Happening at a place near you: Lisbon September 27, 28 and 29

Together with Henriette Weber Anderson I am co-leading a whole day workshop on creativity September 27 prior to SHIFT  (28-29 September, 2006) in Lisbon. Besides this I will also be giving a presentation about intellectual property and knowledge ownership during the SHIFT event. About the creativity workshop:

"The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves. Carl Jung”

We are all born very creative and screaming. We go to school, learn to add and do other fancy stuff, and most of the time forget how be creative. In this “Creativity Workshop” we will playfully provide you with a remedial one day crash course aimed at having you claim back some of that creativity that you were born with, and borrow some more from your own resources. We will not solve all your creative problems and we do not promise that you will see God, however we do plan to have some fun looking into several aspects of creativity that are important in technology and life. This is an applied workshop, do come prepared to work on your own goals and to scream.

When it comes to SHIFT, Lisbon, Portugal and Creativity I am totally biased. My view is that creativity can be a can or worms if not handled properly, however there are some serious people who have been methodological about looking into it, so I feel sage - or as sage as any of this can feel - about tackling creativity in an interactive workshop where we, trainers and participants, get to do some fun playful thinking about what creativity means to them, and what use, if any, it could possibly have in their daily lives. I have found myself recently trying to pick the brains of an Italian venture capitalist about this thing called creativity. I was fascinated by the fact that he responded that it is very important that the managing teams of the ventures that he looks into be creative, however I was unable to extract from him how he judged the presence of that creativity or what criteria he used for his assessment. So, how do you assess creativity? Why am I biased when it comes to Lisbon and Portugal? Well, I was born in Portugal and if there is one thing that I have ever regretted in my life, that is, to have left that country. I hold no nationalistic views, however it is one beautiful piece of real estate! I love the language, and language is culture. I love the food, and food is culture. SHIFT is being organized by Pedro Custodio and his team in Lisbon for the first time this year. He has been inspired by events like lift06 and reboot and I would like to think that this is the Atlantic coast flavour of these two great events (conference, unconference).

Technorati Tags: conference, creativity, lift, lift06, lisboa, lisbon, portugal, reboot8, shift, shift06, workshop

Long tails, short sight, big business, small wonders and "Trust"

JP Rangaswami in his "confused of calcutta" blog has something very interesting to say:

If you (re)build it they will come "... The “long tail” implies that the Internet is ushering in an age when micro-niches will dominate, at the expense of mass-culture monoliths. Sure, the Net makes it easier for us all to find the bizarre fetishes and tiny cliques that we are longing for. But one thing has always bugged me about this theory: How do you make a business out of that, unless you’re a big aggregator? I read that, and somewhere in my head a bulb fused. Or maybe it lit up. Pretty much every serious argument we’re having, every conversation we need to continue, is about some form of Big versus some form of Small. Blefuscu versus Lilliput. And we use concepts like expertise and authenticity and reliability and affordability and freedom and choice to try and win the arguments. And the concepts we use land up polarising the debates. Which made me think…. …. .It’s all about trust ." (for the whole argument do go to the original post)

The original post contains all the relevant hyperlink background on this ongoing discussion of what marketing might be, could be or ought to be when the advancing edge of communication is instantaneous and available to all. I think JP nailed it.

Technorati Tags: business, long tail, tensoriana, trust

Coming out of recession!

To begin with my deepest apologies to all, in particular to  the participants at the WIPO training July 11, 12, and the Advisory Board at innovation.tank, who have been waiting for what I said that I would write and deliver. I have been bogged down and the excuses are my own, so I will be dealing with them as best as I can and not clutter this space unduly. NOW! Today is August 1, and it is THE national Swiss holiday. The folks will go bananas with fireworks later this evening, but otherwise it tends to be a nice holiday right smack in the middle of the summer. I started the day by giving tensoriana a whole new post about DRM, fiddled with the template and decided that indeed, I better get back to the drawing board. On bloglines I had over six thousand posts to read, and I am not going to read them all. In endo things were a bit more down to size, just a bit over 1'600! Blimey! I did use some of the comfort features in endo and added a few links to my delicious with news items that I find of interest, if not alarming; these roll over as the first item on the right navigation column on this blog. Here are really good news - in Portuguese - directly form the aggregator, that is, the early registration for SHIFT has been extended until August 20th. It is a good thing, I have yet to register although I am slated for both co-leading the Creativity Workshop and making a presentation on intellectual property and software.

Datas de Registo (PT):

Uma vez que recebemos vários emails a pedir para se inscreverem na conferência após a data limite (30 Julho) para o desconto especial de 50%, e uma vez que aparentemente metade do planeta está ou estava de férias, a organização da SHiFT decidiu alargar o prazo para o pré-registo na conferência.

Assim, e não havendo certamente uma repetição desta medida, o desconto especial estende-se aos registos efectuados até dia 20 de Agosto!.

Aos restantes que se inscreveram atempadamente, irá ser enviado um pedido de pagamento a partir dos próximos dias, sendo que se não tiverem recebido o respectivo pedido até dia 20, devem entrar em contacto com a organização.

Vemo-nos em Setembro!

Tags: shift06, registo, lisboa, portugal, conferencia, tecnologia

Did I say back to the drawing board? I meant, back to writing!

Technorati Tags: actionable, conference, integrity, no excuses, shift, update