The term ‘edge of chaos’ has a number of usages, in this case I use Stuart Kauffman’s*, a theoretical biologist and complex systems researcher, ‘mathematical models of evolving systems in which the rate of evolution is maximised near the edge of chaos’.  As many artists will have experienced, this dance at the edge of chaos produces the most vivid results – but how do you know that you have reached the edge of chaos and stability, if you don’t occasionally go over it?
*One of his cited inspirations behind studying complex systems is: “when you look at a cubist painting and see the structure hidden within it – that’s what I wanted”.(1)

There is nothing quite like an over-working creative mind in free-fall. For some it is the full enormity of our own autonomy, the limitless possibilities from the spectrum choice – overwhelms us into inaction.  Or this can just as easily be flavoured by absurdism, the realisation that there is no inherent meaning apart from what we give it (even more choice). Or perhaps nihilistic reductionism that negates all meaning entirely. Cramping just the problem solving skills we need to get back into the realm of stability, to bring creative concept into manifestation, can also be: the perceived futility of our actions in the face of such awesome absurdity/complexity/nothingness, economic stress, anxiety about presentation, and if it really gets out of control, spirals into a vortex of a full blown existentialist crisis.

Unsurprisingly this creative process in the brain is of increasing interest to neuroscientists.  In his keynote presentation (below) on ‘Neuroscience of Creativity’ at State of the Arts 2012, Dr Robert Bilder from UCLA’s Semel Institute breaks this down into the “components of cognition that we can study the biological basis of creativity : Generation, Memory and inhibition: Drive & emotion”.  Through his research discovered the “best single predictor of creative generation is sheer number of products”, that is, “most creative products come from people who generate the most products”.  This may seem self-explanatory, but if you are sitting around waiting for your moment of brilliance to happen it is worth a thought that, as Dr Bilder uses the example, “Picasso created 10,000 works in his lifetime”.

So while an occasional foray into the truly complex can deliver incredible bursts of creative output, a successful creative practice needs to be balanced with the skills to connect back to the realm of execution.  But this is where our creative brain gets in the way.  See the human brain is a strange place, we can know something, like great time management tips or that smoking is bad for us, and literally take no action based on this information. Even though we know we would be better off if we enacted on it.  To create a practice from the creative part of our consciousness we need to bypass thinking, and instead find paths to doing – forming a creative habit.

Our habits are controlled by the opposite end of our brain from our creative thought in the basal ganglia. Located in the core of the brain the basal ganglia is also referred to as our reptilian cortex, since this part of our can be traced back to evolving in reptiles. According to the Triune brain theory as we evolved our brain just built on top of itself, like adding an extension –on top of the reptilian cortex is the paleomammalian (limbic system) responsible for: our instincts in reproductive and parental behaviour, and neomammalian (neocortex) which controls abstract thought, language and planning.

Diagram of the human brain

Oliver Emberton in his Forbes article ‘How do I get over my bad habit of procrastinating?’, describes how the reptilian brain (named Rex in this article) ‘instincts guide and motivate you to this day. Hunger. Fear. Love. Lust. Rex’s thoughts are primitive and without language… Here’s the bit you’re not going to like. Rex makes the final call on all your decisions. Every. Single. One.”  But using the creative powers of our neocortex and with the knowledge of how habits are formed – we can hack them.

Charles Duhigg , author of ‘The Power of Habit’, explains,“habits emerge because the brain is constantly looking for ways to save effort. Left to its own devices, the brain will try to make almost any routine into a habit, because habits allow our minds to ramp down more often.” (2)  So instead of using our neocortex, the creative brain, to keep track of discipline, productivity and time management we can set up a routine to bring these functions into the realm of habit in the core of the brain. Leaving the higher brain available for creative thought and habits tamed. The exact sequence of events in formation of a habit is cue, the signal for a habit to start; routine, the actions performed; reward, the reward for the action. As Duhigg summarises the extensive research (mostly with mice in mazes), “over time, this loop – cue, routine, reward; becomes more and more automatic. The cue and reward become intertwined until a powerful sense of anticipation and craving emerges.”(3)

The next step in successful formation a habit is choosing an activity that can be successfully formed into habit. As with goal setting there is a lot to be gained by focusing on outcomes over which you have locus of control (more about that in this post from last year), that is, directing your energy towards what you have control over (how you spend your time) rather than the result (which has many factors influencing it).  Everyday as you complete your effort based goal (routine), you will feel a sense of accomplishment (reward) and by the end of the week have results to show for it (another reward).  The initial phase of forming the habit will require all of your creative brain to get started. As I have written about before, Matt Cutts proposes that this takes one month of daily repetition – check out his 30day challenge. But depending on how embedded competing habits are, like hitting snooze on your alarm or compulsively checking social media or not being able to go home before a party ends, the amount of time and energy required to change your behaviour will vary.

Unfortunately there is not one set way of going about this, so a bit of trial and error to find the methods that work for you is needed. Go agile – by creating an external and iterative system to measure and learn from your experiments forming a habit. This could be as simple as a calendar with stickers to signify completion of your new daily habit, or make an art project from the process, or write up like a science report (think mice in the maze) or enlist a mate to weekly share openly successes and failures, observations and tips. By creating an external system to store and periodically evaluate your progress, the stifling constant evaluation from (the not so helpful part of) your creative brain can be removed.

Start by working on one habit at a time and make it stick! If you follow the 30 day rule you should be able to develop 12 new habits over a year.

Tips to try:

• Physically placing objects to remind you of a new habit you are trying form (cue)
• Instead of packing everything up at the end of the day – set up your workspace ready for the first task of the next day . Even purposefully leaving a half finished task out to jump straight into. (cue)
• Place a big sign on your alarm clock/phone that reminds you why you want/need to get up. (cue)
• Piggy-back your new habit on a solid habit (cue, routine)
• Splitting your day into work sections that you can tick off as you complete (reward). In my studio I work in two hour blocks (which is the same length of time as my favourite podcasts), some techniques break it down even further 20mins. The pomodoro technique actually uses a kitchen timer to create the externalisation of time. (cue – timer on your desk, routine, reward- timer buzzing)
• If you struggle working in isolation, consider moving to a shared studio or co working space. Sometimes even having other people passively observe you working is enough to shame you out of bad productivity habits. (cue)
• Create habits that maximise your energy or habits that manage energy rather than time. Ever noticed that when you are well rested and fed, how alert and sparking with ideas you are? Naturally without any prompts wanting to get into even tedious parts of your work. Funnily enough this trend is usually reversed when hung-over or hungry or tired (or all of the above). Try out the habits that get you in bed earlier or drinking less or taking care of your diet. (reward- feeling great)
• Find fun ways to reward completion of your new daily habit especially while you are working on getting it to stick  - old school shiny star stickers work wonders!

