Video: Wiki's in Plain English

I just discovered these funny and informative videos produced by the team at Common Craft. Each video explains a topic using no-bull language and visuals. In fact the visuals are a combination of hand-drawn images, cut-outs, live motion and pixelation.

Having worked in multimedia, and animation for 10 years, I am really impressed by their ability to distill technical concepts into an easily digestible and funny form. I doff my cap to you.


I chose this particular clip, as I am just exploring how I can leverage Wiki's as part of my Innovation Hub training programme for organisations. This is an internal training program for organisations wanting to develop creative catalysts (or what I call Innovation Agents) in their organisation. These teams then spread the Innovation Agent Mindset, virally throughout the organisation, by forming their own Innovation Hubs.

More information about the Innovation Hub, and the Innovation Agent Toolkit will be available on the new Creativity Hub website, coming soon(ish).

Technorati Tags: animation, communication, creativity, visual thinking

Animation: Simon's Cat 'Let Me In!'

I watched this hilarious cartoon, and realised that I have not been honouring my background in animation, puppetry and multimedia. Even though I now share tools and techniques for creative thinking and personal development, my love of animation informs everything I do - from the illustrations I use, to the stories I tell with my latest game-tool Rory's Story Cubes.

The thing with animation and cartoons is that they often provide us with a new way of looking at things. This is why we laugh - our brain is tripped up while processing seemingly incongruent information - hence the laugh.

Laughter also has many beneficial effects. It reduces stress for one. And this is key to developing your creativity. Trying to generate ideas is not all that effective while stressed.

What does this all add up to? Well, from this day forth, I will start posting animation clips I discover that I consider to be different in some way - either funny "ha-ha", or funny "odd". Most importantly, I will choose ones that I think will help you to a more creative/flexible thinker.

Workshop - BEYOND COACHING (Creative Tools To Empower Your Clients)

BEYOND COACHING
Creative Tools To Empower Your Clients

Date: Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Time: 9:30 am - 4:30 pm
Location: Avoca Suite, Stillorgan Park Hotel, Stillorgan Road, Dublin, Ireland
Standard Pricing: €200 (includes Rory's Story Cubes & Inner Vision Deck™ and Workbook)
Discounted Price: €150 (applies if you already own Rory's Story Cubes & Inner Vision Deck™)
Online Booking:  http://beyondcoaching080311.eventbrite.com/

Have you ever had the experience where a client you are meant to be helping, becomes stuck, and is reluctant to talk about an issue? They want your help, but can't put it into words.

Have you ever wished you had someone to help you sort out a challenge, but thought - "I should be able to do it myself"? While you are busy helping others, your own issues lie ignored in the background. You think that, because your job is to help others, you ought to be able to sort it out yourself.

Do you want to bring some play and laughter into your sessions, to help your clients relax and open-up more? The beginning of a session is usually quite awkward. Learn how you can quickly break the ice with people of all ages and background.

Workshop Overview

This workshop is presented by Rory O'Connor inventor of Rory's Story Cubes™ and the Inner Vision Deck™. In this  one day workshop you will gain the experience to confidently use these simple, playful yet powerful tools to reach a level of insight and trust with your clients, not normally experienced through ordinary dialogue.

By learning how to use these two creative tools in your sessions you will empower your clients to better help themselves. By teaching your own clients how to use Rory's Story Cubes and the Inner Vision Deck, you will discover that your clients will be more willing to do 'homework', knowing that they have the tools to help themselves.

As a result of the workshop and using these tools, you will find that...

• Your sessions become easier on you, as your client does more of the work;
• You clients will have more buy-in to the solutions they discover for themselves;
• Your listening skills will improve, as you no longer have to listen & solve at the same time;
• Your level of self-awareness will increase with each use of the tools;
• Your client relationships will move to a deeper level as your clients become more willing to reveal themselves;

Target Audience

This workshop is geared towards full-time, part-time and trainee Therapists, Counsellors, Psychologists, Personal Development Trainers, Teachers, Mentors & Life Coaches. Anyone who works with (or wants to work with) people in order to help them remove blocks and find solutions that facilitate personal growth, success and well-being through greater self-awareness.

