Storydriven

TED for free

The Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) conference, held annually in Monterey, California, is to ideas what South by Southwest is to music or Sundance is to film - the single most important place to discover new things and hear fascinating people. It's so successful that the 2008 conference is already sold out.

I really, really want to go to this thing. Maybe in 2009. Until then, many of the presentations are available online, kind of like YouTube for innovators. William McDonough, the way-farthest-out-there sustainability guy, has a talk about his "cradle to cradle" philosophy. Carl Honore talks about the power of slow. Steven Levitt talks about "crack economics." And, for a more holistic (and humourous) touch, Eve Ensler (The Vagina Monologues) talks about body-and-soul happiness.

Bookmark this page. Check it out when you can. It's a source of constant inspiration, and regardless of your area of interest - design, technology, writing, music, sales - you'll find something to stir new thoughts in your brain.

Edited to add: I had no idea when I started this post that this concept - sharing TED presentations online - was so new. It launched yesterday. Here's the NY Times article on the relaunch of TED.com

Creative Workspaces

Boing Boing points to a great ongoing blog about creative workspaces. Notice that most of them are messy.

There's been an ongoing debate at E+S about clutter. The creatives invariably have cluttered, often messy desks (but organized in their messiness). This gives the administrative staff fits, in part because our office is also our showroom, and clients come to visit.

The creatives (including me) say: If I'm a client, I want to see clutter, as long as it's evidence of creativity. A clean work area indicates to me that nothing's happening (or worse, the creatives are repressed).

The left-brainers say: It has to be clean and sparkling to show off the "showroom" as intended.

The cliche says: a neat desk is a sign of a disturbed mind.

(You might have guessed I'm a bit messy)

The question is not only who is right, but what are the circumstances for each individual client? And if a client isn't coming through, why does it matter? The workspace/showroom was designed a long time ago, when the needs of staffers were different and it could be "shown" as needed. Today, we're nearly 50 people, and to the company's credit, renovations are about to begin to create more effective workspaces for each group within the company.

Some people thrive on interaction, love the open concept and have no trouble concentrating. I, on the other hand, am allergic to noise - highly sensitive and incapable of doing any but the most menial tasks when not a) alone and b) in a completely silent environment. Interestingly (or not), once I've written a draft, I have to take it somewhere else, physically, to edit it. That place is often a coffee shop - seems like noise doesn't interfere so much with my critical-thinking processes as it does with my creative ones.

Anyway, creative people are messy (it's rare that I don't have a dozen books and magazines surrounding me, open to relevant passages or articles). It's like a metaphor for having a mind in which everything, every concept and idea is fluid and dynamic; our spaces are, too.