Get out there and test it – treat it like a fun experiment, create an external system and reshape your creative habits. Next time you slip over the edge into creative chaos, your new habits will bring you back to tell us all about it!

I would love to hear what hacks for creative habits have worked for you – please share in the comments.

Notes:

1. P 103, M.Mitchell Waldrop, Complexity: The emerging science at the edge of order and chaos, Simon & Schuster; 1st edition, 1993

2. p17, Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, Random House; 1 edition, 2012

3. p19, Ilbid.

Nodus Labs: Facebook volunteer group network visualization in Gephi

As part of an in-bound marketing strategy, that is, the marketing channels you don’t have to directly ‘pay’ for, activation of your Social Graph is just one possibility.  With some time, skills and social smarts you can generate a fantastic level of new interest and engagement for your organization.

Definition time: the Social Graph of an organization is the network of relationships in your community,  in this context, online.  Users, customers, investors, employees, board members, founders, suppliers, supporters, their social influence and connections all contribute.  The activation bit, is creating dialogues and narratives, encouraging connections and genuine engagement, that expand the breadth and depth of your community.

When you are small and trying to make a big splash your biggest enemy is indifference.  In my experience, curiously, it is always the most interesting people, working on interesting projects that spend the most time hand-wringing about being judged / blowing their own trumpet / agonising over every sentence in a blog post.  Stop it!  Want to know what is more embarrassing?  When your funding runs out and no one cares!

Start the conversation within your own team, this can be as small those commenting on the company or related blogs, encouraging each team member to tweet, share, re-pin or even have their own blog.  Almost everyone in your organisation will already have some kind of social media presence.  They will have their own style and views on how to communicate online, which is fine, but if they are not excited by what you are doing, how do you expect anyone else to be?

It is basic maths.  In your current marketing strategy you probably have a blog, facebook, twitter, newsletter and maybe a few other communication channels talking about your brand/org/project.  Even if you have a small team of 4 who all blog or share their various areas of expertise or vision within the company – that is already a huge impact on the conversation.  Add 50 or even 10 to this social media presence and you can start making a significant impact on the reach of your community, share of voice (SoV) and reputation management. Check out Jason Miller’s post on 5 simple metrics to measure.

Trust and authenticity.  Put some faces to your organization.  Develop a relationship with your community/customers/investors online.  Show what a likeable and (add adjective) bunch of people you are.  Vital if you are at an early stage.  Venture capitalists (VCs) want to see that you have the best team, it allows people to connect to your adventure and a great insurance when you have product failures because your users will forgive you.  If your community is engaged with the narratives of the people who are working tirelessly to achieve x, they will keep coming back, give feedback and feel included in your vision.  Still not sure? VC, Mark Suster on ‘Why startups need to blog’.

Showing off your company culture.  Attract top performers to your company when maybe you don’t have top dollar, make your team one that everyone wants in-on.  People who enjoy their work, like artists, do not see the separation between work and the rest of their lives.  This is not a ploy to force people work even more – but in organisations that understand this attract top talent by giving the freedom for the fluidity of life and work, on- and offline.

Authorship and authority.  As more and more content gets generated online Google (and others) need to find better ways to rate and index sites.  Increasingly complex algorithms are developed to differentiate compelling from ordinary content, which in turn provides more accurate search results.  Google’s not-so-popular social network Google+ does provide one significant advantage for content creators – authorship.  By connecting your online content with your profile (which in this case could connect to your organisation) you are authenticating it for Google.  Not only does it give you a nice pretty picture in search results for your content (which should give you higher click through rate (CTR)), anyone logged into their Google account and  connected to your circles will see ‘relevant’ content prioritised and marked.  Below is what happens when I search for my friend Tim Webster.  Without personal search activated I get a lot of information about an Australian sports presenter with the same name.  Then with personal search activated Google knows that I am probably looking for the Tim Webster who is in my circles.  Indicated by the little person icon – see below.

Saving money down the track.  Social authority (which also includes engagement in other social networks) around your brand/organization is increasingly measured by Google in developing your quality score – which directly effects Adwords cost-per-click prices.  Facebook pages have made qualitative changes, so if your posts do not receive comments or likes from your community, future posts will be shown to a smaller segment.  With access to a broader segment only obtained through paid promotion.

Getting Started: Content

Activating your social graph is not about spamming or selling to your friends.  If you are doing this please stop, it is tacky and anyway they are not your potential customer base.  Activating your Social Graph also does not mean that your employees are now required to spurt branded campaigns or forced to use their personal social accounts for an organizational purpose.  Encourage your team to share, create and discuss what they are genuinely interested in.  Connect with people who are already part of the conversation and have their own communities.  Be genuine, be generous.

The segue between you as an individual and your role/brand/project can be a tenuous as you like, in the beginning it is just about getting started.  There is plenty of time to refine later, however, I would avoid anything counter or harmful to the company and their culture.  Be a community star, quick check list: authentic, consistent, transparent.

Some themes:

Professional:  Share expertise or thought leadership within your field.  See: Avinash Kaushik’s blog: author and Google digital marketing evangelist.

Start-up adventures: blog about the trials, tribulations and golden nuggets of being a start up CxO/ founder.  People love this, you are doing what many dream about – help them live vicariously.  See Joel Gascoigne’s blog : founder at Buffer.

Technical:  Social doesn’t have to be all online.  Get involved with teaching code, or other tech communities – and blog or tweet (or both) about it.  See Amélie Anglade @utstriker : MIR/sound software engineer at SoundCloud

Art/Love/Life:  Perfect if there is some sort of crossover with the offerings of your organization.  This is not always possible, but it is a great place to start…   See: Nick Normal’s blog : artist, maker, librarian, diplomat, Queens enthusiast, World Maker Faire NYC co-producer.

Inspiration: Your social media efforts don’t have to be tamed prose.  Pintrest and Tumblr are easy tools to share inspiration and connect.  See Austin Kleon’s Tumblr: just one part of this artist/writer’s impressive online presence.

Tips on how to implement in your organization:

Like with any new behaviour there is going to be some resistance to adoption and sustained practice.  I love bottom-up collaboration, but this is just one of those things that needs top-down if it is going to be seriously implemented.  Founders and CxOs need to lead this behaviour change, set guidelines and make the resources available for its success.

Not everyone is a social media or blogging natural and the initial experience of developing their professional voice can be very intimidating, often for your most senior employees.  But when you sign-on to a start-up or any organisation that needs to fight for its existence – founders, board members and CxOs have no excuse not to be socially engaged online.  This should just be part of their role.  No doubt to get to their current position, they have an extended network already and authority within their field.  It is simply then about connecting the dots.

