Clare Townhill

The retirement home for not-so-super superheroes

One of the great joys of Christmas, apart from hyperglycaemia, is the chance to catch up on all the subscriptions and unlistened to podcasts that the tyranny of normal daily-life makes it im-bloody-possible to keep up with. As I blocked out the bickering from the front-seat on the way to my sister's on Christmas Eve I caught up with an episode of This American Life from August (yep, August): 'Superheroes'. One of the episodes posits the great question which superpower you would choose between invisibility and flight; another the blog created to house all the failed superheroes, monsters and villains who never quite made it to a third issue: http://gone-and-forgotten.blogspot.com/

Joy.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/178/superpowers

"When we pop out of the womb we are all natural hackers"

Really enjoyed the Hacking and Innovation talk this week courtesy of Canvas8 and W+K. At the heart of the talk was the notion that following the rules is robbing us of life and that somewhere in the conflation of sticking to the rules and judgements about our goodness as people it all went wrong. Plus f course some great examples where benevolent rule-breaking can take you. Josh Klein and Bill Jensen co-authors of 'Hacking Work' said some great stuff. Here are some of the soundbites that inspired me most:

"When we pop out of the womb we are all natural hackers"

"We were at our best and brightest when we were driving our parents crazy by asking 'why, why' why? But then unfortunately we grew up being taught that following the rules and being good people equate to the same thing."

In amongst all this goodness I met Giles Phelps and had a great but brief chat to be continued at a later date. He's just posted this lovely video 'Hacking People and Culture', sweet, thought-provoking and a perfect content piece for this post. Thanks Giles.

 

People Watching Plus from Rune Madsen on Vimeo.

Transforming the Lone Nut

 

A great talk about the over-glorification of leaders and the importance of the follower; it's that first guy who transforms the loner into a leader by dancing next to him. Those that subsequently join in emulate his behaviour (i.e. the joining in) and do not go off and emulate the leader by starting another dance. The movement starts with the followers and not the leader.

Canvas8: The Changing Face of Media

I've been really very slack about this post for which I apologise unreservedly. Great, thought-provoking thoughtleader session courtesy of Canvas8 last week on how brands should use rather than get used by technology. Links below to the talks given by each of the speakers written up by James Cridland who I was lucky enough to sit next to. Must try harder.

Gerd Leonhard  

David Bausola

Ramsey Khoury