Art / Education

Update #3 on the Union Square display

We made the minimum on the Parsons Union Square kickstarter project! The project raised $5,017, just over the minimum of $5,000 we set (which is still below the what we'll need, but we'll figure out how to make it). Here's the latest updated we sent out. Update #3: We made it! Thank you! We made it! Just barely! Making it this close ($5,017 out of $5,000) means every contribution counted. Thank you to every one of you from all of us. We appreciate each of your contributions all the more for each one counting so much. We are that much more dedicated to making a beautiful display. Whether you contributed to help make New York more beautiful, to help students, to contribute to art, for…

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April 30, 2011

Awareness / Blog

Goodbye guilt and blame, V

[This post is part of a series on overcoming guilt and blame for good. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] My past three posts on guilt and blame have been about beliefs and models. Now let's look at behaviors to solidify and augment that change. Belief without behavior doesn't change your life and no one can tell anyway. Belief consistent with behavior changes your life. Today's suggestion is to be curious about causes of your feelings of guilt and blame and act on it. All too many people ask "Why would they do such a thing?" rhetorically, angrily, not looking for an answer. Yet…

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April 29, 2011

Art / Creativity

Update #2 on the Parsons Union Square display

Here is an update to the Parsons Union Square kickstarter project. Update #2: Video of the Fifth Avenue display Here is a video (just from my camera phone, sorry not great quality) of one of the displays in Parsons' window facing Fifth Avenue and 13th Street. As mentioned in the last update, this display is a big, genuine art piece, although still in preparation for the Union Square piece, which will be bigger and digital. Still, this one is pretty cool. The animation is a whimsical one of one of the students in the course, although everyone contributed to designing, building, and installing the display, as well as creating the animation in it. Many people walking by stop and look at it. Please check it…

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April 28, 2011

Awareness / Blog

Goodbye guilt and blame, IV

[This post is part of a series on overcoming guilt and blame for good. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Two days ago I suggested that we all believe we don't try to hurt others and therefore should give others the same benefit of the doubt, even if we feel hurt by them. Yesterday I proposed a model that we all the the best we can, not just yourself. Today I'll combine those two ideas and suggest that if you were in someone else's position and had their same perspective and abilities, you would do the same they would. Being in another's position is…

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April 27, 2011

Fifth Avenue display being installed

Art / Creativity / Education

Update #1 on the Union Square display

Here is an update to the Parsons Union Square kickstarter project. Update #1: Prototype displays go up in Parsons windows, 5th Avenue and 13th Street The class has been preparing prototype linear zoetropes to be placed in the windows of Parsons' building at 5th Avenue and 13th Street, facing the street. We shouldn't call them prototypes because they are full art pieces everyone in the class participated in creating, hosted by a great institution, on display for the public to see. But they are preparation for the Union Square display, which will be bigger and digital. Below are some pictures of the students completing and installing these linear zoetropes. If you are near Manhattan, please come see them. By this point, most of the difficult…

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April 26, 2011

Blog

Goodbye guilt and blame, III

[This post is part of a series on overcoming guilt and blame for good. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Two days ago I wrote at a high level about getting rid of guilt and blame. Yesterday I wrote about understanding others' emotions of guilt and blame. Today, let's look at people's motivations from yet another perspective. I'll introduce a mental model for people's behavior. I'm not proposing the model is right or wrong. Models are always flawed -- the question is how useful it is. Try this model on for size: Everyone does the best he or she can at the time, given…

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April 26, 2011

Blog

Goodbye guilt and blame, II

[This post is part of a series on overcoming guilt and blame for good. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Yesterday I introduced the topic of getting rid of guilt and blame by understanding the emotions and replacing them with more productive ones. Today, let's look at them from a different perspective: understanding other people's motivations. The better you understand your own motivations, the better you can understand others', so first let's look at your motivations. Have you ever hurt someone intentionally -- that is, acted with your primary intent to make someone's life worse? I've never met someone who acted primarily to make…

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April 25, 2011

Awareness / Blog

Goodbye guilt and blame, I

[This post is part of a series on overcoming guilt and blame for good. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Do you like feeling guilty or doing things that make you feel guilt? Do you find blaming people improves your life? Not likely. Would you prefer alternatives that don't make you feel bad and do improve your life? Of course. Feeling guilt and blaming others have become rare for me. Life is better without them: I feel better, have more rewarding relationships, have fewer conflicts, and resolve what conflicts I do have more quickly and easily than before. When you understand why you feel…

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April 24, 2011

Art / Blog / Creativity / Education

Tonight’s talk’s map

Here's the mindmap for tonight's Fred talk. Slightly evolved from my last one. Not everything made it into the presentation. Drag it around and click around. To navigate use arrow keys or click white space and drag to move the map click the '+' or '-' icon at the top to resize the map click the "fit" icon at the top (to the right of the '-') to fit the visible part of the mindmap in the space available click nodes  in the mindmap to show or hide nodes beneath them -- dragging, resizing, or re-fitting as necessary afterward [freemind height='500px' width='600px']/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/creativity_map_110423.mm[/freemind]

