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Here’s another TED Talk worth checking out.

Once every seven years, Sagermeister will close down his design studio so he can take a one year sabbatical. During this time he’ll reflect on his business & life, pursue other interests, plan for the future, etc. Obviously, taking a year off isn’t for everyone, but I like the idea of taking time off (in smaller increments) for self-improvement.

My favorite quote:

“…we spend the first 25 years of our lives learning. Then there is another 40 years that’s really reserved for working. And then tacked on at the end of it are about 15 years for retirement. And I thought it might be helpful to basically cut off five of those retirement years and intersperse them in between those working years.”

In this TED Talk, Robinson offers some nice observations about what’s wrong with the current education model and what can be done to change it. Here were the highlights for me (you can also watch the full video below).

Quotes:

“Every education system in the world is being reformed at the moment. And it’s not enough. Reform is no use anymore, because that’s simply improving a broken model. What we need — and the word’s been used many times during the course of the past few days — is not evolution, but a revolution in education. This has to be transformed into something else.”

“…human communities depend upon a diversity of talent, not a singular conception of ability.“

Two of the main problems with current education system:

1) Idea of linearity — “life is not linear, it’s organic. We create our lives symbiotically as we explore our talents in relation to the circumstances they help to create for us.”

2) Perception of college as the pinnacle of our education — “I think we are obsessed with getting people to college, certain sorts of college. I don’t mean you shouldn’t go to college, but not everybody needs to go, and not everybody needs to go now. Maybe they go later, not right away.”

Conclusion:

“We have to go from what is essentially an industrial model of education, a manufacturing model, which is based on linearity and conformity and batching people. We have to move to a model that is based more on principles of agriculture. We have to recognize that human flourishing is not a mechanical process, it’s an organic process. And you cannot predict the outcome of human development; all you can do, like a farmer, is create the conditions under which they will begin to flourish.”

LINK: Article about the video on HuffingtonPost.com

This weekend I was fortunate to be one of the lucky people in attendance at TEDxHollywood, “a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience.”

The event was held at the LA office of TBWA/CHIAT/DAY, which is basically the kind of cool, funky, creative environment where every ad guy and girl dreams of working.

An office park...literally

The event was organized by Creative Director Tito Melega, who said during his introduction (I’m paraphrasing) on the evening’s theme, Creativity In The New World: “Instead of creating stories people want to hear, we create stories people want to tell.”

The event moved forward with the first guest speaker, photographer Jay Mark Johnson, who creates stunning visuals through the use of what he calls “Space-time Photography.”

Next up was Rob Schwartz, Chief Creative Officer at TBWA/CHIAT/DAY who talked about some of the work that went into the Pepsi Refresh Project, an excellent case study for brands who want to behave as a tool for positive social change. What was really inspiring is the number of incredible ideas people submitted to the campaign: “There’s so much creative potential in this country coming from regular people.”

I loved when Rob showed us a messenger bag created from a billboard that was used doing the Refresh project. It was a great example of a brand using their marketing to literally create something in line with the campaign message. He closed with this Behance-esque quote.

IDEAS WORTH SHARING —> IDEAS WORTH DOING

Mark was followed by singer/songwriter Elizaveta, who pretty much left everyone floored during her performance with her amazing voice. You can download four free tracks here.

The last presenter of the night was Tears For Fears co-founder Curt Smith, who talked about how social media has changed both the music industry and how he behaves as a musician. The key takeaway for me was when Curt said, “I don’t HAVE to record an ALBUM.” He’s realized that the album format is inefficient and outdated, something Bob Lefsetz has been saying for some time now: people nowadays prefer cherry-picking their favorite tracks over buying albums.

Looking back, I’m incredibly grateful to have been a part of this experience. I met some terrific people and I think that it’s great Tito was able to gather such a colorful group of presenters to educate, entertain and inspire us for a short evening — pretty much everything I could ask for in a TED event.

LINKS:

Check out my full Flickr set here

TED X Hollywood Tweet Stream

I just discovered an excellent  new TEDTalk featuring illusionist David Blaine. There’s an important lesson here as Blaine explains:

1) The process of trial and error

2) How much research went into these stunts

When I was at MAS Chris Owens (The Richards Group) said that “the Planner has to be the most confident person in the room.”

