Hovering roller coaster duplicates IdeaFestival feel

Explaining what the IdeaFestival is all about can be a challenge. When people as different as Tiffany Shlain, Burt Rutan, Jane McGonigal, Michio Kaku, Ray Bradbury, Sheril Kirshenbaum and Daniel Tammet have appeared to talk, any organizing principle, from an outside vantage, appears to be rightfully strained.

Some have described the festival as an economic development effort. After all, without game-changing ideas (and an ability to execute them, of course) the growth prospects for any economy are much lower. Business today depends more than ever on its human capital.

Daniel Pink has argued that we're entering a right brain age, that the meaning-makers win. If you believe an ability to make connections across the Corpus Callosum is crucial, that an ability to think laterally can be unusually productive, then I would describe the festival as a whole-brain production. It's about this too.

And if you are the curious sort, the fun of encountering something new and delightful and unexpected comes with its own justification. In fact, at the IdeaFestival, I always feel just like the people in this video.

Registration for what will be the most successful festival ever opens soon, but please!

No pushing and shoving. And raise your hands if curiosity leaves you all gooey inside.

Wayne

Buenos Aires - Inception Park from Black Sheep Films on Vimeo.

Get the Naked Truth at IdeaFestival 2012

Registration opens soon. IdeaFestival 2012 happens September 19-22 in Louisville, Kentucky

Please join us on Facebook and @IdeaFestival on Twitter.

Wayne

For Valentine's Day the poem, "Touch Me"

The Poetry Foundation has posted a selection of love poems on this page, which I would encourage you to read, and if you're feeling particularly sporty today, to share with someone you love. Far and away my favorite work, however, is Stanley Kunitz's "Touch Me," which, sadly, is not listed by Poetry.

Kunitz delivers a powerful and compact mediation on life and love in the brief poem, which concludes with three stunning and plaintive lines that issue from the preceding meter with a naturalness that catches the reader by surprise. Read it and see if you don't agree. A Pulitzer Prize winner and Poet Laureate, Kunitz produced his best work much later in life - "Touch Me," for example, was written at the age of 90.

The poem can be found in his Collected Poems. Watch the poet himself read it in the video above.

And give someone you love a hug today. Tell them how you feel.

Wayne

Business and Making: It's not about taking value

Part cultural observation, part philosophical treatise, this video on business and the "maker" movement posted at the Kauffman Foundation goes a long ways toward explaining the appeal of the maker movement.

Thanks for the link, Laurie!

Wayne

#ideasatplay at IF University

When does the same question require a different answer?

Writing in the Louisiville Courier-Journal, the IdeaFestival's good friend, University of Louisville  Strickler Executive-in-Residence and professor of management in the College of Business, Prof. Nat Irvin, describes IF University.

We at IF University are about to launch an idea that we believe is totally fun, interesting, educational, provocative and may well prove instrumental in helping our community improve its “ innovation IQ!” The concept behind IF University is simple and extends the success of our annual IdeaFestival throughout the year. Through IF University we intend to provide year round programming that explores ideas, innovation and content from the IdeaFestival and related subjects. Classes will be informal and structured primarily as conversations, encouraging a collective learning experience. We are looking for creative teacher types so if you have an idea, passion, subject or avocation that you would like to share with others, we are interested in hearing from you.

We are looking for people who are interested in expanding our understanding of who and what we are. Like Einstein, we think there may be new answers to old questions.

Over the next few weeks you will begin to notice on various electronic billboards — of all kinds — in all kinds of places, including even the print media, an “IF?” question that is designed to evoke a response from your brain. These series of questions—all of them very different are designed to poke a hole in your mental universe, the one you are living in day in and day out.

So think of this “IF?” questions project as a Louisville/Lexington and all points in between virtual think tank, a living coffee house where everyone who sees the “IF?” questions will be invited to think about the same idea and yet offer their different responses through whatever means they may choose! We’re hoping that you will use your Twitter accounts, Facebook, Blogs, Podcasts, Tumblr, et.al…including the quaint conversations around the dinner table.

Think you have an idea for a class? Share it, and then us know via #ideasatplay on Twitter.

Wayne

Image of Michio Kaku: Geoff Oliver Bugbee