Bring a pole held puppet dragon to a plaza and randomly ask passersby to hold the poles. Then walk away.
On each pole is a note:
“You don’t have to do anything. You could just stand there or you could leave the pole on the ground. But you could also dance. What would happen if you did? Would the others join you? Would you have fun? Would you be embarrassed? I’ll be embarrassed if everyone just lays their poles down. You don’t have to be like that. You could take a chance. You’re not alone. You have nothing to lose.”
In the process of working out how to teach young people how to live in society, Chase Randell began to question society's assumptions. He decided to take them on starting with the assumption that only qualified professionals can build things of value. He committed himself to building an underground house on a patch of woods in upstate New York. He then looked for people to help him learn how to do it. The result was not only an underground house but a beautiful underground house with a wall of bluestone, intricate stone walls, high timber ceilings as well as doors and stain glass windows found in junkyards. If he had gone to the "qualified professionals" with his idea the costs would have been enormous. His heretical idea is to teach other people how to do this so they can be more self sufficient.
While researching tools for my course on Cloud Computing for Entrepreneurs, I came across this nice collaborative diagramming tool called Cacoo. One of my points in the course was that Cloud services that included the ability to collaborate were the most valuable. Recently my friend Phil was asking about a diagramming tool and I figured it would be fun to try it out. Here is the diagram we worked on. Try it yourself. Sign in to Cacoo (it's free) and invite someone you've always wanted to work with to brainstorm with you on new ideas.
Analyn invited the Heretic to one of her social action group meetings. Throughout the meeting he drew in his sketchbook and she noticed that he was doodling. She was furious until towards the end of the meeting he looked up and asked a question that cut right to the core issue that the committee was trying to resolve. He then gave a simple but perfect suggestion and went back to his doodling.
Drawing is always about problem solving. Therefore drawings by their nature are problematic. If you’ve created the perfect rendering then it is not a drawing. Even a doodle is addressing a problem: How to get the goop out of your subconscious and into a tangible state that can be used to find meaning. The answer? Draw something meaningless and evolve it into something unexpected.
Sunni Brown’s Doodle Revolution Toolkit and TED talk
Vinay Gupta and his friends at the Hexayurt Project wanted to attack the problem of providing cheap easy to access shelter for crisis locations. They asked "Why not use locally accessible materials? How would we reduce waste to make it a viable solution?" They took the lowly plywood sheet and flipped it to create the Hexayurt, named after the Mongolian round tent. They tried it at Burning Man, and then brought them to Haiti and other places around the world. Most importantly, they used the Open Design concept to make sure that the idea was accessible to anyone anywhere.
Rip some paper and put it in a small plastic container. Label the container “Ripped Paper.” Put the container in a larger container along with a bent paper clip and label that container “Miscellaneous.” Put the container in a larger container and label that container “Small Objects.”
By using the Miscellaneous category you have devalued the contents of the two smaller containers and you have degraded the relationship between the “Small Objects” category and the “Ripped Paper” category. Most of all, you have demonstrated the inherent problem of Hierarchical Categorization. To be fair, you can’t blame Miscellaneous. That’s just a stop-gap of last resort on a flawed system. You will find Miscellaneous categories everywhere.
Hierarchy is extremely valuable for understanding frameworks but it is really only a particular kind of relationship. Connecting things with relationships is much more effective than dividing things with categories. This is especially true with people.
If you want to learn to use a tool as a leader you need to use it as a participant. Go to Meetup.com and find an event to attend. Show up early and help the organizer set up. Ask them what passion drove them to start this project. How did the meetup tool help make their vision come to life.
For a while I’ve been telling people: “Don’t focus on the tools; focus on the problem they are used to solve” and yet, I’ve created a site dedicated to tools and I’m giving you links like this one that randomly lists tools by virtue of their wow factor. (to be fair, the author is wowed by things that are actually useful): Cool Tools
Is it OK to look at tools without a problem in mind?
Yes.
When you are working on a problem wouldn’t it be good to have a database in your head of effective tools and the kinds of problems they can solve? (Having a list in Evernote would be even better.)
As a Performance artist, I used the tools from my father’s shop for absurd purposes to rail against the rigidity of business. When I was in business, I told people to stop looking at tools and look at outcomes instead. Now that I’ve created a “performance-art-like” exploration of tools, I’m trying to expand my perspective.
