Every Monday, Kevin and I go vegetarian. It's a small, simple way to be intentional about what we eat, and how it affects the world around us. Last night: Pantry pasta and chick pea salad.
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Friday, June 3, 2011
What I learned today
I love the people I work with. We operate like a family, and for the most part, we're a pretty functional one. I'm grateful for what I learn every day. Today was a zinger. Here's what I learned:
I define collaboration as co-creation. Sitting side by side, working fluidly, letting go of ownership and boundaries, to make something that couldn't be made with any of us alone. I think it's a better result. It's certainly a better experience.
Feedback and subsequent iteration is not enough (for me). This mode of "meet, then go away and create, then come back and get feedback, then go away and create" is inefficient, and feels rife with opportunities for misunderstanding. And, it makes it hard to get the right feedback at the right moment. To have a removed reviewer, the designer has to explore something to great depth, to realize a concept almost fully.
Unfinished work feels bumpy and uncertain. It can easily inspire fear and doubt in a removed reviewer, and defensiveness or frustration in the creator.
Not everybody wants to, or knows how to, be a co-creator. It takes invitation, shared expectations, and full commitment of trust in each other. We have to give up our attachments, and be open to the unknown discovery, the unpredicted innovation. There's a lot of uncertainty there.
What I haven't learned is how to work with the in-between. How do I figure out where and when to engage the various people who need to have input—because they have a significant stake in the outcome—when their definitions of collaboration fall in so many places along the continuum of co-create to review-and-iterate?
How do you do it? Where do you find your community of practice?
***
It's hardly poetry. But it's what was on my mind as I close my day and turn to the business of the rest of my living.
I define collaboration as co-creation. Sitting side by side, working fluidly, letting go of ownership and boundaries, to make something that couldn't be made with any of us alone. I think it's a better result. It's certainly a better experience.
Feedback and subsequent iteration is not enough (for me). This mode of "meet, then go away and create, then come back and get feedback, then go away and create" is inefficient, and feels rife with opportunities for misunderstanding. And, it makes it hard to get the right feedback at the right moment. To have a removed reviewer, the designer has to explore something to great depth, to realize a concept almost fully.
Unfinished work feels bumpy and uncertain. It can easily inspire fear and doubt in a removed reviewer, and defensiveness or frustration in the creator.
Not everybody wants to, or knows how to, be a co-creator. It takes invitation, shared expectations, and full commitment of trust in each other. We have to give up our attachments, and be open to the unknown discovery, the unpredicted innovation. There's a lot of uncertainty there.
What I haven't learned is how to work with the in-between. How do I figure out where and when to engage the various people who need to have input—because they have a significant stake in the outcome—when their definitions of collaboration fall in so many places along the continuum of co-create to review-and-iterate?
How do you do it? Where do you find your community of practice?
***
It's hardly poetry. But it's what was on my mind as I close my day and turn to the business of the rest of my living.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Remarkable things
The most remarkable things
are often tiny surprises.
Quick intakes
of breath, the lungs' equivalent
of a glimpse
caught
through a window,
A stare thought
to have an inappropriate length,
lost in pondering.
A new nest,
the size of a soup spoon's
bowl.
Every moment holds
a possible miracle. Every blink
may reveal
the dream that steals
away
on the softest feet
the quietest fog.
These remarkable things rush
past, bubbles on water.
Our charge is to collect them.
Catalog
their character,
savor, share, remember.
***
Many of you have asked to see my poetry. I have not written for pleasure in a long time, though I think in verses often. It is photographic and involuntary.
I have no idea how to read my own poems, nor really where they come from. I'm certain that they are both lovely and terrible, but here they are. Ephemeral, works in progress, incomplete. Probably embarrassing, but I don't know any better, and frankly, I don't really care.
For me, poems are a protest. A refusal to lose the things I hold dear. A memory. A moment cherished, and shared.
are often tiny surprises.
Quick intakes
of breath, the lungs' equivalent
of a glimpse
caught
through a window,
A stare thought
to have an inappropriate length,
lost in pondering.
A new nest,
the size of a soup spoon's
bowl.
Every moment holds
a possible miracle. Every blink
may reveal
the dream that steals
away
on the softest feet
the quietest fog.
These remarkable things rush
past, bubbles on water.
Our charge is to collect them.
Catalog
their character,
savor, share, remember.
***
Many of you have asked to see my poetry. I have not written for pleasure in a long time, though I think in verses often. It is photographic and involuntary.
I have no idea how to read my own poems, nor really where they come from. I'm certain that they are both lovely and terrible, but here they are. Ephemeral, works in progress, incomplete. Probably embarrassing, but I don't know any better, and frankly, I don't really care.
For me, poems are a protest. A refusal to lose the things I hold dear. A memory. A moment cherished, and shared.
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