For everyone else make it an optional (but supported) extra-curricular activity.  Offering incentives for any culture change is a pretty clear way of making new expectations of behavior clear.

Free: internal praise and recognition of the team’s efforts

Free: an engaged internal community.  It is not just about creating but there is huge value for the team engaging with each other’s online content – commenting, sharing, re-tweeting etc

Free: offer opportunities for team members to be interviewed or guest post on the brand/org/project blog (with links)

Offer to make work time available for developing online content.

Or have a regular workshop with expertise, this could be from your internal social media or marketing people.  Help the team to develop their voice, content, share feedback and understand the nature of social media.

If you have the budget or the scale of organisation that requires it, incentives such as vouchers for exceptional social content could be offered.

Don’t forget to create great (org) content, give your team the best opportunity to share (when they are inspired), check out Flickr accounts like transmediale, or Facebook accounts from: 3rd Ward Brooklyn and Etsy.

Then:

Make a commitment to be consistent, whatever that is.  One tweet a day, a blog post a month, Saturday morning pinning and repining, just make it a habit, and you soon won’t even have to remind yourself.  Once people start sharing, commenting, tweeting your efforts – they won’t be able to stop!  Self-help tip (and another great example how to engage online) : Matt Cutts on changing habits, also Google’s head of webspam.

How to avoid #fail: guidelines, then feedback, feedback, feedback.

Some things should be off limits for public discussion.  No matter how common sense that seems to you, spell it out.  Technology secrets, incomplete business deals, personnel problems, using company handles when drunk etc.  Twitter is littered with fantastic examples.  The best way to make guidelines work is for the whole team to have input.

Connecting, reading and sharing feedback with each other’s content, is the best way to refine your voice and also pick up any issues early on.  Digital media is amazingly tolerant,  because you can always edit – when you are starting out this is quite a blessing.   A gentle comment (on- or offline) usually gets the message across, just in the same way any community maintains their social norms.

Measure and Learn.

Create campaign UTM links on founder blogs:  handy url builder

Measure and annotate the change in SoV, visibility in search engines and correlations in traffic increases.

Keep track of your referral traffic in Google Analytics.

Measure and calculate the value of Facebook content being shown to more of your fans.

Remember: Social doesn’t just happen, be consistent, give feedback, invest in creating great content, measure/learn and have fun!

Do you have any tips to share?  Or organisations that do this well?

Made by Many: Make, Test, Learn

One of the other less glamorous similarities is that for both artists and innovation start-ups the constant pursuit of funding to continue their practice.   Even when funding is acquired it is often limited, so it is imperative to find methods for creating quickly and efficiently.  Now I know a whole bunch of artists who approach their practice with incredible entrepreneurial skill, and plenty who don’t and are happy with their choice. But what I often hear from artists is dissatisfaction with the lack of funding and opportunities, but not much in a further discourse.  Why are artists (as creative sorts) not creatively reimaging the paradigm of the business end of art to get a better deal?

[note]  I am using some big broad words: art, artistic practice and the title artist are incredibly diverse I realise it is impossible to make one easy definition to fit all – If you can think of a better way to summarise these terms please let me know.

I have been genuinely surprised, when discussing possible funding and business solutions with artists, by the lack of knowledge of one of the most prolific start-up business philosophies of recent years: The Lean Startup by Eric Ries.

“Lean isn’t simply about spending less money. Lean isn’t just about failing fast, failing cheap. It is about putting a process, a methodology around the development of innovation”.  Successfully this has been applied to the development of countless technology innovations and has real potential for a huge variety of art projects too.

The basic structure of the Lean Startup works around the iterative feedback loop make-test-learn.  Traditionally used in building software this cycle fits in with agile development sprints, where within a defined time frame (usually 1-2 weeks) new features are developed, tested and then the findings fed back into the next sprint.  The aim is to develop the simplest realisation of the innovation concept as fast as possible, described as a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and to build up from there. This is opposed to the strategy of creating the ‘perfect’ offering and then gauging the response, often once the resources are spent.

Working in this cycle of build-measure-learn the Lean Startup process seeks to develop validated learning (learning from objective measurement) to eliminate uncertainty allowing for fast decision-making and efficient use of resources.  With the ideology catch-cry “Think big. Start small. Scale fast”, companies such as Dropbox and Wealthfront have used to successfully bring disruptive products to the market.

But it is more than just applying a certain type of business model to artistic production. It is gleaning the successes from this process to explore alternative methods to organise and develop work that can serve artists better. Whether this is in the management of a studio practice, dealing with funding bodies or seeking to disrupt the art and culture industry beyond old constructs and dichotomies.

Like a number of other productivity methods such as GTD, part of the power of the Lean Startup model is the externalisation of goals and learning. Articulating the measure of a successful outcome, collecting the feedback and using this as the validated learning to guide the next phase of ‘building’.  Now not all artistic projects will benefit from audience feedback through development, but taken in a broader sense this feedback can come through a select group of peers or just from yourself in response to the material realisation of an idea.

Personally I have found this process of creating external systems incredibly liberating in the creative process.  Once I am within a creation/making cycle – I am not wasting my time constantly evaluating whether each activity is worthwhile because I am confident that the evaluation process has been scheduled and that will be the time to reflect.  This leaves me to get on with it, creating in deep concentrated thought.

Immediated Autodocumentary: ks12

An interesting example of this reflection of process is creative studio ks12 developing their concept of the video sprint in their application for the Portland Incubator Experiment. While not directly using the lean method their approach draws on methods from agile software development to create product as process. Engaging their creative practice with the funding and development potential incubator projects can offer.

Out of the studio, I recently spoke at the Berlinerpool event Funding Arts: Cultural Mecenat as Corporate Strategy. In my presentation I attempted to connect the Lean Startup (as new mode of business) and the venture capital that funds the start-up community to potential opportunities in arts funding.  My experience with arts funding whether government, corporate or commercial is that it reflects the cultural values and modes of operation of these organisations.  Often these cultural conditions can be in opposition or merely imposing upon an innovative creative practice.  Whereas venture capital already has the connection and interest in risk-taking and innovation potentially could deliver funding opportunities to the arts with a better cultural fit.

the awesome foundation

This style of funding also extends to groups like the awesome foundation, a “worldwide network of people devoted to forwarding the interest of awesomeness in the universe”.   Once a month in each city the local awesome foundation trustees hold an event, which emulates the pitching process at start-up events, and hand out a paper bag to the winner with $1000 – no strings attached.  This can also be seen in the growing sector of crowdfunding (kickstarter, WeFund, Sponsume) that have brought new opportunities for capital at the intersection of arts and technology.  Working lean speaks the language of these new funding models, demonstrates your vision (the un-imaginable) with a minimum viable product and grows the project efficiently from validated learning.

