Calling all creatives.. 18 Days and counting!
September 7, 2006
‘Whatever you do, or dream, begin it now… Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.’
With Programming titles like the New Creative Community, The Future of Connection and Collaboration, So you Say You Want to Change the World?, The Third Culture, Inventing Inspiration and the Next Adventure in Fun, If is both a question and an answer.
When I think about all of the people I admire, alive and dead, they are all people that dared to ask the fundamental question: ‘What if?’ and then proceeded to answer it. As I hunkered down to finally decide what areas we would explore during If, I started thinking about all of the books I’d read that inspired me to say ‘what If?’ in my own life.
Here is an abridged list based on what I hoped to accomplish with IF:
1. I wanted If to be as close to an optimal experience as possible and picked up the book “Creativity: The Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, whose research and theories in the psychology of optimal experience have revolutionized psychology.
2. As I read through ‘Creativity’, I wanted to know more about the state of Flow described by the author, so I stopped off at the bookstore and sought out Csikszentmihalyi’s “‘Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience” where I learned about the tension between skill and challenge. It all seems so straightforward, to truly feel like you are flowing, the challenge you are dealing with should be on par with your level of skill. If the challenge is too difficult for your skill set, you will probably give up the task. Similarly, if your skill set is too developed for the task and it bears little challenge, you are far more likely to get bored and quit. The optimal experience is about increasing your skill set at the same rate as you augment the challenge. When that happens, you become completely absorbed in the task and you are flowing through an optimal experience.
3. At one point, I came across an interview on PSFK with FlavorPill founder Sascha Lewis. I was so impressed by Sascha’s book recommendation: “The Rise of the Creative Class” by Richard Florida, that I invited Sascha to speak at IF (September 26th) and started sending out this excerpt of Florida’s book to some of my favorite creatives… just a few pertinent ideas to remember at all times, and to reinforce through the IF project:
“The members of the creative class today need to see that their economic function makes them the natural, indeed the only possible, leaders of the 21st century. By being newly emergent, the creative class does not yet have the awareness of itself as a class, that is needed…
What is required is a shared vision that can motivate the specific actions we choose to take. This vision must reflect the very principles of the Creative Age; that creativity is the fundamental source of economic growth, and that it is an essential part of everyone’s humanity that needs to be cultivated…
We must carefully consider the ends to which we direct our creativity. It is a precious asset not to be squandered trivially, and a powerful force to be harnessed and directed with careful consideration of all its possible consequences… What do we really want? What kind of life and what kind of society do we want to bequeath to coming generations?”
4. If you liked the thought that Creatives are the natural leaders of the 21st century.. you might want to join us at IF this year.