Content

The workshop is designed as a hands-on experience to ensure you walk away with the confidence and knowledge to use these tools expertly with your own clients. The workshop will cover the following:

• Creative Problem Solving and the Socratic Method
• A simple way to identify and frame challenges to address
• Translating challenges into effective Questions
• Creative Problem Solving with The Inner Vision Deck
• Facilitating others with The Inner Vision Deck
• Story as a doorway to greater self-awareness
• Problem Solving with Rory's Story Cubes
• Facilitating others with with Rory's Story Cubes
• Using Rory's Story Cubes in a Group
• Questions & Answers

As part of the workshop you will receive guide notes and worksheets for both Rory's Story Cubes, and the Inner Vision Deck.

What People Are Saying

The Inner Vision Deck was awarded Five Stars by InnovationTools.com

"The guy is a genius. If I could have [Rory's] brain, that would be my 1st success!!"
- Anonymous response to Workshop Survey conducted by University of Ulster

"As a person reliant on my 'Inner Knowing' I find the Inner Vision Deck™ a useful link-in to my intuitions. The card selection helps me to bring focus to what is up for me and to gain clarification or confirmation on the way forward. The deck can be used as a quick reference tool or alternatively...it can be used as a more methodical 'search engine' type tool that allows me to connect with insights on issues or questions for which I am seeking answers. The Inner Vision Deck is a big bang for your buck!" - Tom K

"I am getting so much from [your workshops] both on a personal and a business level. I'm gaining tools to work with both in my coaching and in my personal life. The group interaction is great and the workshops are thought provoking and supportive. I feel this course is both an eye opener and an asset to my creativity. Your passion for working in this way certainly comes across very strongly and I, as a participant, reap the benefits. Learning through play and experience is the best way for me." - Mary Power, Empower Coaching

"What stands out for me now is how excited I felt about finding two locally-produced tools...which can help circumvent blocks in the coaching process.  Coming to that pass, i.e. the client being over-rational or controlling or inclined to disable the helper (even one that 's costing money) is a major challenge in our line of work, I think." -Emer McDermott, ReNua Coaching

About the Presenter

Rory O'Connor is founder of The Creativity Hub, a Belfast based company that is committed to helping people, teams and organisations become more creative. Rory has worked behind the scenes to help organisations big and small empower their staff to build their vision, creativity, relationships and profit. He works with individual entrepreneurs, and charities, right through to Fortune 50 companies.

Rory’s Story Cubes and Inner Vision Deck are just a few of the innovative products that he has invented to aid us to think more creatively about our business, our brand and our lives. All of Rory’s products and inspirational work is implemented in a way that encourages individuals to optimise their creative ability. He has a wide range of experience, skills and education.

BOOKING & REGISTRATION

Visit http://beyondcoaching080311.eventbrite.com/ to secure your place now. If you have any questions about the booking process, please email rory(@)thecreativityhub.com.

How can you sell something that is already Free?

Kevin Kelly has an blog post titled: Better Than Free

In it he talks about the impact of the Internet's ability to easily replicate digital information in such a way that makes it inherently free. We can see this being experienced by the music industry. Digitized music is easy to copy and redistribute over the internet. Kelly goes so far as to call the internet a "a copy machine.

At its most foundational level, it copies every action, every character, every thought we make while we ride upon it. In order to send a message from one corner of the internet to another, the protocols of communication demand that the whole message be copied along the way several times. IT companies make a lot of money selling equipment that facilitates this ceaseless copying. Every bit of data ever produced on any computer is copied somewhere. The digital economy is thus run on a river of copies. Unlike the mass-produced reproductions of the machine age, these copies are not just cheap, they are free.
Our digital communication network has been engineered so that copies flow with as little friction as possible. Indeed, copies flow so freely we could think of the internet as a super-distribution system, where once a copy is introduced it will continue to flow through the network forever, much like electricity in a superconductive wire. We see evidence of this in real life. Once anything that can be copied is brought into contact with internet, it will be copied, and those copies never leave. Even a dog knows you can't erase something once its flowed on the internet.