In this clip from my favorite TV show of the eighties, Northern Exposure, Chris, the resident philosopher is using a trebuchet to fling a piano, and he explains that it is not the piano that is important but the flinging itself. So is he focused on the tool and not the outcome? When you see the reactions of the other characters, you realize that this absurd act actually had an effect on people. That is the outcome.
That was TV though. Let’s try it in real life on a smaller scale. Stack up some empty soda cans (don’t forget to recycle when you’re done) and find an adjustable wrench. There’s something familiar and gratifying about the weird center of gravity of an adjustable wrench. Think of the monkeys in 2001 Space Odyssey. Now fling the wrench at the soda cans.
Your brain released chemicals twice during that experiment: once when you felt the centrifugal force of the wrench leaving your hand, and once when you heard the uncomfortable racket of the crashing cans. Did those feeling have value? Do you think you could make use of that effect some day?
Note: this episode was my first exposure to a Trebuchet and inspired this post
George Siemens, a major proponent of Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs), brought together 3 heretical ideas to begin changing education:
Courses can be provided by academic institutions to anyone in the world, free of charge.
Courses can be offered to an unlimited number of people.
The content of courses can be created by the learners themselves.
He uses whatever tools work and participants are encouraged to expand their use of tools to spread the reach of the course content. Here are some examples:
The Heretic had a friend with astigmatism who was afraid of hallways because he felt like they were closing in on him. To cure himself he decided to measure the walls of a hallway and prove that they were parallel. He knew the Heretic was good with the latest tools so he asked him to set up a mobile laser-based measuring device with mirrors and other optics and a system processor capable of producing the desired result. The Heretic got a piece of string and some chalk and proceeded to do the proof the way the ancient Greeks did it.
Instructions:
Cut string #1 to width of hall
Fold string #1 in half twice and mark the folds to establish
4 quarters of the length
Cut string #2 to the length of string #1 + ¼
Tie pencils or chalk to each end of sting #2
Fold string #2 in half and mark the midpoint
Layout string #2 at a diagonal from one wall to another
Tape down or tack the midpoint on string #2
Use each pencil to draw an arc on the wall
For each arc, cut string #3 to length of the arc at the
endpoints on the floor
Tape down or tack one end of string #3
Fold string # in half and tape down or tack the midpoint
Rotate the free end of string across the arc. If the end of
the string matches the line, the arc is a perfect semicircle, therefore the
walls are parallel
Explanation
By creating the arcs with string #2, you are creating double
napped cones cut in half by the plane of the floor.
A plane is perpendicular to the axis of the cones will
intersect the cone to create a circle (as demonstrated by string #3).
Two planes that are perpendicular to the same line (the axis
of the cones) are parallel to each other.
The Greek mathematicians didn't need precise measuring tools. They had precise ideas.
If you have a big idea, at some point you are going to want to make stuff, some sort of swag or actual product. (Hopefully you will only be selling something non-material like a ticket or a download.) Regardless of what you make or whether you want to make a profit, you need to know your breakeven point. How many units do you need to sell to offset the costs of each unit (variable costs) and that unit’s share of the overall costs (fixed costs).
You can avoid the break-even problem by eradicating the fixed costs. You do this through on-demand ordering. The product is only created when it is ordered. You only pay for the vendors costs (variable) when you make a sale. The downside is the increased cost for your customers and narrow margins for you. Here’s a service that you can use: http://www.cafepress.com
`Two days wrong!' sighed the Hatter. `I told you butter wouldn't suit the works!'
`It was the best butter,' the March Hare meekly replied.
`Yes, but some crumbs must have got in as well,' the Hatter grumbled: `you shouldn't have put it in with the butter-knife.'
Go to the kitchen and get a butter knife…a clean one. Make sure you are living with someone who won’t be freaked out about you walking around the house with a butter knife. Go to the book shelf and reach for the second shelf from the top and place the pinky of your right hand on the right edge of the case. Then stretch out your hand and touch a book with your thumb. Pull that book out half way. Stick the butter knife into the pages about half way through. Pull out the book and go to the page with the knife. Scan the text. Somewhere there is a sentence that holds the key to a problem you have been working on this week. Maybe it won’t be apparent at first but if you close your eyes and take a deep breath, it will come to you.
The magic that makes that trick work can be put to use for your idea if you can work its hidden truth.