Further expanding the conversation the online collaborative design platform jovoto has sought submissions from their community to be part of a joint think-tank with communication agencies and organisations to explore creative agencies of the future.  There have been some fascinating discussions around the future of work for creatives such as creating fluid networks or cultivating a culture of constant creation.  The project challenges a community to articulate an alternative which is enormously refreshing from the usual bitching about the status quo.  There are three days left for rating  - and keep an eye on the jovoto blog for the think-tank white paper.

This is just a start, let’s keep this conversation going to seek better solutions to not only sustain artistic practice in an ever-changing market but to fundamentally to disrupt those markets. Whether that is running lean or not, it is just one possible point of departure to this journey to disruptive and creative innovation.

What other initiatives/people/collectives in the arts are rethinking how to access resources?  What methods have worked for you?

Berlin while home to hundreds of different types of start-ups is still defined by execution-focused incubators such as Rocket and newer players, Team Europe and Project A (amongst others).  All these companies do very well from bringing low risk products with proven business models to market.  So as you can imagine at Web Week conferences such as Heureka and NEXT, there was a lot of talk about company building, raising capital, the methods and value of execution.  The message was loud and clear – you can’t have a functioning business with out great execution.

As a creative sort I know that ideas are cheap (there is no shock value left in that for me!), you have loads of them all of the time and most of them, while very entertaining aren’t that good for more than a giggle.  Choosing which ideas to execute and the execution itself are of course the main features of any business decision, in any industry.  But during the course of Gründerszene’s Heureka conference I was surprised to hear Luckasz Gadowski, Team Europe founding partner proclaim, “if you want innovation, be an artist” (I don’t think he meant it in a good way either.)  In the showmanship of the moment I think there was an exaggerated flippancy to this comment, but it does demonstrate the prevalent ideology of process innovation in German companies.  But when did tech business become just about execution rather than getting excited by disruptive innovation and great products?  Surely these properties of enterprise should work harmoniously (with many other factors).  So why put innovation at the opposite end of the scale to execution?

I am always wary when dichotomies are too easily created.  Apart from being intellectually lazy, in our complex world nothing is so linear that you can have one quality down one end opposed to another quality at the other.  I am uncertain what is to gain by using Artists as the examples of ‘pure’ innovation, apart from an attempt to devalue it?  Prior to tech (and still thriving) is one of the greatest scalable industries of all, Modern/contemporary art –and it certainly didn’t get there by not executing.  Practicing Artists might have a very different value structure or vision that they are fulfilling – but they still execute.  One of my early business and art heroes, Andy Warhol famously quoted “Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art”.  (The Philosophy of Andy Warhol : (From A to B and Back Again) is still one of my favourite business books.)

Design Thinking Ideo: David Gilbert, Strategy & Design blog

Further, I am always surprised when people rely on dichotomies despite doing them selves a disservice, boxing themselves into a stereotype.  Quite a number of Artists irritatingly do this (the tired old ‘selling out’ conversation) but straight up business execs should also be paying more attention to the corner they are painting themselves into.   Navigating the chaos of current markets continually being disrupted Robert Safian explores the qualities of future business leaders, “Every enterprise needs to find – and evolve – the structure, system, and culture that best allows it to stay competitive as its specific market shifts. Business leaders need to be creative, adaptive, and focused in their techniques, staffing, and philosophy.”  Knowledge across disciplines in fact seems to create buoyancy in troubled seas.

Beyond surviving disruption, developing disruptive technologies ultimately requires a creative leap of faith to imagine the unimaginable.  While researching his upcoming book Hearts, Smarts, Guts and Luck, Anthony Tjan interviewed hundreds of entrepreneurs from around the world to find out “what it takes to be an entrepreneur and build a really great business”.  He was surprised to discover that “of the entrepreneurs we surveyed who had a successful exit (that is, an IPO or sale to another firm), about 70% did NOT start with a business plan.” While you cannot bypass execution, nor is it advisable, a more holistic approach between all of the disciplines is needed.  In fact, in the handy top 5 list for early start-ups that Tjan created from his findings, understanding the business model came in fifth!

A great example is the fundamental company building skill – bringing the right people together and getting them to work together – which any true execution model must rely on.  Time and again entrepreneurs during Web Week discussed the issues of company building in a disruptive environment, in particular the importance of maintaining company culture while rapidly scaling.  Sebastian Siemiatkowski, CEO of Klarna: describes his philosophy as the Uppsala model (named after his hometown) “money does not buy you time”.  Paraphrased: you cannot buy a company culture.  Having the cash to hire hundreds of programmers does not guarantee success with rapid growth brings its own problems.  Culture is a delicate thing, if you continually ignore it and drive purely through singular metrics, the reputation of your company will eventually starve you of great talent (who want more than a great pay-check) – a problem I am sure Rocket is already aware of.

Proposing a new type of entrepreneur Max Marmer from Start-up Genome, wrote “Transformational entrepreneurs – Map of Socioeconomic Value creation”.  This new type of entrepreneur brings together “the scalable tools and methodology of Technology Entrepreneurship with the world-centric value system of Social Entrepreneurship”.  In doing so he addresses issues in both sectors.  Despite the phenomenal growth and company creation in technology start-ups he is critical of the lack of projects with purpose beyond high exit valuations. Equally in the social enterprise movement, it was refreshing to hear Marmer’s critique ”the community’s propensity to descend into self-congratulation starves the founders of the critical feedback required for them to find the holes in their vision. The standards must be set higher than good intentions.”

Map of socioeconomic value creation : Max Marmer

This critique addresses the culture that our access to technology and incredible opportunities of scale has created.  In the mad dash to scale and to exit valuations, what has happened to deeper thought, true innovation and real communities?  “The most common mistake start-ups make is to think it’s all about technology and economy” Alexander Bard Internet sociologist (and NEXT speaker) sums up in ARMdevices.net interview.  He continues “…psychology and history are actually more important to understand your future customers, friends and people you are going to connect with.  Psychology is the under-rated factor in everything online today.”

Perhaps instead of hacking technology we should be hacking our culture. Events like the un-hackathon at the Californian College of the Arts are taking a more collaborative approach to the links between tech, design and business.  Before any coding begins the teams use design thinking to connect strategists, designers and programmers to find innovative ways to solve problems facing communities. (I am pretty sure that no facebook games were made here.)  The sentiment from culture hacking events such as this I think was summed up by favourite quote from Web Week, Dr Stefan Glänzer from Passion Capital, “instead of analysing models – start solving problems”.

The Berlin technology industry, while growing phenomenally, is still in development and until it truly becomes (disruptive) innovation focused will not be the next Silicon Valley, if that is even what it wants to be.  However you feel about the big incubators, they have in fact created an eco-system in Berlin where a greater diversity of companies now have a much larger pool of talent, capital and experience to pick from.  And I am glad I am here to see how it plays out.

