an old roller derby helmet makes an excellent hanging basket for spring flowers
(for those of you who didn't get the #7734 before, I hope it's obvious now)
In any sport where hitting your head is such a risk that wearing a helmet is either a rule or generally advisable, you occasionally have to replace them. Any time you take a major blow to your helmet, it becomes is compromised in that area and may merit replacement (learn more about single v. multiple impact helmets here). As a result of several years playing derby, I have amassed a few of these and I just can't throw them out, as I feel there is too much useful material still intact.
This year I have decided to make a few hanging flower baskets out of them - as demonstrated in the above photo. I lined them with an old plastic bag and then poked some holes in the bag through the helmet vent to allow for drainage - filled them with dirt and seeds and that's it.
I'll be speaking again at this year's Desautels Business Conference on Sustainability. This year's theme is "REdefine, REdesign, REbusiness". The conference is using the recent economic crisis and the ongoing ecological crises to revisit the concept of doing business, doing well and doing good.
On Friday, January 21st I will deliver a presentation on "Creativity, Diversity and Transformation" where I will work with students to recognize some assumptions that many of us carry about - about change, the status quo and changing the status quo. I hope to communicate how important it is for us to harness the power of the wildly creative energies that surround us to make our business more human, while at the same time making them more innovative.
The full conference will be held January 20-22 at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec - you can get more details on the full program at the website.
Happengläd's New Hat is a monthly New Work Salon, hosted by the ever-labouring lady of laughs DeAnne Smith. It's a chance for Montrealers to watch local performers "try things out." If you are familiar with the concept of creativity, trying things out is very, very important. However, things tried are not always perfect or particularly refined. At other times they are truly magical. You don't know until it's tried, honestly. And that's half the fun (I'm not sure what the other half is - but I believe it has something to do with the cheap refreshments available at the theatre).
I'll be participating this month in my first attempt at what I'm calling a "public service announcement" of sorts. I have a few of these percolating, this will be the first public execution of one. This one has a decidedly light tone - it deals with murder, hospital visits and dogs. Come, watch - and let me know what I can do to improve on this sort of thing.
Tuesday September 28, 8pm - only $5 tiny loonies, 264 St. Catherine Est, near Berri Metro.
I have the word "umkehren" tattooed on my arm. It is part of the above phrase, which is credited to the 19th century geometrist Jacobi, who apparently suggested inverting every geometrical theorem to better understand it. "Umkehren" means "to invert." There are some obvious reasons I did not want the English translation on my arm, as fitting as it my be. Like many others, I believe that Jocobi's phrase has a much broader application than the one he developed for geometry. It is important to always question assumptions and to turn some notions on their head to understand them from another perspective. As such, my tattoo serves as a reminder to challenge my assumptions when I do not immediately understand something.
In the place of such a corporeal reminder, feel free to watch this great short clip featuring musician and entrepreneur Derek Sivers, which cleverly explores this very notion.
We are so married to the systems that currently deliver energy to us - be it hydro, petrol, or coal. Big systems run by big companies for big profit are needed to extract, make usable, and deliver these forms of energy to us. They cost a lot in terms of money and tend to have negative environmental impacts. But energy is everywhere around us - and within us - and we waste it for a lack of creative ways to capture it. But this is changing.
Developed by Jessica Lin, Jessica Matthews, Julia Silverman, and Hemali Thakkar (recent Harvard engineering grads - note: all ladies), the sOccket is a product that takes what energy is readily available in many developing nations - namely many children with a love of soccer - and converts kicks into a usable source of electricity. This is not old school child labour - but a portable generator that encourages play! Apparently, 15 minutes played on sOccket 1.0, could store enough energy to illuminate a small LED light for three hours! The new prototype sOccket 2.0, can power the same LED for the same amount of time with just 10 minutes of play. Imagine how much wood or kerosene this can save a family.
Or how about a night club dance floor that captures the energy of the dancing upon it? There is so much energy wasted at night clubs - not least of which is the energy being expended by all the people writhing about (mostly) to the beat. This kind of thinking, which recognizes the power of movement, can easily be applied to so many places where people move - train station turn styles, for instance, or slightly more exciting/creepy - in the chest cavity - where we breathe with some regularity.
Generally speaking, these tools are not meant to replace all the energy used to power our lives, but rather supplement them - for the time being. In combination with proper energy saving measures, they could eventually become a more important source of energy for all of us. Further, these products help to remind us of the multitude of opportunities for those who think creatively about issues such as energy sourcing and uses - and points to a future where more democratic energy sources abound.
If you walk around Montreal with any regularity, you may have noticed the recent rise of an artistically rich and linguistically complex graffiti tag known as "Cobra Cock". Clearly a deep thinker with much on the mind, this street artist has shared his floral and richly original understanding of mankind by tagging many homes, businesses and alleyway fences with this overtly naïve approach to street art.
A particularly nuanced version of the ubiquitous Cobra Cock tag.
Well, it's happened, as it was bound to. There is a new alliterated snake/genital tag in town. Behold: Viper Vag.
Viper Vag stamped threateningly above a rather limp Cobra Cock.
I have no idea who did this - but you have my respect sir or madame - well played. As many Montreal property owners surely do, I look forward to the ensuing alleyway battles for space and supremacy.
Sir Robinson is charming, insightful man who has now given two fabulous talks about creativity and learning. So he's basically one of my growing lists of nerd-heros.
He's calling for a revolution in education - one that is personalized and creates the conditions for meaningful and passionate learning.
Today was one of those days - a day when the fortuitous coming together of a number of key factors reveals something which would, from that day forward, forever appear incredibly obvious to you. The factors in question were 1) fatigue, 2) motivation theory, and 3) a student led dialogue session.
