my story from the stories:

I believe we need to focus on offense… we’re burying ourselves in defense.

I believe we need to respectfully question and unpack assumptions of success.

I believe we need to focus on what makes us tick and then stand graciously tall.

…and embrace failure - be usefully ignorant - choose not to fall - dare to be great.

Everyday.

i believe innovation = learning.

and innovation is not invention. 

we don’t need to invent anything more in ed. 

we need to rework what we already have in time/money/resources. 

we need to listen to global voices and become more resourceful.

all anyone needs is access to resources (and probably a bit of detox) 

not managers/owners…. use Sugata as an example. 

those all around us are our emotion and ignition and passion…

from reading talent code to and from… 

wondering how incredible if we could free ourselves up (the land of the free - right?) to let kids choose their topic and then facilitate/model deep practice, a keen process of learning how to learn…

[i can’t convince myself that we all need ie: algebra… please help]

bif home

new bif 6 videos

bif’s lovely leadership team

bif’s research advisory council

bif 6 portal

bif 6 summit book

twitter list of bif 6 story tellers

#bif6 feed

bif story studio (last 6 yrs)

about bif - their current labs

shakey video of bif hq:

courtyard outside

hallway and courtyard from inside

inside

expert shots on flickr via jeremy withers of bif 6 and bif

bif 6

clay christensen at bif

continuum workshop at bif

diane hessan at bif

seven johnson at bif

Saul Kaplan

post on innovation …

We need to get out into the world and do more stuff Innovation isn’t do more things… it’s doing things better

Alan Webber

We are 20^th in the world in child welfare.

It’s not content its context – it’s the narrative, art that touches meaning..

IF Stone

The investigative reporter of his age, broke all the new stories – that newsweek wasn’t doing.

What’s wrong with journalism today..

It wasn’t about content vs context

Witnessing a wholesale abandonment of world reporting..

Muck raping is slowly sinking in the west

We’ve got fake themes pretending to be news

We’ve collapsed at the feet of context vs content and news has become entertainment

Journalists have become storytellers

Absence of tough minded investigated journalism

We need it because we need civic engagement

Story telling isn’t the problem… we’re not digging deep enough with the stories

Support investigative journalism anywhere you find it

Everyone of you has a story to be told

Be your own muck racker…

Don’t settle for stories  - go for deep investigative stories

John Maeda

The about clock – west coast laid back time keeper

Weird thing in tech – wasn’t getting better = actually getting worse

Compae manuals for car to manual for camera.. is anything really getting any better

The history of tech… then bandwidth came… then we could text

Then cell phone – and we can text

So – is anything really changing – wrote a book on simplicity, found mit in simplicity

Realization – we are in a recession and told that way to get out is through advancement of science,tech, math

That is why nationwide schools are closing art schools to fit them with chem labs

If innovation anywhere is just stem it’s missing something

Turned stem into steam

Bring art into the equation

A different kind of thinking

Idea based, intuition, design

Innovation is stem and idea thinking – these two sides have to balance out

Thinking is powerful – do you have any proof

Misfit – people who look for integrity, seeking truth with your hands, that kind of desire, is what is needed in innovation today

Won’t be found in a tech school or a business school

Innovators don’t just ppt the design thinking theme,

Strange things happening, not traditional tech innovations

Devotion to craft, something that doesn’t make any sense..

The world of making things again with your hands…

Don’t support the communities – but engage in them…

He’s at risd - images

quote found in his images - several times:

all i want to be is someone who makes new things. and thinks about them.

Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio

Find an interesting question –

What do average families own and would they put it out in front of the house for all to see

What does a week’s worth of food look like and cost

Marketing came to underdeveloped – like ramen

One kid ate the dried noodles one at the flavor pack

Americans we’re fighting a battle, look at what we have in our shopping carts

·         Some of us are eating ourselves to death

·         deep cultrual divide when you make these interviews

Easier to get people to put food out for hungry planet than to get them to put all things in house for material world

An average would have muddied those up and been less constructive – wish more said this

Pick a country, choose occupation, find person, interview

A lot of people are looking for conclusions when they read books… you read the books and think for yourselves

what incredible fotos they shared.

here’s more from Peter’s photography.