Thanks to Delivery Hero and Gründerszene/Venture Village for the Heureka ticket; and to the Berlin Geekettes for making it so much fun.

One strategy towards nurturing a collaborative culture is the creation of collaborative work environments.  Beyond assisting adoption of new work practices, as the new environment is a constant reminder of the culture change, collaborative environments also have unique and measurable benefits for organisational problems such as crippling communication overheads, managing large-scale collaboration and staff ownership of tasks and workflows.

In an early stage of developing his PhD, ‘Stigmergic Collaboration: A Theoretical Framework for Mass Collaboration’, Mark Elliot founder of collabforge, poses the question: “Could a collective creative process become a medium in its own right, subject to the design interests of a ‘composer’?”[1]   From his wealth of knowledge in artistic collaboration, Elliot develops this exploration into the mechanics of the collaborative process and how it scales.  As opposed to the traditional form of collaboration (that we have all experienced) which involves social negotiation to reach consensus, the core concept explored is stigmergic collaboration.  That is, the “indirect communication between agents which is coordinated through interactions with their local environment”[2]; originally observed in termite mounds among other swarm phenomena as the method of collaboration.

The problem is that traditional collaboration in a group of much more than 5 people the negotiation starts quickly absorbing time just to communicate goals, make sure everyone is up to date and have the materials they require. Described as communication overhead, it is so consuming that it puts a cap on effective traditional collaboration in groups of more than 25 [3].  But by creating a stimergic collaborative environment where the conversation can be recorded directly reduces the reliance on social negotiation and breaks through this upper collaboration limit opening the potential of mass collaboration.

The ability to record the collaboration in a space externally Elliot explains, “material encoding of collaborative contribution enables participants to ‘see what they think’, providing them with enhanced capacity to remember review and reflect upon their shared contributions, both individually and collectively”[4].  Specifically this has the benefit of “distributing the cognitive load as well as optimising for the specific skills and resources that individual members posses (i.e. leveraging the division of labour)”[5].  In the online environment this ability to share, edit and collectively create is most often seen in the wiki format. The most famous of these being Wikipedia whose community of thousands of writers and editors have generated millions of articles, with surprising accuracy.  Other examples of collaboration platforms include open source software platforms such as SourceForge and Apache.org, political activism platform echo.to and of course Google docs.

Another online solution that contains these core functionalities is the work platform Podio.  Through the use of customizable ‘workspaces’ all the files, conversations and documentation for a project or team are in one online location ready to go.  The social, real time collaboration platform organises your work by context (yay GTD!) and attempts to save you from inbox-of-doom. Transparency here is the key to efficient collaboration as everyone in your organisation can see and edit just about anything in the ‘workspaces’ they are included.  This level of trust is vital to opening your team up to the potential of new connections and the freedom for collective intelligence to form, that pushes innovation in new and interesting ways.

In my role as a Podio super-user at work, I spoke with Gabriel Escalona at Podio’s Future of Work Berlin Meet-up about the implementation of the system and some of the results achieved.   The most noticeable was the time saved being able to set ‘tasks’ rather than send endless emails chasing things up, and being the productivity nerd that I am setting myself tasks too!   We also came up with some apps that automised authorisation processes in operations, helped share images and ideas across the company and gave everyone easy access to current documentation.  Since the tool is so simple to manipulate, creating workspace applications specifically for your workflow also empowered engagement and opened the conversation on how core business functions could be optimised.  I am not sure how metrics of time saved are generated but one company has quoted they have saved 20% on their communication overhead by having client conversations in one place.

Culture change can be tough, but when you and your team spend 8+ hours at work a day ignoring how to create engaging structures and environments will soon see your top performers finding new environments to thrive in!   Implementing a company wide online work solution is also a massive project see: 5 mistakes to avoid when implementing an internal collaboration tool, but a quick rethink of the layout of your office is relatively simple and still to great effect.  Keith Sawyer’s Creativity and Innovation Blog recently referenced a number of examples of the architecture of collaboration and new thinking on office design. These free-roaming office spaces such as The Melinda and Bill Gate Foundation hq by nbbj Architects and co-working spaces (check out: Betahaus and 3^rd Ward) are designed around the concept that according to the type of work, particular project or energy required staff can up-root to be in the right environment.   Huge benefits include the increase in productivity when staff are autonomous and fresh perspectives and shared leaning to old problems with interactions outside of regular company hierarchies.

Betahaus Berlin by Ian Kath; Flickr

The emphasis in these new types of offices tends to be on open spaces and freedom to participate in what is essentially hot-desking.   So I was glad to see that the New York Times article Please, Just Give Me Some Space: In New Office Designs, Room to Roam and to Think included Susan Cain’s (TED talk: The Power of Introverts) argument against the constant use of open-office environments.  Her concern is that deep creative work also needs quiet spaces where individuals can also be free from distraction.   This matches my experience of running workshops using the technique of individual brainstorming, followed by group discussion in repetition produces far more creative and varied solutions than group discussion alone.   Extrapolate this to an organisational level to develop spaces for both kind of activities, not only in the headphones bubble, that most of us currently rely on to indicate ‘do not disturb’

It can be as simple as a quick rearrange of office furniture to create more communal working and casual spaces rather than raising a Seattle city block to rebuild your hq!

• Place images and objects in the space that exemplify the vision or are part of the narrative of the organisation; motivational posters of mountains or eagles do not count.
• Install lots of white or blackboards where messages, doodles or mind-maps can be drawn up and edited by everyone.
• Make one meeting room really different, whether colour (apparently blue has been proven to be good for creativity) or fit-balls for chairs or a swing.
• Instruct mangers to lead by example and use the new spaces.  If a hot-desking like policy is going to be implemented it should be for everyone. Not everyone dreams of being a digital nomad, not having your own space a work can also be demoralising and can make staff feel dispensable and transient.

And if you don’t have the authority to create a new culture at work…  hack it. Start with the spaces you do have control over and work you way out, soon enough you will get the attention of a happy team, cool innovations and great results anyway.

What practical tips do you have for creating collaborative environments?

Simple pleasures have always been an important feature of my life.  My dad, also a particular Vonnegut fan too I must add, instilled this joy through his pleasure of a ripe banana that is just so; or the ritual of having breakfast watching the birds in the garden; or a sudden break into a skip; or discussing with me the joy of eating raw broccoli, for the record it because it tastes like the colour green more than anything else.

It seems so easy to get caught up in the daily grind and hustle, constantly fixated on the things we are yet to acquire.  Constantly moving the bar of success and the happiness we assume that comes with it just beyond our grasp.  For artists added to this it that there is no set way to create a successful outcome, in fact making it all the more unlikely if it has already been done.

