To Swear or Not to Swear

I’m known to occasionally swear in a presentation, and in our Presentation Skills workshop, I’m frequently asked if it’s okay to use emotive language. Here’s a great example where the word s**t seems highly appropriate. Take about 5 minutes to watch a terrific short talk on TED. 

-Scott

Talk about positive reinforcement - if you and your coworkers fill out your timesheet, a magical fridge opens automatically and gives you beer! Watch the video to see it in action.

This totally cool kickstarter project concepts a reusable bottle that tracks how often you refill it and through an iPhone app allows you to visualize the positive impact you’re having on the environment.

The Aussies at Dove take on negative Facebook ads to create some positive priming.

Great stuff, courtesy of springwise.com. Check out the full article and see if you don’t get a little excited.

Harvard’s Tony Wagner, author of Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World, speaking at Skillshare’s Penny 2012 conference. 

Wagner’s insights echo John Seely Brown’s in the excellent A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change, as well as Sir Ken Robinson’s vision for changing educational paradigms to better foster creativity.

(via explore-blog)

Check out Coke’s “Hug Me” vending machine in Singapore. No money, no change. Just a hug, and here’s your soda. Seems as soon as we remember how contagious happiness is, it’s only a matter of time before we want to share it with everybody.

As part of our work we teach workshops.  They’re intense, engaging, high-energy.  They require the audience to do a lot of mental and emotional work.  In unison.  An audience as one thinking being.

I’ve just wrapped up a session.  To an audience of 60 high-potential twenty-somethings from across a range of companies.  

We missed target.  We didn’t create the energy or engagement.  The performance was mediocre.  This is rare.

Why?  Because we were introduced with a prayer.  A very well meaning prayer.  It was a secular gathering, generously hosted by a faith-based organization.  

We’d pumped music into the room, started the warm-up conversation, got the crowd thinking a little, then at the formal introduction, the HR officer opened the session with a “prayer to our Lord”.   A little stunned, I was standing there thinking “I don’t have a Lord” and “how uncomfortable are those in the audience who haven’t bowed their head?”, or worse “what about those who have bowed their head simply to fit in?”.  

It reminds me of the looks I receive from fans at sports games when I don’t put hand on heart and sing Star Spangled Banner (I’m sorry, I love America, but it’s not my anthem).

80 minutes wasn’t long enough to recover the flow.  The energy was lost.  The tone was changed, the division set.

I wish this delightful lady had simply added a Y to her intent.  I could have harnessed a “Let’s take a quiet moment to reflect and take energy from your god, whomever or whatever that is.”

- SW

http://helldesign.net, kurzweilai.net

Until now. Beyond read­ing email and surf­ing the Web, we will soon be check­ing our vital signs on our phone. We can already con­tin­u­ous­ly mon­i­tor our heart rhythm, blood glu­cose lev­els, and brain waves while we sleep. Minia­ture…

(Source: futuramb, via emergentfutures)

Make a mess. And if it doesn’t work. Start over.