Friday Morning Inspiration - Scott Belsky

I wanted to share with my readers one of the most inspirational, informative talks I saw during Internet Week New York a few weeks ago. Part One:

Scott Belsky, from the creative network Behance and author of "Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming Obstacles Between Vision and Reality" spoke about idea generation and actually working on ones creative endeavors. He studied people who make ideas happen and how they push them to fruition; Google, writers, photographers, etc. And he realized the success of the idea has nothing to do with how great the idea is. Wouldn't it be cool if our society was an "Ideatocracy," he asked. For example, you'd never see a bad movie again. But obviously that's not the case so he spoke of the creative process and how to complete a project.

Most people get a project plateau right after the initial idea realizing they have to actually execute it. The biggest problems is that we're in a "reactionary workflow" constantly inundated with communication. We're constantly reacting to emails, Tweets, status updates, etc. instead of our own work. Ignore the clutter. Set aside time (use a timer) where you're off the internet or can discipline yourself NOT to check it.

Managing projects are key. The more organic the project flow is, the more likely you’re going to stay on top of project. Break projects into arbitrary increments of time. Milestones. Tasks associated with milestones. And adjust milestones to other increments of times – and reconsidered and innovate.

Scott says meetings are usually called by top people who are insecure about where they are in the process. Ha! He advises every meeting to have an "action step." Cancel weekly status meetings. Do meetings while standing up so people are less likely to chit chat. 

Scott believes that when you open your email and Twitter, your whole day is wasted. Stop reacting to what’s coming to you. It won’t make you fall behind. This echoes my dad's process of working first thing in the morning. Think about the big picture. Think about urgent vs. important. 

A common theme running through Internet Week is to get a product or service out there without perfecting it. I agree with this sentiment. It's how Rent the Runway got their website out. And according to Scott, often times IDEO does rapid prototyping - seeing an object materialized so they can refine it. By putting a product out there right away, you realize you’re either horribly wrong or right. It's better to be wrong early so you can fix it.

Use community to gain traction with your ideas and leverage that community. Chris Anderson of Wired puts his idea on his blog first. If it’s so easy to replicate by someone else, then he believes its not worth doing. By seeing how people engage – he’ll judge how good it is. Then his bloggers hold him accountable to complete the idea.

Scott found three types of people while trying to profile successful creatives:

1. Dreamers - They always come up with something new. Think, "maybe we should also do this." They get high off of new ideas.

2. Doers - The Debbie Downers or the world. "Here’s why we can’t do that. Timeline isn’t there. No budget." They poke holes in dreams. They're annoying but important and thrive off of execution.

3. Incrementalists -  They have a weird innate ability to jump from dreamer to doer. Jump from idea to execution. They create too many things but nothing to scale. None had truly been successful. 

So now that you've figured out what category you fall into, how do you get things done? You partner up with a doer. Partner up with a Dreamer! Or an incrementalist. But wait. There's more! Stay tuned for Part Two!

Internet Week New York - Yahoo Provoke Summit

It's been a week and I finally have time to give a recap of some of the highlights of Internet Week New York. On Monday, I attended the Yahoo Provoke Summit with an introduction by Ze Frank. I'm not entirely sure how to describe Ze other than genius, cultural anthropologist, thinker and web pioneer. Okay, that will do. In his 45 minute riveting talk he successfully connected a few lines of Corinthians 13:1-13 "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me" to how the biggest challenge for advertisers is to create meaningful connections between people. How did he do it? I have no idea but I will relay some of the ideas he spoke about. Puer Aeternus = the eternal child. In the land of Facebook, games like Farmville and FourSquare, have we entered a state of puer aeternus? What exactly is "work?" Ze argues that work is that attempt at creating an authentic, emotional connection with our peers and future peers. The Modern Day Pirates summed up Ze's point that in his "view, advertisers should not restrict their visions, but rather should present them to the internet and engage their target audience.  If the product is worth marketing, it will find its supporters, and they will rally around it in a way that money cannot buy."

After Ze's presentation, Nick Parish from Contagious Magazine led a panel discussion with Bre Pettis from MakerBot, Matt Szymczyk from Zugara and Seth Goldstein from Stickybits. Check back with Modern Day Pirates for company descriptions. Bre had some thought provoking comments and told me later that he should have started a fist fight among the panel to entertain the audience - but really, he was interesting enough. He thinks that IP (Intellectual Property) is dead and that everything will be open source. Digest this one for a bit. Imagine you run a small non-profit in Africa and you need an online donation infastructure. 5 minutes later, you're up and running - no cost to the organization. Now think about pharmaceuticals, education, architecture.. He also believes, coming from working in the American school system as a teacher, that education is dead. In keeping with the sharing of knowledge, he believes that the education of the future will be through sharing over the web. So maybe he's trying to get on the TED speaker radar... but he definitely has a good point. 

And finally, Iain Tait, Global Interactive Executive Creative Director at Wieden + Kennedy discussed how to evolve an advertising organization to better facilitate this type of higher level, thought provoking creativity. As I'm sure we've all read before - the most successful organizations are the ones that encourage the "best stuff" to win. It's no longer about "the man" pushing his ideas onto us in the marketplace and the same should hold true for an ad agency. The successful ad agency should have hungry, ambitious, evolved and creative people that are dedicated to working and winning as a team. Creating integrated and innovative campaigns is not about ego or ownership but about sharing and the collective win.

Wow.. I see a theme here. Collective. Human, emotional connection. Sharing. In 2006, Time Magazine voted "You" as the "Person of the Year." It seems that in 2010, this concept of individuality has evolved to recognizing the importance of all of us and not just thinking about our own needs, but the needs of the collective.