From TEDx Charlotte (see earlier post, "Are we Innovative yet?") :
The day kicked off with Tracy Russ and Quentin "Q" Talley. Russ was "Left Brain" and Q was "Right Brain." The idea, of course, is that you need both. They pitched 10 ideas at once wacky and thoughtful (left-right brain convergence maybe?)
1. Give every tree in Charlotte-Mecklenburg a name. This will help stop the loss of our tree canopy. So, "maple tree" becomes "Mary Dilworth." "When 'Mary Dilworth' croaks there are tears and people care," Russ pointed out.
2. Bring "art recess" into the workplace.
3. "Your Zip Code or mine?" Make friends with someone from a different neighborhood and visit each other's part of town.
4. "Bedsheets not spreadsheets." This is NOT what you're thinking. The idea is to collect, via a website, the hopes and wishes of people in the community. Then print them on blankets and give a blanket of hopes to every Charlotte newborn. (All together now: "Awwwww.")
5. "Pimp my CATS." The CATS here isn't the Charlotte Area Transit System but "Creative Access to Song. The idea is to put live music onto city buses. (Or should they charge more for musical ads?)
6. "Have a Poet in Chief for the city."
7. "Dais Divas" - As long as there's drama on our elected bodies, let's go for it. Get elected officials every year to get together and put on a musical. ( The "Glee" technique.)
8. Wisdom of the Elders. Return to the traditions of many cultures that respect and admire the elderly and use their wisdom. (I guess this means that a lot of people think anyone over 50 is irrelevant, since they're telling people NOT to treat them that way. Downer of the day.)
9. All high school graduates go to college.
The rest of the morning has been a mixed set of beautiful art, oddly didactic lectures, bizarre math/physics guy, and ended with the incomparable Tim Will of Foothills Connect.
I'm missing lunch now. More to come.
Friday, September 24, 2010
"Pimp My CATS" and other ideas
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
7 comments:
Far too cutesy.
Please don't tell me that someone is actually getting paid to come up with these ideas! And did you have to pay to go? Come on, let's hear from some grownups.
A good brainstorrming session will produce a whole basketful of ideas, and 90 percent of them will be impractical. Make sure to know which are which.
Granted that a brainstorming session will bring up a wide variety of ideas. But really, I would expect that brainstorming adults (and Russ and Talley are adults)would come up with less gimicky, less cutesy, less childish ideas. I suspect you could still have fun without being so high schoolish.
I found the "Your zip code or mine" idea to be absurd and condescending--it seems to assume that no one socializes outside of their own neighborhood or part of town. Reminds of Friday Friends project, which also implies that people need guidance to engage with someone "different" from themselves.
These folks need to get to know "real" people--not people consumed with doing things for show.
Based on the comments so far I know why Charlotte is not considered a creative city.
Brainstorming does provide everything from great creative solutions to outright nonsense and everything in between. But it doesn't have to happen in such over-the-top fashion. I was in a meeting last week where 1 person mentioned an issue, and an impromptu brainstorming broke out, and 10 minutes later the person that raised the issue had about 15 possible solutions to research. Naming trees? That's a little over-the-top.
Anon 9/25/2010 08:13 - I don't think the "your ZIP code or mine" is a bad idea. One of the unintended consequences of mixed-use developments, where everything you need is within an arm's length, is that you really do have fewer reasons to venture outside your home ZIP code and thus fewer opportunities to meet new people. Charlotte has become fairly compartmentalized - it's turning into several small cities within cities - University, Ballentyne, Uptown/South End, Dillworth/Myers Park, etc. - to where going to another "compartment" isn't much different from saying, "I'm going to Concord/Rock Hill/Salisbury/etc." We're getting to the point where the workplace is the best place to interact with different people. (As we all know, but don't dare to say out loud, is that the last place in Charlotte you can go to see different people is church, as churches here are as segregated as ever.) So I think it's good these guys brought up the "your ZIP code or mine?" idea.
Definitely some wacky ideas in there:)
Post a Comment