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Category Archives: creativity
S.a.l.e.s. S.u.p.p.o.r.t.
In a team funstorming session today, our department, Sales Support, brainstormed on the question “what is Sales Support?” Like others, our team designed a poster with words, images from magazines, and markers.
Meanwhile, I wrote out these lyrics:
S is for SUPPORT…it’s what we do.
A is for ASSERTIVENESS…I’m talking to you!
L is for LEARNERS…and the word might be “train,”
but what we do is tweak the brain.
E is for EXCELLENCE… we do nothing half-a$$ed
S is for SPEED…and we. mean. FAST!
S is for SIGHT…we help people see.
U is for UNITY…it’s all about …WE.
P is PROFICIENCY…our audience relies on it.
P is for POWER…we supply all of it.
O is OPTIMIZATION…fitting resources to a “T”
R is RESPECT…spelled R.E.S.P.E.C.T.
T is meant to end it on the word TEAM.
put it all together, we fulfill Sales’ DREAM.
(exits stage right. And our team won.)
404 Not Found (I must keep looking)
I suffer from Half-Heimers. My wife says I can’t remember half the stuff she asks me to remember.
Not all. Just half.
For example, I forgot what I was going to blog about today.
So today’s blog po
st is my 404 not found post.
I hope the subtle humor is not lost on you.
The 404 Not Found error message is ubiquitous and annoying enough that several creatives have graced the interwebs with their clever 404 pages.
I’m sorry. My brain did not find today’s post in its memory banks.
Please return to our home page: geewhiz.wordpress.com/ and give my brain another chance.
Braincalming. Not brainstorming.
How many times have you been coaxed into participating in a brainstorming session? Did you feel that the results warranted the investment of time, energy, resources, people?
This post at The Heart of Innovation proposes a concept that contradicts prevalent thought: that braincalming rather than brainstorming produces results.
I love this extract:
“Every wonder why so many people get their best ideas during “down time” — the time just before they go to sleep… or just after waking… or in dreams… or in the shower… or in the car on the way home from work?”
Caine’s Arcade – a boy and a dream go viral
Imagination. Innovation. Incredible power of social media.
A 9-year-old boy in Los Angeles with a big dream and tons of creativity spends his summer building an arcade out of leftover cardboard, hoping customers to his dad’s auto parts shop will stop and play.
But in this day of online shopping, his dad’s customers shop by mouse click, not by foot.
No one stops to play.
Until one day, a customer shopping for a car door handle stops to play, buys the fun pass, and becomes enamored with the boy’s imagination, innovation, and incredible execution.
That customer, Nirvan Mullick, dreams another big dream, and the rest of the story is how videos go viral.
Watch.
Postscript: More than $100,000 has been donated to a trust fund for Caine’s college education. Imagine the technological wizardry to come from this boy’s imagination.
Amgen Tour of California – geewhiz photos
Convergence (n) – the point at which objects meet.
On May 15, 2011, my hometown of Sacramento became the convergence point, and I could only be at one place at one time.
So, I shot photos at the Amgen Tour of California as it blew into my hometown.
Wrapping itself around the state capitol for its final leg of this “opening” stage, the race finished just blocks away from where I also wanted to be, the Sacramento Community Center.
For it was at that precise time and place that my other true passion was converging.
The technical communicators’ annual conference!
Draw me a picture (at SXSW)
Not able to attend SXSW (the South by SouthWest conference), I have to live vicariously through the tweets, blog posts, slideshares, and other conference notes from attendees who happen to be among my social media contacts.
So, this set of hand-drawn notes by ad agency Ogilvy appeals to me on several angles.
First, it’s visual. Colorful. Image-based, more than text-based content.
Second, it’s good for business. Clever that this agency differentiated itself from others, the illustrations open potential business opportunities for Ogilvy, simply because presenters and followers who request a free 11×17″ print might linger, browse, and perhaps do business with Ogilvy.
Third, it’s cleverly different. Unlike the presentations posted on other sites, notes posted on blogs, and photos and tweets, this visualization of the content got my attention.
Prepare to be visually fascinated!
See http://ogilvynotes.com/
Touchscreen or keyboard?
As designers add tactile touchscreen interfaces to devices, some debate the ease of use.
Some users suffer from limited tactile sense control. Others struggle with the smaller size of the visual keys. Still others need the audible and tactile feedback from hardware keys.
Would these hacks solve those user interface problems?
Discovered at socialjunjun.typepad.com/.
The power of sticky notes
When a team asks me to join in a brainstorming session, and the first thing I see is someone with a notepad trying to capture all their thoughts, I always find a way to have them change to sticky notes and a large wall space. Why?
Continue reading
How to say “I am sorry” to a designer
I found this in my Stumbleupon wanderings:
swiss-miss.com/2010/02/im-sorry.html
Clever. Inside joke? Not if you use Windows shortcuts. Your designer will appreciate it.
Oh, it’s Command+Z to the designer, most likely a Mac user.
The art of the focal point
“Every good design needs a focal point.” Garr Reynolds begins in this meaty blog post.
Explaining “Tokonoma,” Garr moves from the Japanese architectural and cultural explanation, into the realm of practical application in—of all things—presentations. He takes the real-life, explains the concepts, and turns them back into the real life.
Brilliantly depicting before and after examples of presentation images, Garr shows examples that my most-practical and literal-minded followers can swallow.
I encourge you to apply the principles if you do any of the following:
- create presentations and training visuals
- design living spaces or workspaces
- create visual communications (even the most-basic e-mail!)
Read his post on presentationzen.com.
100 tips to rise above the noise on Twitter
Friends who aren’t on Twitter often ask me how to get beyond their “get started” phase. Other friends tell me of the frustrations with Twitter that drove them away. Still others remind me that their busy lives don’t allow them to engage with Twitter as often as they’d like.
To all of these friends, I may have found an answer. Read this helpful list Continue reading
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