Desire and ambition are incredible forces that can muster huge amounts of energy to generate projects, ideas and outcomes, but life is not so simple as to will something to be.  Obstacles are also a set feature and the pressures of limited resources such as time, energy and money, can make us feel completely out-of-control and off-course of where we ‘ought to be’.   Actually the more capable and ambitious we are, the more destructive this force can become.

But if we approach this from the other way around, if instead of thinking that obstacles are the unwelcome intruders into our well-devised plans, we should actually expect and plan for them.  Shifting goal posts are here to stay and constant change is a feature of our time but we can control the way we perceive this challenge. <Insert sailing metaphor of choice here> (I have always found them comforting, even if they don’t stand up to deeper scrutiny).

Not only is it a choice to celebrate the humble moments in life on a daily basis, I also try to focus my energy on broader actions and habits that I can actually control.  Whether this is going to bed early, or choosing to spend an hour writing instead of watching tv or taking time to meditate.  Recently reading The Personal MBA I particularly like the way Josh Kaufman describes the distinction between goals and results, and warns of the perils of mixing them up.  “For the best results, make your Goals actions that are within your Locus of Control“, the results are then the by-product of completing these goals.   Rather than having the goal to post on my blog every month, which becomes defeating when I don’t achieve it, I focus on the goal that every Monday I spend a couple of hours working on a post. The result being that without any stress or guilt about once a month (more-or-less) I have something that I want to post.

It all sounds quite easy but actually takes a bit of de-programming to think about things this way around.  The well-meaning but naive career advice that was doled out to my generation in Australia: “you can be whatever you want to be…” (without much detail added to how you were actually going to do it), totally failed to prepare us for the un-level playing field, the reality of the competitive global market and the rewards for specialisation.  The mythology around ‘success’ trained us to focus on big-ticket achievements that with broad-brush strokes have been painted for us in heroic proportions.  Rarely does such a report record the daily joys and challenges of our lives, and instead is skewed towards fantastic atomised accomplishments.

I have been tinkering with this and a number other posts for a couple of weeks but today I was reminded of how insane this pressure to succeed can become and how grateful I am for the positive rituals in my life (and the people who introduced them to me).  We are continually surrounded by wonderful and incredible moments everyday, but it is up to us to embrace and rejoice in them.

This week the things that made me happy:

Fresh crisp pear that I had with my muesli

The momentarily propulsion of running up moving escalators

Finding the most delicious peach ice tea

The randomness of both trains I got to work having pieces on them

Strolling in my neighbourhood with my first ice cream of the year

Dozing on the couch listening to old British radio programs

… and at some point murmur “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is”.

What were the things this week that made you happy?

Art and technology have an interesting bond in this field, creating a ‘sandbox’, a site of experimentation that allows for a suspension of reality to participate in ‘impossible things‘. When employed in this context disruptive innovations create friction that questions our shared constructs, societal norms and expectations of behaviour, making us often painfully aware of the systems we use.  As an actual disruption to our experience these methods create the exact reactions that commercial software/communication platforms with their extensive UX testing, do everything in their power to eliminate.

The exploration of disruption was a major theme of recent transmediale festival with the curatorial title: in/compatible.  Further described in the festival reader by Artistic Director Kristoffer Gansing as “acknowledging that in times of crisis, there is equally the need for creative hacks and modifications as there is a need for the a refusal of the quick re-integration into business as usual”.

Resonating with my experience in the intersection of start-up tech and creative artistic innovation was the on-going reSource program curated by Tatiana Bazichelli. This program focused on projects that actively engage their audience through participation and critique through the use of disruptive technologies.  Among the objectives of reSource are to: “Rethink concepts such as (social) networking, collaborative practices, innovation and participation; To apply the concept of disruptive innovation to the art field, opening up the critical perspective onto the network economy in order to understand how the market works by disassembling its strategies and production mechanisms.”

Assisting the Community Manager Katherina Galla, I got a first hand insight into the communication design by Filippo Gianetta which developed strategies to reflect the curatorial approach of in/compatible directly in the modes of the festival’s communication. In particular the disruptive addition of Hot Glue, created tense unease randomly allowing visitors to the transmediale website to manipulate the content and the official miscommunication platform of the festival r15n.

Immediately I was drawn in my the playful miscommunication aspect of the interactive installation of r15n. The r15n network randomly connects participants phones with an automated phone tree network to deliver a message throughout the whole community. The network literally disrupts participants randomly to deliver a message that we may or may not want.  In the process breaking a number of our current social behavioural norms of telephone use and questions our hyper-connected yet disconnected use of social media with the uncomfortable experience of having to actually talk to someone.  We have all become accustomed to the rapid inclusion of vague acquaintances on platforms such as facebook, but outside these mediated constructs we would be genuinely shocked if they actually called us.

I imagined the transmediale crowd with some background on the project would bypass the barriers to adoption such as the social norms of not giving your number to a stranger and inviting the disruption of a continually ringing phone. But when people were instructed to leave their phones on during a seminar and then the ensuing disruption every couple of minutes from the system some of the audience became audibly pissed off. This was now disrupting the norm of a conference seminar as even speakers would interrupt their presentation to answer the phone.

Produced by the Telekommunisten Network, r15n not only delivers a direct experience that questions our engagement in social networks by drawing attention to our discomfort but also creates a deeper narrative by transferring this critique to the ubiquitous capitalist system. During the r15n workshop we went a whole lot deeper into The Telekommunist Manifesto with Dmytri Kleiner and the Telekommunisten collective. Using the original definitions of capitalism and communism Kleiner develops the analogy of Peer-to-Peer communism in a mesh network topology vs. the Client-Server capitalist state designed in a star topology where the privileged have the ability to extract capital.

network topologies

In the peer-to-peer network there is no incentive for Venture Capitalists to invest in a system that no capital can be extracted from – so they don’t. In parallel as programming becomes a specialised skill the result is the need for far more capital to realise development of technology, with no ability to return this capital P2P has suffered. Instead there is a massive development/capitalisation of ‘Web 2.0′ technologies which consistently place themselves in the centre of this network topology.  Douglas Rushkoff’s statement, who I saw at last year’s Hello Esty conference, was paraphrased “If you don’t know who the customer of the product you are using is, you don’t know what the product is for. We are not the customers of facebook, we are the product”. The same sentiment in both presentations was discussed, that while most media-savvy tech people understand the trade-off of these social networks, and assess the value that these media accordingly, we are hardly encouraged to think about or to resist it.

