I was told the most beautiful story by Rachael, my new right hand gal at work, today. We were sitting in the sun and sharing stories, as we’ve just moved into our new offices and the place is still a bit of a construction zone. No access to servers. No access to the Net. So we chat.
We’ve spent the morning in the company of champions. Our GM is off to compete in some triathlons in the States and the guys he trains with are Olympic and Commonwealth athletes. Peter Robertson shared his theory on winning with heart (Health. Enjoyment. Attitude. Recovery. Training.) and one of his health tips is to make sure you get enough sun. Australians have taken the sun smart message a little too seriously and there is a bit of a country wide phenomenon of Vitamin D deficiency.
The new building has loads of natural light and the sun carves in and paints the room with reminders of our environment all day. I am absolutely dependant on the sun to shine myself I have to agree how important solar power is. We both remark on the smiles we see across the space even though the place is in chaos. There’s a new energy in the team.
We discuss how ‘from little things big things grow’ and how such a small practice like 15 minutes of meditation a day can so significantly change your life. Rachel tells me of a heart meditation “the inner smile”. This practice reminds her that we can open ourselves, open our hearts to happiness, embrace the warmth around us and shine light into the world.
Heart. Sunlight. Energy. Smiles. Openness.
I’m feeling very grateful. It feels like an auspicious start to a new place.
* thanks Wade
Visit www.futuremelbourne.com.au 
to participate.
In the past 20 years, Melbourne has been transformed into a creative, vibrant and liveable city. In the next 20 years, Melbourne will become a more economically, socially, environmentally and culturally sustainable city through the help of a new long-term strategy – Future Melbourne.
Future Melbourne is a bold vision for the city’s future that will affect everybody who visits, lives, invests and works in the municipality. It is due for completion in September 2008 and will replace the City of Melbourne’s existing ‘City Plan 2010’. The six aims of the strategy are to make Melbourne a city for people, a prosperous city, an eco city, a knowledge city, a bold and inspirational city and a connected city.
From the many public forums, proposals, submissions and online discussions with the community during the past year, Council now has a draft plan which is open for community consultation from Saturday, 17 May until Saturday, 14 June 2008.
In what is believed to be a world-first on this scale for local government, the draft is also now available as a wiki so that the community can comment, discuss and directly edit the Future Melbourne draft plan.
Colour me impressed
I’m reading Stumbling on Happiness at the moment and it’s introducing me to some great ideas, and prompting journeys where I’m meeting new people. I’m loving Jane McGonigal who says in this presentation that ‘happiness is the new capital”. Check out her Year In Review for more o-my-gosh ‘helping to forge the new future’ type out takes.
She has a new mission statement in her work as a game designer — the goal of using new scientific research on well-being to develop technological systems that actually improve quality of life. If you need a quick crash course in well-being research, she recommends two places: All of the great field-building positive psychology work done by Martin Seligman at U Penn, and the work by Allister McGregor and other to look at well-being in developing countries at the ESRC Research Group.
She taps in to the cognitive surplus and the connectivity that can be built into games to generate some inspiring experiences:
I’ve heard this term spoken so many times in the last fortnight it deserves exploring: Clay Shirky’s “cognitive surplus” theory (expanded in an article here)
So how big is that surplus? So if you take Wikipedia as a kind of unit, all of Wikipedia, the whole project–every page, every edit, every talk page, every line of code, in every language that Wikipedia exists in–that represents something like the cumulation of 100 million hours of human thought. I worked this out with Martin Wattenberg at IBM; it’s a back-of-the-envelope calculation, but it’s the right order of magnitude, about 100 million hours of thought.
And television watching? Two hundred billion hours, in the U.S. alone, every year. Put another way, now that we have a unit, that’s 2,000 Wikipedia projects a year spent watching television. Or put still another way, in the U.S., we spend 100 million hours every weekend, just watching the ads. This is a pretty big surplus. People asking, “Where do they find the time?” when they’re looking at things like Wikipedia don’t understand how tiny that entire project is, as a carve-out of this asset that’s finally being dragged into what Tim calls an architecture of participation.
Filed under: Great Stuff
I just love this list of random adventures for sale.
Worth an explore…it’s a bit of collaborative performance art. Dares for cash. Digitally documented contemplation. All of this with a bit of whimsy thrown in…
Kinda like this:
If you give me $250 I will buy you a PO Box in New York for a whole year. I will mail you the key. Throughout the year I will mail letters and things to the PO Box. I am hoping that you don’t live in New York, and that where ever you are in the world you will know that there is a small PO Box in New York amassing with little things for you. You will come to New York before the year is up and collect the little pile. Since PO Boxes are small, it will be a small collection, so I will only mail things when I feel there is something special to send.