Confidence comes from preparation, and preparation comes from making mistakes and doing your research — often going above and beyond what other people are willing to do.

He ends his presentation with this:

“As a magician I try to show things to people that seem impossible, and I think magic, whether I’m holding my breath or holding a deck of cards, is pretty simple: It’s practicing, it’s training and experimenting while pushing through the pain to be the best I can be…and that’s what magic is to me.”

I was just watching the recent TED Talk by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams. In the video he talks about how the explosive growth of Twitter has mainly come from unexpected uses by the Twitter community.

This reminds me of the Pabst Blue Ribbon story. PBR has always been a low-key, blue-collar brand. Back in the 1970′s, it was really popular, but with the explosive growth of huge brands like Budweiser and the birth of the microbrew industry, it lost a lot of its appeal.

As Douglas Atkin pointed out in “The Culting of Brands,” by the middle of 2002 the company was experiencing a completely unplanned turnaround:

“Pabst Blue Ribbon had miraculously become the fastest growing brand of all domestic beers, achieving double digit growth within a declining industry.

What happened to spark such a turnaround? A thriving community had adopted PBR as a brand that espoused their ideals. They liked how they had never seen advertisements for it, and that it was a throwback to America’s heartland and blue-collar ideals. It was a beer that wasn’t about image.

Ironically, this embrace quickly gave PBR an image. Impressively, PBR’s marketing team has resisted the temptation to jump on the hipster bandwagon and try to market to this cynical demographic. They realize that they are popular because they haven’t been trying to woo anyone. PBR wisely realizes that it needs to completely let go if they want to continue to enjoy their resurrection within the hispter community.”

Brands exist for the benefit of people. There’s really no other way to look at it. I think that today brands need to be malleable – people need to have the ability to mold them as they see fit. By doing so, people feel a sense of ownership for a brand, and therefore become more loyal.

Just look at Wikipedia. Most people didn’t think it would work, and what most of us underestimated is that users would be so committed to building the brand. All Wikipedia had to do was provide the skeleton – its users would do the job of fleshing it out.

Anyway, here’s Evan Williams at TED. It’s a short video – only about 8 minutes.

A lot of people say that this is their favorite Ted Talk, and I really enjoyed it too. I just watched it for my first time today. A few quotes from the presentation:

“Kids will take a chance – they’re not frightened of being wrong…If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”

“Picasso once said all children are born artists. The problem is to remain an artist as we grow up. We don’t grow into creativity..we grow out of it.”

“If you think of it the whole system of public education around the world is a protracted process of university entrance. And the consequence is that many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they’re not, because the thing they were good at at school wasn’t valued or it was actually stigmatized.”

“We know 3 things about intelligence: 1) It’s diverse 2)It’s dynamic 3) It’s distinct”

It’s interesting how right on Sir Ken Robinson is during this talk. He basically says the educational system – not just in the U.S.,  but everywhere in the world, is fundamentally flawed, because it mirrors itself after its educators. Professors, he says, “Live in their heads.” They’re focused on Mathematics, Literature and Science, and the Arts are always placed at the bottom of the educational hierarchy. As a result, students who excel at the Arts and creativity aren’t celebrated – they’re perceived as inadequate. This thinking stifles our creativity instead of nurturing it.

One of the key insights author Elizabeth Gilbert has goes back to the times of Ancient Rome and Greece. In those days, people believed “genius” came from a divine source. This theory evolved from having genius to being a genius. She says that this tremendous pressure to live up to the expectations of being a genius puts an unnatural burden and expectation on creative people, which inevitably leads to their burnout or early demise.

She says,”I think the pressure of that has been killing off our artists for the past 500 years.”Although I don’t wholeheartedly agree with her argument, I think it is important for people to distance themselves at times from their actions and behaviors to gain perspective. NOT to shun responsibility or accountability when things don’t go well, but to understand that WHAT you do will vary in success despite your greatest efforts. Creative people are often defined by their creative output (or lack of) and I think the key takeaway here is by putting less pressure on themselves they can rebound more easily and dive back into the creative process.

What do you think?