirmation of the centrality and universality of storycraft, by the co-authors of Artful Making…

“The Soul of Design explores the uncanny power of some products to grab and hold attention—to create desire. To understand what sets a product apart in this way, authors Lee Devin and Robert Austin… carefully explore the hypothesis that there is something within a “special” product that makes it—well, special. They argue that this je ne sais quoi arises from “plot”—the shape that emerges as a product or service arouses and then fulfills expectations. ”

http://www.sup.org

ArtBux interview with Mr. Devin will have to be coming soon, dontcha think?   Had a chance to meet him at the Agile Games, and participated in his “Deep Dive” session.   Exciting ideas about how practices from theater can take a rightful place within the operational practices of organizations, both for-profit companies and not-for-profit groups.

Categories Uncategorized

Relentless

April 27, 2012 //
1

Software developer turned venture-philanthropist Mario Morino, author of the recent book Leap of Reason, pulls no punches in this text of his speech to the City Club.

In his opinion, “the whole system sets nonprofits up for struggle and starvation, not for solving challenges.”

http://www.vppartners.org/sites/default/files/cityclubspeech_web_0424.pdf

It’s a sobering read, ending on a call to action.

“And I’m also seeing what a difference courageous leaders can make when they become more intentional
in defining their approaches … more rigorous in gauging their progress … more willing to admit mistakes …
and more capable of quickly adapting and improving— all with an unrelenting focus and passion for
improving lives.  We need to supercharge these leaders. “

Categories Uncategorized

TGIF: Deception’s in the Pipeline

April 27, 2012 //
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On Fridays, ArtBux releases a choice bit of thought-exchange among writers and luminaries.   This is the final installment of an interview with David Kord Murray, author of Plan B and Borrowing Brilliance.   We wrapped up by discussing his next book, a work of fiction still in-progress.  

Have a great weekend ~ TGIF! 

AB: What is in your creative pipeline that you might care to share with us?

DKM:  I’m actually writing a novel.  The title is “The Fourth Deception.”  It’s a story about lying.  The impetus for the story is the celebrity tale of Ann Hathaway.  She was an A-list actress engaged to a guy who was Italian playboy but turned out to be a complete fraud.  He was not at all who he presented himself to be, and he was successful at it.   To me this was intriguing.  I wondered “what would that be like?  What if you suddenly found out your lover or your best friend was duping you about the very nature of who they are?  And if you really wanted to dupe someone, what lengths would your mind have to go to?”

So the first deception is when someone lies to you.  The second deception is when you deceive someone else.  The third deception is when you deceive yourself.  And the fourth deception is when you deceive yourself in order to deceive someone else.

Scientists now believe our subconscious was created by the evolution of our ancient ancestors so that we could better deceive each other.  The theory is that conscious knowledge of deception will leak out somehow physically, whether through big facial twitches or micro-expressions, or something you can detect on a polygraph.  But if the subconscious fools you into thinking that you’re telling the truth…

Of course, there can be a positive side to it too.  One of the characters in the book is learning to control and channel her subconscious thoughts, and this makes her powerful, full of self-control and determination.

Categories Uncategorized
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