Fast Company: 10 Rules of Effective Brainstorming

Somehow they didn't get the memo: In order to do brainstorming right, you need to make ideas visual!

Still, this slideshow by Fast Company itemizes (and validates) the creative elements needed for innovation sessions. 

[A facilitator] is the traffic cop of the session, and should be an outsider. An insider brings baggage that can inhibit the free flow of ideas. HR consulting organizations are one possible resource; if you are working with a design firm like IDEO or Continuum, they may be able to help.

If bringing in an outsider is difficult for some reason, the second best option is to bring in someone from a different group inside the company. Facilitators need to be skilled at group dynamics, able to read when the team is flagging or when it is hitting on all cylinders.

They have to be patient, yet willing to exercise discipline if one person can't stop talking or is becoming aggressive. It is more a matter of personality than formal training, but it can't hurt to bring in people to watch a well-run brainstorming session to see how it works.

Alphachimp Emergency Vehicle Purchased

Thanks to everyone in the Alphachimp Studio Network for once again making the impossible possible.

This spring and summer have been busy with bizarre challenges, interesting new projects (including animation) and frantic last-minute requests (Hey! Keep'em comin'!).

Launa passed on to me that Drew D. suggested an ambulance as the company car.

So, thanks to Ebay and the internets, I have purchased a custom-built red raised-roof 1971 Chevrolet Suburban Sentinel ambulance from Langford's Funeral Home in Jonesboro, Arkansas (see photo).

Unfortunately, it only gets 4 miles to the gallon and they forget to clean it out after its last job in 1988.

So, it will be on display in my mother's driveway until further notice.

Thanks team!

Ups and downs of zero gravity art

And I thought creating drawings in front of a live studio audience was tricky!

clipped from www.reuters.com Jul 9 - British artist Nasser Azam goes weightless for his latest creations. Azam led a team of five artists aboard a Russian transport plane specially modified to simulate zero gravity conditions feet for his new project, Life in Space.

The Future of American Men

Whether a Young Carefree or an Above Average Joe, the life and role of the American male in the 21st century is being redefined.

Social Technologies sketches out 5 American Male personas that also include the Good Ol’ Boys, Mac Daddies, and Worry Warriors--each with a different take on where they feel they are in life and where they may be headed.

clipped from www.socialtechnologies.com What are guys’ lives like today? What is important to them and how can we better relate to them? That was what Spike TV asked the Washington DC-based futurist research and consulting firm Social Technologies to help the network find out. As the home of everything "men," Spike TV commissioned the study to gain a deeper understanding of the many facets of men, according to Kimberly Maxwell, senior director of brand and consumer research. "We wanted to check the pulse of American guys to be better able to understand their lifestyles, their daily habits, and values," she says, noting that the research builds upon Spike’s 2004 "Guy's State of the Union," which delivered a wide-ranging overview of guy's lives. Social Technologies analyzed the segmentation data to create descriptions and composite personas, used by Spike to better understand different types of men and how their lifestyle and consumer habits may change in the near future. So what are these five types of American guys? [PHOTO: Matt Andrews]

The Cartoon Lounge

Graphic facilitator and intermittent cartoonist for The New Yorker Magazine, Drew Dernavich, announces the launch of The Cartoon Lounge, a blog--or "blorg" according to contributor Zach Kanin--for non-New Yorker content.

clipped from www.newyorker.com Let’s make this clear. This is not The New Yorker magazine. To get a cartoon published in the magazine, we must submit dozens of original ideas every week. The cartoon editor rejects the overwhelming majority of them, and the ones that survive must still make it past the editor and the publisher, and are subject to further fact checking, copy editing, and layout considerations. Getting something uploaded on this blog will be different. For instance, one of us will be eating lunch on top of our computer keyboard, and we’ll set down that half-eaten chicken quesadilla a little too hard, and—BAM!—instant blog post. It will work something like that. And not just weekly, but daily. So, it’s the same cartoonists, but a different process.

Prometeus - The Media Revolution

Email recently celebrated it's 30th birthday (see article).

This week, NPR is focusing upon the effects of--and coping methods for--this single technology that has shaped the workflow, schedules and lifestyles of much of the world.

For a glimpse on where the emerging new media may take us as "prosumers" who produce and consume media, check out this vision of a future scenario, in which virtual reality, spiritual experience, and the commerce of memory are commonplace.

clipped from www.youtube.com

Brainpower May Lie in Complexity of Synapses

We always if we were smarter than chimps (or at least baboons).
Here is clinical proof as to why the human brain has a better handle on complexity.

This article profiles a whole new dimension of evolutionary complexity has now emerged from a cross-species study led by Dr. Seth Grant at the Sanger Institute in England.

clipped from www.nytimes.com Evolution’s recipe for making a brain more complex has long seemed simple enough. Just increase the number of nerve cells, or neurons, and the interconnections between them. A human brain, for instance, is three times the volume of a chimpanzee’s. The computing capabilities of the human brain may lie not so much in its neuronal network as in the complex calculations that its synapses perform, Dr. Grant said. Vertebrate synapses have about 1,000 different proteins, assembled into 13 molecular machines, one of which is built from 183 different proteins. These synapses are not standard throughout the brain, Dr. Grant’s group has found; each region uses different combinations of the 1,000 proteins to fashion its own custom-made synapses. Each synapse can presumably make sophisticated calculations based on messages reaching it from other neurons. The human brain has about 100 billion neurons, interconnected at 100 trillion synapses.

36 Hours in Knoxville

Along with most of my favorite people, I grew up in Knoxville. Perhaps it was the migratory instinct of the young and the restless, but just about everyone from High School has flown the coop. There has, however, always remained this sticky pride and underdog yearning for Knoxvegas to gain some street cred. That day may have come!

(And, there are no better poster-making poster children than the KnoxPopArt promoters, Yee-Haw Industries.)

clipped from travel.nytimes.com Shawn Poytner for The New York Times. Making art in the form of posters at Yee-Haw Industries. KNOXVILLE is often called “the couch” by the people who live there. It’s a place too unassuming to shout about but too comfortable to leave. The city, the third largest in Tennessee behind Nashville and Memphis, is also referred to as Knoxpatch, Knoxvegas and for those prone to irony and finger pistols, K-town, baby. The truth is, Knoxville, cheerfully ensconced in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains and banked against the Tennessee River, has an intrinsically lazy, soulful feel. The geography is soft, green and rolling. The climate is gentle, breezy and bright. Locals tend to be not just friendly — a given in most Southern towns — but chilled out, too. This is not the Old South of magnolias and seersucker so much as a modern Appalachia of roots music, locavore food, folk art and hillbilly pride. Or, as yet another city moniker aptly states, “Austin without the hype.”

FastCompany's Top Jobs

Animator, travel writer and interaction designer I've done.

"Brew Master" and "Flavorist" I pursued in the 90's as an amateur single man living in Uptown Chicago.

But "sensory brander" and "sleep instructor" sound like excuses I make around the house when I'm shirking my spousely chores.

And "Graphic Facilitator" didn't even make the list!

clipped from www.fastcompany.com