But the rules are changing, as once precious copies are now becoming essentially free to anyone who decides to go and look for them.

When copies are super abundant, they become worthless.
When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable.

It may be time to let go of charging for our digital goods, and focusing on charging for that which cannot be copied. Kelly calls these the 8 Generatives:

• Immediacy
• Personalization
• Interpretation
• Authenticity
• Accessibility
• Embodiment
• Patronage
• Findability

To find out more, read the full article Better Than Free.

But before you go, you might ask why am I posting about this? Well, I have been working on the Innovation Agent Handbook that I plan to distribute via the Internet over the coming months.  Reading Kelly's article, I realised that I always knew that you cannot really protect copyright of digital goods on the internet. It's as if you have to accept a number of 'spoils' or 'pirated' copies. Having read Kelly's article though, I am now interested in applying creative problem solving to explore how can this ability to freely copy be turned into a benefit rather than a limitation? I am always fascinated how seeming negatives can be turned into positives.

Hopefully you'll see the fruits of my labour when I release the Innovation Agent Handbook later this year.

Brian Gallagher provides walkthrough of Rory's Story Cubes inspired Illustration

My best-buddy Bren B, and guardian to one of my children (ulp!) has rounded up a number of Irish illustrators who have been busy putting Rory's Story Cubes to the test. They are exploring how the dice can be used to inspire new ideas for illustrations. One of the illustrators, Brian Gallagher, has kindly put together a walkthough of the process he used to create his illustration (Thanks Brian). This has been posted by Bren B over at www.scamp.ie

Over to you Bren...

A friend of mine has developed an excellent creativity tool called Rory’s Story Cubes. Rory’s Story Cubes is a dice game/tool that helps people of all ages to develop their imagination and creativity through improvisational storytelling. It is comprised of set of 9 6-sided dice with a total of 54 unique images/symbols.

I asked some of my talented and generous illustrator friends to test them out to see how/if they can be useful tool. Brian Gallagher was one such illustrator. He has also agreed to show us the process he used to create the above image.

Over to you Brian…

Read Brian's walkthrough of how he created the above illustration here.

You can order Rory's Story Cubes at www.thecreativityhub.com

Technorati Tags: creativity, dice, improv, Rory's Story Cubes

Late Late Late - Steve Simpson creates Rory's Story Cubes inspired illustration

Late, Late, Late is a new illustration by Irish Illustrator, Steve Simpson . This is the first of 6 illustrations created by Irish Illustrators. Each illustrator was given a brief to create an image inspired by a roll of Rory's Story Cubes.

For Steve's illustration, he was given the image above as his starting point*. Can you spot the connections in his illustration.

Steve had the following to say...

If, like me, you sometimes prefer to work to a brief when developing your own work these are a a great idea. Would be great for comic strips as well as children's books.

*The dice in this image are from an earlier protoype, and do not reflect the outstanding quality of the dice used Rory's Story Cubes!

To buy or find out more about Rory's Cubes visit www.thecreativityhub.com

I have another go making a story using Rory's Story Cubes

Here's another video clip of me using Rory's Story Cubes (Order here) to make up a story for my 3 year old daughter Niamh. Can you spot the continuity error in my tale?

Technorati Tags: creativity, dice, family, game, improv, Rory's Story Cubes

Rory's Story Cubes - Storytelling for all ages

In this video my daughter Niamh (pronounced [Neev]) tells a story using Rory's Story Cubes. I have to resist the urge to tell her how to play the game 'properly', and simply let her use her imagination.

To order Rory's Story Cubes visit The Creativity Hub Homepage

Technorati Tags: creativity, dice, family, game, improv, Rory's Story Cubes

"Once upon a time..." with Rory's Story Cubes

Here's your chance to have a go with Rory's Story Cubes. Click on the video to see the roll of the dice.

The challenge is to make up a story that begins with "Once upon a time..." and somehow links together all nine (9) images on the dice into a story. There is no right or wrong kind of story.

**TIP** It helps though to talk faster than you can think. If you are unsure about this, check out the previous post to watch an example of me using Rory's Story Cubes.

Post your story as a comment below.