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April 23, 2011

Art / Blog / Creativity

Working on art

When you feel like a superhero it's hard not to indulge in sharing why you feel so great. Solving technical problems makes you feel like a genius when you get it. I've had two days straight of amazing progress. One thing after another fell into place. It all took a lot of research, trial and error, moving step-by-step, not biting off too much at a time. Most of that was software and deliveries coming in. For those who know, the software I'm working on was getting the Western Digital media players for the Union Square digital linear zoetrope display to work remotely, which requires getting into the hacker community for the product. For anyone who doesn't know, working with hacker communities means searching all over…

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April 22, 2011

Blog

Added press page

I added the Press page to the blog. Building the site. Slowly getting there...

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April 22, 2011

Art / Blog

How to succeed in difficult situations

My friend, Sebastian Marshall, featured me in his excellent blog yesterday. His blog is on strategy, specifically about "Strategy, Philosophy, Self-Discipline, Science. Victory." -- apologetically about succeeding. He's an incredible guy living a life most people dream of, sharing how to achieve the same. His views are well thought out. His advice is actionable and sensible, but not what most people would realize at first. Mainly because he's thought through why some things are the way they are and how they could be different, then acts on it. Most people don't do that. Then he continues to experiment and refine. My post there is about some of the steps that helped make the Bryant Park big public art piece happen and that are making the…

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April 21, 2011

Fred Invitation for Saturday. Come!

Blog / Creativity / Education / Events

See me speak on creativity!

See my Fred talk this Saturday, April 23, 7:30pm at 136 Lawrence Street, Brooklyn. From my previous post about the talk (before it was rescheduled to this Saturday): Fred talks are do-it-yourself Ted talks with the slogan “Your friends’ ideas worth spreading.” Who says you need some huge conference for thousands of people that costs lots of money? You probably learned more from your grandmother than most of your teachers, let alone famous people you don’t know. Let’s do it ourselves! Sharing locally can do things pristine, beautifully-produced things can’t. Who isn’t a fan of do-it-yourself community building? A big part of why I’m doing it is that the people behind it give me the feeling they may make Fred talks huge. Maybe huger than…

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April 20, 2011

Awareness / Blog / Freedom

Another reason to avoid proprietary software

Another reason to avoid proprietary software is that it allows its creators privacy on your hardware. That lets them spy on you, among other things. Who wants that? For example, here is a report that the iPhone keeps record of everywhere you go Security researchers have discovered that Apple's iPhone keeps track of where you go – and saves every detail of it to a secret file on the device which is then copied to the owner's computer when the two are synchronised. The file contains the latitude and longitude of the phone's recorded coordinates along with a timestamp, meaning that anyone who stole the phone or the computer could discover details about the owner's movements using a simple program. Another reason to support the…

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April 20, 2011

Awareness / Blog / Education

Values and diversity in higher education

"Does Harvard pay off?" was the title of a thread a friend posted on A Small World (and re-posted on his blog) whether a higher education was worth it. The discussion didn't lead to a full consensus, but many people from within Harvard's community and the Ivy League answered yes for various reasons. Based on my faithfully rewarding strategy "don't look for blame, but take responsibility for making things better to the extent you can," I believe a more valuable perspective than if something is worth it is what you can do to get the most out of it. I wrote the response below, which the author of the thread asked if he could refer to. When I started at Columbia it seemed every sentence…

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April 20, 2011

Awareness / Blog

The root of happiness

I can tell you the root of happiness. I'm talking about the root of the word, not the emotion per se, but they're related, so the answer is telling. First, let's note that for many people, happiness is their highest value, over money, fame, fortune, and power. More pointedly, when you ask people what they want for their children, happiness ranks yet higher. The root of happiness is hap, which is the same hap in perhaps, happenstance, haphazard, and happen. It means chance, luck, or fortune. At least in English, we can't help when describing one of our highest values to imply it results from luck or chance. English isn't unique, nor is language the only way our culture implies our values result from luck…

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April 19, 2011

Blog / Fitness

Grete Waitz: superhero

Grete Waitz, superhero of marathons and especially the New York City marathon, which she won 9 times (!!), died today of cancer. From Wikipedia Grete Waitz (1 October 1953 – 19 April 2011) was a Norwegian marathon runner who won nine New York City Marathons between 1978 and 1988, more than any other runner in history. She also won a silver medal at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles and a gold medal at the 1983 World Championships in Athletics in Helsinki, Finland. ... It was in 1978 that her association with the New York City Marathon began; she was invited to run there by race co-founder and director Fred Lebow and in her first marathon effort not only won but took a full…

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April 19, 2011

Blog

My teammate won a Pulitzer!