- Nigel Maister has a PO Box at Cooper Station in New York until 2/28/09
- Jessica Shade has a PO Box at Grand Central Station in New York until 2/28/09
- Bernice McDonnell has a PO Box at the Knickerbocker Station until (they didn’t give me an expiration date – I assume one year from 3-14-08)
- Marloes Lasker has a PO Box at the Knickerbocker Station until (they didn’t give me an expiration date – I assume one year from 3-14-08)
Filed under: Great Stuff
Interesting people. A theatre of ideas. An evening of interestingness.
Six months after our first event, the Interesting South team have found more fascinating people and have asked them to speak about something they care about. We want to replicate the experience of clicking from one really good blog to another, ranging across sciences, arts, music, jokes and whatever.
You’ll be happy to know we picked the Belvoir Theatre as we’re striving to keep the kind of atmosphere we had in November. Something intimate enough that you can see the whites of the speakers’ eyes so it feels more like a chat than a lecture, but with comfier seats.
This time we’ll feed and water you. All ticket proceeds are invested into the night.
Date:Monday, May 12, 2008
Time: 6:00 pm – 11:30 pm
Ticket: $35
Buy them here:
http://www.eventbrite.com/event/104584816
We into reducing paper so we’re going to try send you a mobile bar code with will serve as your ticket. This will be sent 2-3 days after your purchase. If you don’t receive it, we’ll have your name on our door list.
Join the Facebook Group to keep across the fun.
Viva Ideas!
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Jetlag, a new job and the 20/20 summit mean that I have far to much to think about and far too few metal resources to do it with.
As ever The Flight of The Conchords can put it all in perspective.
Filed under: Great Stuff
Joshua Allen Harris’s “Air Zoo” installation made on the streets of New York by tying plastic bags to the subways vents. More sidewalk subway creatures here.
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In a town where ( as the lovely and clever Kristen would say) Girl Guides get thrown in jail for selling cookies on the street without a license, the squirrels are thumbing their very cute noses at the law.
I say: nice one, furry tailed champions of subversion. That’s the spirit.
Filed under: Great Stuff
It’s a beautiful Spring afternoon in New York and Madison Square Park is full of people sitting at small green metal tables enjoying the sun. They’re chatting with friends, checking each other out and eating, cooling their heels after an hour wait in line to be served at the Shake Shack. Check out the current waiting time on their web camera .
Why? Why would you wait that long? Because they’re the best frickin’ hamburgers you’ve ever eaten and the shakes would impress Vincent from Pulp Fiction.
Filed under: Great Stuff
I love this video of a mash up of Twitter and Flickr of reader created Six Word memoirs.
We’re planning on tasking all of the attendees at Interesting South, instead of wearing a name tag, to share a six word biography. Interesting? Challenging? Silly? We hope so.
We’re looking for speakers too. You know you want to. Fill out the form (download by clicking here:) interesting-south-speaker-topic-form.doc
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Now this is insight: Whether you call it Va-jayjay, Map of Tassie or even Hilary Muff, one thing’s for sure… we love naming them. In fact, 94% of Australian women use another name for their vagina, (although 91% are not so keen on men using nicknames).
More about ultimate care down there on the Kotex U site.
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The flow chart via Experience Curve.
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I was at The Studio last night watching SOMA puppets Cabaret Decadence and thinking how many delightful memories I have of the inspired silliness of The Muppets, and what an unknown loss Gen Y have from its lack as their Sunday evening family program was The Simpson’s.
And then I found this gem, and realised that puppets will have their way…
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There is wisdom everywhere (thanks for the reminder Simon):
The strong person is not the one who can wrestle someone else down. The strong person is the one who can control himself when his is angry.
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A five page downloadable ‘wish I could distribute them widely’ utterly underforced design feedback kit.
Gold bits:
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Good idea wasted by poor execution
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This is irrelevant
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Microsoft Word is not a design tool
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THIS DOES NOT COMMUNICATE
Thanks to Lauren for the find.
Not quite a year ago, Drew and Gavin asked a question — would you like to write a business book? And over 100 people responded from all over the world … contributing 400 words each to the book Age of Conversation.
This dream team have decided to go ahead and do it again in 2008. That’s right, they’re looking for contributors to another collaborative publishing project.
The rules and approach for all authors will be the same:
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You will sign over all rights to your chapter
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You understand that all proceeds of the book will be donated to Variety, the Children’s Charity
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You will promote the book, throughout the process, on your blog if you have one
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You’ll embrace the cooperative, collaborative spirit that defined Age of Conversation
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You’ll honor deadlines so Drew does not have to be a nag
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You’ll honor word counts so Gavin doesn’t have to be a nag
This year the topic of the book is being turned over over to us. The short-list:
- Marketing Manifesto
- Why Don’t People Get It?
- My Marketing Tragedy (and what I learned)
And now we want you to vote for the topic that interests you most. Please go HERE to cast your vote (you have until the end of January to vote).
Please note: you can vote regardless of whether you want to contribute or not.
And if you are keen to CONTRIBUTE, email Drew and let him know.
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A print campaign by NSW Police in Australia to raise awareness of the number of teenagers dying as a result of listening to iPods while they cross the road is beginning to reach epidemic proportions. Who knew!