Tony Hsieh of zappos

Wrote a book because he wanted to share:

1)Seems like we’re doing everything right – but the truth is we’ve made a lot of mistakes

We also got very lucky

2) been a battle between making employess/customers happy vs good business – with internet can do both

Do you feel lucky or unlucky in life

It’s not so much that people are inherently lucky or unlucky.. it’s about how open people are

It’s not a matter of having enough resources but about having enough resourcefulness

List of core values – something you could hire someone for without any look at what they do

Pec – personal emotional connection

No scripts, etc.

Want costomers to be themselves – share personal things that connect with customer

Zapposinsights.com

Use happiness as a business model

Not something we planned from the beginning, we’ve tried to keep an open mind… not just thinking ourselves of a shoe company

Bus tour

I just videotaped that..

Victory comes from luck wisconsin, drove 7 hrs to meet them

Pre-med dropped to do something really passionate about.. writing, graphic design , 10 yrs later on this bus with 10 others delivering happiness to the world

I want a happiness bus

Happiness is about being able to combine pleasure and passion and purpose

Saul – I didn’t really get it until I went to the company and experienced it

Richard Saul Wurman– has been at all 6 summits

Download MP3

Founded ted

Secrets of how to put on a good event – how to keep it simple

Lights on the people less on me

It makes me speak better…

Wow he’s amazing

There’s something going on with this 15 min shit or 18 min shit – because they know it’s going to be taped – so there’s something not genuine about it

Gettysburg address was 3 min…

What I created I need to destroy now… he just took 18 out of the hat

Trying to reinvent what a gathering is

Don’t put it on at all and when you want me to stop talking say – that’s it… be an editor

Ted med – can’t get in

I’ve always loved bananas, doesn’t need refrigeration and you think it’s clean

Lived in jungle for 6 mos in tecal or pecal – peel a banana upside down

Fascinating – the opposite way of doing things

This proliferation, the tedding of the world

The reason I took off more than 75 pounds, because no one told me to

Talking about the news – Alan – leave out one thing… not only the availability but making it understandable, a lot of things just aren’t understandable, the bull pal disaster (chemical) –

People don’t know where this is or how to connect it…. He said – it’s just about the size of boston or san fran – which took 2 seconds to say – and it helped people get perspective

Largest city in india – so by telling the truth they lie – by not making something understandable

My one single passion in life – to understand what it is like to not understand and make something understandable to another person who doesn’t understand

Talked about convos in 45 min break… we’re so sloppy, we care so little about each other, it’s not just happiness, it’s wanting to know what the other person thinks. It’s not about being smart, it’s about the acceptance of being stupid. We are all stupid. The power I have over anyone in the room, is how much I embrace my stupidity… it’s really a way of getting through the day.. a way of letting stuff in.

Start from a blank slate of not knowing..

What a joy to actually, literally not know something – and slowly fill it in

1848 – richest person john jacob aster – he died – made his money selling beaver pelts

1877 – cornelius vanderbuilt – shipping

1937 – rockefeller – oil

1880’s more millionaires living in the yukoton in mexico, quinatanaroo., why – because of industrial revolution, everybody was shipping things, packing became ubiquitous, that’s where they grew it – no duct tape – grew sisil

Look at our change of patterns, now we have zappos

The patterns of change – where the wealthiest is and where these changes are

We have to understand change

Volcano in iceland – volcanoes are not created equal – we know this happened because ben franklin was in paris and wrote about it

This isn’t trivial stuff because a single event can cause havic

Craig fugan – disaster occurs

1)    Quick

2)    Cheapest

3)    Best

Can you imagine if a politician would do that

Saul stopped him  :)