By no means is r15n meant to be ideological perfect example of Dmytri Kleiner’s Telekommunist Manifesto, instead it creates an effective engagement to participate in an alternative social network. It is actually purposefully imperfect, citing that more participation is needed by the community because of the infallibly of the network that then the communication becomes dependant on each person’s actions who are now responsible for keeping the message going. Pushed out of passive mass social communication into a direct social exchange, it struck me how quickly we have adjusted our social behaviour and expectations around new (capitalist) technologies.

The retro internet graphic design aesthetic the transmediale website and print catalogue also connected with this imagining or perhaps nostalgia for simpler systems, championing the diy style of an ‘amateur’ internet. Visually capturing the resurgence of interest in amateur coding, initiatives such as Code Year and creates the aesthetic space for crap hacks.  Throughout transmediale festival in/compatible another dichotomy and again one of Ruskoff’s catch phrases “program or be programmed” or the alternative “hack or be hacked” reoccurred. Whilst I think the sentiment this statement is an enlightening reminder of the true nature of the systems we participate in it does over-simplify (as any good catch phrase does I suppose) what is to be done and the full eco system of talented and skilled people who have a part in this revolution.

Disruption as a method to create new markets has firmly entrenched itself in the tech industry but also has the potential to be manipulated as a form of criticism. Disrupting our constructs to imagine alternative realities – perhaps even beyond the capitalist/communist dichotomy.  As the Telekommunisten manifesto succinctly states: “The only way to change society is to produce and share differently.”

Did you go to transmediale? What were your thoughts/reactions? What uncomfortable/disruptive technologies have you participated in?

Lewis Carroll’s stories played a big role in my life, not only due to my namesake, but his playfulness and skill in manipulating language, logic and challenging the constructs of what ought to be.  Later I connected Carroll’s suspense of ‘reality’ with Richard Feynman’s famous quote, “… I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics”.  I couldn’t help but think that perhaps this was another example of the constraints of our language and thought limiting our ability to describe these phenomena*.  As Shimon Malin describes in his book Nature Loves to Hide: Quantum Physics and Reality, a Western Perspective, “language pulls us toward the current paradigm by forces that are as strong as they are unconscious”.

*my sister had a ongoing argument with one of her Physics lecturers, as I recall she described to me that she understood quantum mechanics in a fuzzy/out-of-focus way.  Which now I would describe as haptic knowledge.

Quantum physics has been one of the most compelling developments over the last hundred years, not only in the experimental accuracy achieved but also the philosophical implications of the results.  But to ‘understand’ this quantum ‘reality’ we need to reconstruct our perception of the universe and our ideas on how things ought to be.

When people claim to not know anything about Physics I point out to them that the forces of physics enact upon us in every moment (so we all know about Physics).  But it is our perception of how these work, whether conscious or unconscious, that creates our world view.  Furthering this discussion I find it kind of incredible that the popular understanding of how the world works is still based on a Newtonian paradigm (Newton’s laws of motion were published in 1687).

I am not going to re-explain the ins and outs of the major experiments of quantum physics see below:

Wave-Duality Theory: Matter can act as both a wave and a particle depending on whether or not it is being observed.

Paradox of quantum entanglement: Schrodinger’s Cat

In this quantum context, the old paradigm of realism, without the presence of consciousness becomes an abstraction.  The only concrete truth is now our perception, the self can no longer be objectified as the observer, instead there is a ceaseless tension between the field of possibilities and collapse of the wave function into a fixed reality.

Our perception of our physical reality as opposed to what has been scientifically proven to exist, is just one example of a construct that is so deeply embedded in our sense of ‘reality’ that “no one understands [quantum mechanics]”.  We encounter constructs all the time, truths accepted by “everyone”, historically I can list plenty that make us feel smugly superior to our ancestors, like the belief that the world was flat or that the earth was in the centre of the universe.  But how many of us are comfortable with really thinking about the fact the money we all work for and save is not actually worth anything?  It seems the deeper the construct is embedded in us, such as language, our place in the world or the systems we have invested in, the harder it is to deconstruct and untangle.

On my road to understand my innovation practice beyond my studio, I found this Manifesto by Scott Belsky (of Making Ideas Happen fame).  He has named the people who are driving this innovation forward in as the “Free Radicals”.  He describes a new type of professional, who are “crafting the future”, “questioning the norms” and who “don’t surrender to the friction of the status quo”. Well, nice that we have a name now… ;)  Whether you identify with Scott’s vision of a new professional class or not, all innovation still starts with this impossible thing, a vision. Sometimes we just need a dose of creative imagination to jump-start to even dare to imagine a different reality. But to get started I dare say we all need a bit more practice.

What constructs have you unmasked in your own life?  What constructs are ready to be exposed? How many impossible things did you think about today?

Still holding onto my childhood change-the-world spirit, I am fascinated by the role of conversation in developing innovation. A separate yet complimentary practice from invention, Peter Denning and Robert Dunham define innovation in The Innovator’s Way as “the art of getting people to adopt change”. This change can be social and personal (values, practices or the adoption of a new technology), organisational or institutional.

Successful innovators have the ability to sense opportunities for innovation, create a vision, offer that vision to a community, then refine the offer, and suggest paths to adoption. By offering possibilities in conversations and listening to responses, an innovator can navigate their vision to a sustained practice (that is, the change the world bit!)

We’re all aware of the basic construct of conversation as a two way street based on talking and listening.  Everyone has their own path to finding a balance between these two main dimensions of conversation.  For me it was learning the art of listening.  I was one of those smart-arse kids who always had something to say, so much so that in my early twenties I developed chronic Laringitis.  I was sent to a throat specialist and diagnosed with polyps on my vocal chords. Instead of surgery I was assigned a speech therapist.

It’s quite a weird sensation to concentrate on the minutiae of your speech, which most people take for granted as an automatic function.  Consciously breaking sentences up and breathing – without losing your train of thought – turned out to be quite a challenge.

In amongst a bunch of other practical advice, like not singing along at concerts :(, it was suggested that I spend more time listening.  It sounds so deceivingly simple and common sense. Maybe this is just part of growing up, but it was now being forced upon me by the threat of surgery.  As I started practising listening I began to realise how few people really do it.  It’s not just about physically being there when someone else is talking, and responding to a break in the conversation with your opinion. It’s about actually engaging with another person.

By actively seeking out and encouraging other people to talk, and by listening on my part, I discovered, learnt and found incredible insights and opportunities.  This form of real dialogue and exchange of ideas profoundly affected the way I collaborated in creative projects, the opportunities I sought out, and how I perceived myself as an Artist. (see: What being an Artist has taught me)

This revolution was also being played out in parallel in Internet-land.  I’ve had the privilege of growing up on the crest of technological change, participating in the developing stages of communication innovations.  Chat rooms, blogs, mobile phones, social media and the development of web2.0 platforms, have all created far more possibilities for two-way conversations. I have embraced the opportunities these have presented but always with a critical eye on real conversation and the genuine development of dialogue.

