The World of Visualisers and Their MadMapping, as Opposed to Mindmapping

This picture was used to illustrate a supposedly erudite blog about how wiki conversations might be visualised. and I am at a loss how to make sense out of it. It may make sense in the moment for those attending, although I would doubt it. Ahhhhh!!!! The moment of madmapping as opposed to mind mapping is upon us as more and more visualisers and marker pen holders gain work by drawing “bad visualisations” on costly whiteboards, only to be removed immediately after the event whilst being photographed, digitised and copied into the vast bin of data pollution.

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The 7 Principles of Improvisational Theater as a Complex Adaptive System

I am in an improvisational theater performing group. We improvise full-length plays with nothing planned in advance. No structure. No outline. No character or plot development. Nothing, except for two locations we get from the audience at the beginning of the play. The play is then titled, "The Space Station and the Bathroom," or whatever locations we get from the audience. Two of us then run on stage and start interacting, and thus the play begins. When the play goes well, the audience says, "That HAD to be scripted. At least some part of it had to be scripted. It looked too easy." It was easy. When the performance does not go so well, the audience says, "That looked hard." It was hard. I became fascinated by what makes it work. What creates peak level creativity in our group? What allows a complex, coherent, sense-making structure to emerge from nothing but a simple location? What is the "magic formula" that allows a fully formed, organized play - with believable characters and plot - to emerge before the audience’s (and our own) eyes? And what gets in the way? Why does it work seamlessly sometimes and not so well other times? I became a serious student of improv theory - reading the seminal books in the field and observing the patterns in my group and other groups.

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Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy | Derek Sivers

I don' think I have ever seen a better visualization of leadership. This is genuinely worth offering as an introduction to any leadership workshop you might want to run.It is funny, memorable, down right inspiring and humbling.

Blind To Change Even If It Is Staring You In the Face.

When I was working as a theatre producer, I was always fascinated by illusions and magic. No matter how matter times a particular trick or illusion was performed, no matter how many times it was explained either by the magician or as part of a TV special, audiences still could not believe what they were seeing. This has fascinated me because it seems whilst our eyes are seeing and registering what is occuring, our brains are not and what's more they don't want to. Why does "magic as performance" continue to fascinate and fool us. It seems neuroscience is finding some answers. What follow is an article by Natalie Anger of the New York Times and a couple of YouTube videos that explore the neuroscience, demonstrate the cognitive behaviour and the performance. From this you will see just how inattentive we are to change.

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Umberto Eco: The lost art of handwriting

Umberto Eco the Godfather of Semiotics writes an eloquent column in the Guardian on whether it is important for children to continue to be taught handwriting and in his view, it is. Read why!!

Quotes:

Umberto Eco: The lost art of handwriting |