Jesse Eisinger, my former teammate and friend in college, in fact the captain of the team, won a Pulitzer with ProPublica. Congratulations, Jesse! ProPublica reporters Jesse Eisinger and Jake Bernstein have been awarded a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for their stories on how some Wall Street bankers, seeking to enrich themselves at the expense of their clients and sometimes even their own firms, at first delayed but then worsened the financial crisis. We at ProPublica are delighted by this award, and deeply honored. (Writers: get to know me!)  

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April 18, 2011

Awareness / Blog / Leadership / Tips

When you want to feel fake

Why would anyone want to feel fake? When do you want to feel fake? Developing leadership skills or other types of personal development aren't like learning typical how-to skills. When you develop leadership skills or develop personally, you change how everyone sees you and how you see everyone. You change as a person, in other words. You used to be person A and expect to become person B. As person A you knew what environments, beliefs, and behaviors brought you reward. You knew how to enjoy life. As the person B you will become you expect to know what environments, beliefs, and behaviors will bring you reward so you expect to know how to enjoy life. In between, you don't know how much of A…

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April 18, 2011

Awareness / Blog / Leadership / Tips

How to find strengths in your weaknesses

Do you have weaknesses you just can't seem to lose? Maybe you interrupt too much? Or solve problems when you should be building relationships? This perspective may help. When clients tell me about their weaknesses, I generally ask them for examples of how the skills in question worked or didn't work. A common pattern emerges, though it's not universal. One example is my student/client with great listening skills who interrupted a lot. Anyone conversing with him could tell his comprehension and recall were excellent, so he wasn't weak in that area. Yet he got poor reviews. Why? Because he interrupted. But he didn't interrupt to annoy, though he achieved that outcome. He interrupted to be efficient and save time. Efficiency and saving time are hardly…

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April 17, 2011

Freedombox flowers

Art / Blog / Freedom / Nature

Freedombox logo ideas

A friend and I were playing around with logo ideas for the Freedombox project based on this email solicitation from the Freedombox Foundation for T-shirt designs: T-Shirt Designs --------------- One of the things we offered Kickstarter donors was a T-shirt. We are thus soliciting T-shirt designs. The theme of the shirt is Community Angels. It would be good to involve our current logo http://freedomboxfoundation.org/images/freedombox_large.png. Sorry, we don't have a bigger version of that. The chosen design will be printed on t-shirts that we will give to donors. Of course, if your design is chosen, we will cover you in thanks and make sure you get a shirt too. I will also buy you a beer next time we meet. Send designs in a free file…

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April 17, 2011

Blog / Creativity / Entrepreneurship / Leadership

Perfection in leadership and how to improve

Leadership does not require perfection -- far from it. Effective leaders don't have to be strong in many leadership skills at all. Effective leadership emerges more from knowing your strengths and weaknesses than on having many strengths. Speed and strength are valuable to any position in football, but a quarterback doesn't need strength like a lineman. And a lineman doesn't need to be as fast as a running back. A quarterback trying to be as strong as a lineman is wasting his time and hurting his team. Using Columbia Business School's breakdown of leadership skills into the six categories, for example, Decision making Negotiation and conflict resolution Perceiving others Influence and persuasion Motivation Groups and teams Most people will be stronger in some and weaker…

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April 16, 2011

Blog

More Where to Find More

I updated my post on where to find more materials along the lines of this blog, specifically the personal development section. Check it out for further reading.

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April 15, 2011

Awareness / Blog / Leadership

Why learn leadership (even if you don’t want to be a leader)

"What's so important about leadership? Why learn to be a leader? What if I don't want to be one?" I get these questions a lot in my seminars and in conversation, often preceded by "What is it with you Americans?" I often let others in the audience answer the question. Developing leadership skills reveals their value, whether you use them to lead people or not, so a few people answering usually effectively addresses the questions. I answer with a few perspectives. First, people like to interact with people with solid leadership skills -- that is, they are attractive -- and life tends to be better when you are attractive, whether socially, in business, or in any other situation involving others. Mastery makes you all the…

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April 14, 2011

Art / Creativity

Great opening lines to books

I like memorable opening lines to books. Good ones can be poetry, or a whole book into themselves. Sometimes they set the tone for the book. Others are simply memorable for their simplicity. Some of my favorite (some from memory so please correct errors): "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant day when his father took him to discover ice." - One Hundred Years of Solitude "It was inevitable. The scent of bitter almonds always reminded Dr. Juvenal Urbino of the fate of unrequited love." - Love in the Time of Cholera "Call me Ishmael." - Moby Dick "Light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin. My soul. The tip of the tongue…

3 Comments

April 13, 2011