It struck me the other day, with all the amazing innovation that the internet has gone through (ie. YouTube, Skype, Facebook, Twitter), that blog comments are pretty much the same as they were from day one of “web logging”.  Has this format stayed the same because it’s pretty much the best it can be? … or have we just limited our imagination to other possibilities?

Disqus is one of my favourite apps that gets the most out of this format. By linking heavily into social networks, this dynamic comment system bridges content from the social layer and collects feedback from across the web.  Disqus compiles all of these conversations in real time so you see what everyone is talking about world-wide, and your own home panel keeps track of the conversations you’re personally following.

from Fred Wilson: AVC, Scaling The Management Team

For all its bells and whistles, Disqus still rolls the same format – text and comments are in mostly chronological order, occasionally breaking into sub-conversations.

On soundcloud the commenting system works a little differently. Soundcloud-users have the ability to add comments at any time point in an audio recording. When the track is played there’s an option to display the pop-up comments directly on the interface, directly relating them to a time stamp.

from soundcloud: Kito

Currently there’s no technology, in usage outside a lab, to observe where your eyes are focusing on a page of text. That, and the inability to read two things simultaneously are just two limitations to applying the soundcloud comment system to a written blog – but you see where I’m heading.  It would be great if you could somehow comment by hyperlinking directly to a passage.

I was looking at Readmill today – which has some of these functions.  The app gives you tools to highlight, socially share and comment on ebook texts… which, by the way, I am getting way too excited about (someone please give me an ipad!).

This is Readmill from Readmill on Vimeo.

Imagine applying this to communities like jovoto where the discussion is around visual material.  How cool would it be to anchor comments to particular elements of the proposal?  Creating a navigable and visual overview of the collaborative conversation.

Incorporating features from that other ancient internet technology, wikis, Echo (beta) is developing a collaborative document authoring tool. The open source platform aims to create direct democratic action, connecting people with issues, enabling discussion, developing proposals, counter proposals, finding support and refining solutions.  I’ve recently started advising them on community matters and can’t wait to see where this conversation leads me.

from echo.to : How do you want to be governed?

What I would love to see are other formats of blogging being developed where two (or more people) can conduct a form of written conversation in a similar way that seminar panels are presented.  With the opportunity for readers to add questions and comments simultaneously, which can be incorporated into the dialogue– rather than waiting for an end Q&A session.  There are some elements of this in Twitter already and the format of Tumblr actually has a lot of potential for more integrated written dialogue. I love webinars and skype conversations to connect in real time – when you can overcome the tyranny of time zones! But I am fascinated by the potential of distributed time lines text based commenting systems – I guess this is leading me back to one of my favourite topics non-linear narrative… and that is a whole other blog post!

Technological innovation has fundamentally changed the way we communicate, the ripples felt well beyond the tech industry echo-chamber.  Meaningful innovation in core communication tools have the opportunity to change the constructs of language and dialogue (… and maybe the world).

What other ways can better conversations and collaboration be developed online?  Are there already other innovations out there?

However, no matter my ‘professional’ title I still describe myself as an Artist …who works as [insert job title].  The growth of creative industries has made some changes to how the title of Artist is perceived but entrenched negative stereotypes persist. You know the ones; that Artists are flakey, lazy and temperamental.  In reality alot of professional Artists work tirelessly towards their vision, creating exceptional work with often incredibly limited resources.  And our world is richer for their efforts.

I am not going to be a hater and reserve ‘Artist’ for a privileged few who I see fit to carry the title.  If you want to have a three month binge in Berlin and legitimise it by saying you’re an Artist, fine (for all I know that is an art in itself).  The Perception of what an Artist is, or is not, is negotiable, just as much as the term ‘art’ is itself.  At the same time, I believe it is important to be proud of your professional training and practice.  Being an Artist is a legitimate occupation and the skills I continue to learn as an Artist inform everything else that I do.  

So here goes on a not definitive list of what being an Artist has taught me:
Take risks and stop trying to control the outcome
Years of making drawings and installations has taught me the best and most enjoyable work comes when you allow yourself to be surprised.  Have faith in your skills and discipline and you will find your work by doing.  In collaborative projects control kills, why bother collaborating if you are just seeking a division of labour? 
Discipline and creativity are not in opposition: as Woody Allen says “80% of success is showing up”.

Being disciplined and having structure, is different from controlling. It is said that creativity cannot be taught – that it just comes.  But if you happen to be sitting in your studio, or with the tools around you to capture it when it does – then you are on your way! One studio teacher at art school said “some days the best thing you can do is just go to your studio and read a book”.  This applies to everything – even when you are not inspired– show up and be prepared – you will be surprised what will happen.

Courage in the face of adversity: Vision building
“Why do you spend all your time making something that ‘noone’ is going to see?”
“Why do you want to be an artist, they all end up on the dole (social security) anyway?”
“Only 1% of Artists ‘make it’.”
“Unfortunately we have chosen not to exhibit your work this time.”
“I think your drawings are holding you back, I see you more as conceptual artist (read: I don’t think you can draw)”
“Why don’t you get a ‘real’ job?”
“last transaction cancelled: insufficient funds”

Sound familiar? I am sure just about every Artist has had to defend their work/vision at some time.  Artists create a vision, make something ware nothing was before and get people on board. These are exactly the same skills as those required by entrepreneurs.  The plight of the founder/entrepreneur is continually celebrated in the media for their ability to face adversity, build a vision and despite the odds, succeed.  Artists do this everyday.

How to make something out of nothing:  the farts and sticky-tape principle*
From a blank piece of paper, to an empty bank account or an empty room, Artists are pretty damn good at coming up with ways to make cool shit happen out of nothing. This is not to justify the terrible pay and conditions most artists endure but to highlight this unique skill.With no budget or support – just a vision – Artists continually re-think their economic and physical realities, I believe this is what they call ‘thinking outside of the box’.
*thanks Andrea Tu

How to make myself relevant to other people
The reality of being an Artist is that no one is sitting around thinking to themselves, I really need another Artist or there really needs to be another exhibition this year.  Well not in the same way as someone needs an Engineer or when there is a skills shortage of Electricians or good Developers.   Making yourself relevant is therefore a survival skill. Artists have unique and transferable skills, organisations and industries need us, matching these together I have had the opportunity to work with some inspiring people and organisations.

As an Artist I have done all of the following: had creative thoughts that were transformed into physical reality,communicated ideas, organised events, marketed, worked independently and as a collaborator and managed projects. I have also become really good at painting walls white ;)  Beyond creating professional opportunities, making other people understand that you/your product/your skills are vital for any industry because what they represent is creative innovation.  What about you? I am up for extending this list!