Story in ny times about all these pads – this is another pattern, when change happens we eat the previous one, they make believe we are turning a page… it’s not a book, it’s a new modality, it’s not a book

Josh Koppel

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At bif 2 – I told a happy sad story about modality

Tunebooks – digital liner note that lived inside itunes (when you download an album it took a while)

So Idea of content living inside, it died because it had flash inside and apple killed it

Very meaningful lesson to me

I hacked a little ipod, scrolling in it – basic way to move through content

1)    Let’s come up with a way to hijack itunes – another content besides music

2)    Format for all this content to live again

Itunes did show that everything was going to become digital

I’m a rapid protyper

(Sounds like talent code)

So he kept working hard – and people kept saying

Why don’t you work on stuff that you can sell

But he couldn’t

Everything they were creating was for an ipad screen… suddenly all that stuff made a lot of sense

So suddenly a great thing – finger can slow down a movie

Changes how you can engage in media

Started company with john lema – scroll motion

Since april 2008 – building platforms for all kinds of content

Iceberg – book space

Randomhouse, penquin, simon and shooster, etc

What do you keep what do you throw away – page or turn page

The mice running around the dinosaurs saying – hey we’ve got an idea – it’s going to be fine

What the web never did was actually create transaction

Web was relying on being free

Engaging with media – touch

We build platforms, print content, trading card to kids books, in order for this to work it can’t be incredibly expensive or content is going to go away.

We have to build scalable solutions

Content becomes much more meaningful when it’s made personal

First ipad product – first digital text book used in public school – designed around chunks, fully interactive, test and quizzing built in,

Brought scroll motion to the experience of math

Graphing calc built into the book,

Being tested now… everything the kid does is reported back to the teacher –

Woogiew – why would I hand a 500 dollar device to a child… designed to make the experience of tech softer to a child

Sayantani DasGupta

Download MP3

Department of narrative medicine – applying storytelling to the practice of med

Stories are good medicine

Stories are at the heart of the healthcare experience just as they are at the heart of every human endeavor… but something even more for health.. just telling stories to another human being was healing, similarly just listening is a healing experience

Back in the old days – dr’s didn’t have much in their bags, but what they had was the ability to be human… to show up

In that last few years, wonderful things added to that black bag – mri’s antibiotics

We’ve moved away from the black bag

A lot of problems are do to that loss – of the black bag

People feel silenced in their health care

Health care providers feel like widgets

Put story back in health care relationship

Interested in putting

1)    Tech skill – ability to read a radiograph

2)    Human story telling skill – ability to read a human story

Head back to an egalitarian healthcare

Redesign widget narrative and go back to humanitarian narrative

The magical space of story telling – her in bed with grandmother under the mosquito net

I felt like I was drinking from a cup, or I was the cup

So now if I feel parched – I go back to these stories

she says to us…let me give you a taste of this sweet water

Story medicine and justice

Story

Only when they look in the mirror together that they can each see truth about them selves

Stories are relationships

The magic happens between 2 human beings not an inanimate mirror

If you remind me of my aunt milly I will hear them differently than if you remind me of something scary

I tell the medical student – go get me the story

Ie: I’m the med students, nervous, spent all night writing up my history, mr jones is 72 yr old man with pain in left ear

Boss dr gets a totally diff story, he’s actually 73, etc

1)    Stupid med student got it wrong again

2)    History guy is unreliable, stories are unreliable

What if we change the narrative

What if we look to stories for a different truth

Story truth is different than historical truth… testifying to the reality of an unimaginable experience, testifying to the breakage of a framework

The story and the minstrel looking in that mirror, physician and patient, as the dr diagnoses the patient the patient diagnoses the dr, embrace stupidity, ability to know I can never fully understand your story. Perhaps I can look at this stream of cultural, etc stories with you and we can make more sense of everything