I like having the freedom to allow my students to walk around the class, like it's theirs. I like having them lead a good portion of the class, like it's theirs. I like to imagine that this motivates them to learn more, to retain more, to consider the sometimes challenging topics that we cover in that particular class. Sometimes they might not learn exactly what I was hoping they would, but sometimes they learn something much deeper. I always learn something, even if it's just that it's okay to let go and let someone else, someone less "experienced" be in charge.
Every week in my Social Context of Business class, a group of students develop and implement some kind of class activity to help their colleagues better understand the topic of that week - be it ethics, or consumerism etc. This forces the group in question to develop a solid understanding of the topic at hand, in addition to creating some interesting ways of sharing this information with the class. Examples of such exercises include scavenger hunts, the development of barter systems, quiz shows, dialogue sessions, and puzzles. Fun is often a key element of this half of the class.This week they had their peers experience a controversial topic from multiple perspective - I feel it was a highly effective exercise.
It's not like this in all my classes. In some of the coordinated classes I teach, there seems to be a pressure to teach the topics from a given text, in a given fashion. Perhaps as a result, I feel a little less passionately about teaching those topics - I leave the class less inspired. It only just now occurred to me why, precisely, I cannot and will not continue in this vein.
This morning, in one such coordinated class I lectured on the topic of intrinsic motivation. I did this by standing in front of the class and talking about it. "More autonomy, more responsibility etc.... lead to better outcomes," I explained. This I explained by standing in front of class, using examples, real and fabricated to illuminate the topic. I can't imagine a less original way to cover a topic that relate to something as interesting as what drives people. I don't know why it didn't occur to me that, given the power dynamic between student and professor, every class presents the opportunity to put this concept into practice - to give these bright, curious people a chance to develop ways to improve their own learning.
This realization made me understand why the structure of my "Social Context" class seems to be so effective in bringing students together around complex ideas. It's because they do it themselves - it's not imposed on them. I trust them as bright and original thinkers to come up with a variety of solutions to the challenge of real education. At it's root, part of the reason I implemented this structure to this particular course in the first place was because I too was entrusted with more autonomy in the creation of the course. The course coordinator has given me the freedom to cover the topics that I feel most relevant to the subject, in the ways that I feel most effective. I feel this freedom has challenged me to become a better educator, and the freedom I grant my students seems to encourage them to be better learners. It's like a motivational cyclone - kind of out of control, but powerful nonetheless.
Today I was privileged enough to participate as a facilitator in a green building design charette at École Polytechnique de Montréal. The charrette was called by Professor Micheal Bernier in order to expose his students to the concept of a design charrette and to allow them to interact with industry experts. The fundamental goal of the day was to refine the design of an off-grid parking attendant booth, which will be constructed by the students prior to the end of the semester. Such a conceptually simple building, so much learning to be had.
Students struggled with balancing the degree to which the building would be insulated, in order to reduce energy demands, with the reality that this would be a small building with it's door often ajar. Further, there was some hope to use a multiplicity of energy systems (e.g. wind and solar), so as to reduce dependence on one source of energy (e.g. the sun). The greater the variety of sources of energy, the less you have to bank on storing said energy for long periods of time. As it turns out, the specification of the building being totally off-grid, in addition the the location of the booth being between a number of large institutional buildings made this a particularly challenging issue. It will be interesting to see what the final product looks like.
Overall, this was primarily an academic exercise, as the students had been working on the particular design exercise since September. Ideally, a charrette would be called at an earlier date - to initiate a creative undertaking, for example, or to try to develop a shared vision for a project. Given the amount of learning required for the students to actually undertake this project, they had only recently developed sufficient expertise to really use the knowledge provided by industry experts this afternoon. It will be an excellent experience for those students interested in pursuing a career that involves regular integrated design sessions, such as those that are part of most complex or particularly sustainable designs.
As a total aside, I noticed that only 4 of the 33 students in the class were women. This kind of strong gender divide is something I never see in business school. Some things are slow to change, I suppose.
Yong Ho Ji is a Korean born sculptor and artist who builds mutant "monsters" out of rubber tires. He takes a modified natural material, rubber tires, and transforms familiar and somewhat threatening animals into beautiful yet unnatural creatures.
Tire waste is clearly a problem in car-centered societies such as ours (according to the Environmental Protection Agency, at least 290 million scrap tires are generated in the United States each year). Yong Ho Ji presents one of many reuses of this incredibly common waste material. Otherwise, whole tires have been reused as bumpers for boats, highway barriers and less commonly as a construction material for home building. It is not uncommon to now find recycled tire crumb in mats, stair treading and in athletic fields. It's amazing how a material so commonly used for a sole purpose can have such a variety of afterlives - probably not uncommon for most of our waste, when you think about it.
Clearly, one man's waste is another man's treasure. In 2008, one of Ji's sharks went for $145,000 USD at auction.
In 2009, I sold my stake in an eco-development firm that I help found in order to pursue an academic career and to return to the creative works of a previous life. I’m starting this modest little blog in order to marry a few loves of mine – crafting, learning, reuse/recycling, and writing. And hopefully to share a couple fun ideas. My ideas and the ideas of many other people.
Ultimately, this is part of a continuous exercise in rethinking the common – part of a way to train myself to identify new ways to see and use the objects and experiences in my life, partly in hope that it will challenge me and others to apply the same kind of thinking to the more challenging problems that face us today. This is my invitation for you to participate in this exercise.
Please share with me your ideas for clever use/reuse of common objects, or rethinking concepts in general.
