The school’s blog, New Idiom, made this great little video last semester asking people to tell us what they did for their summer internships and with whom.

The serendipity of this afternoon’s research on potential speakers for next year’s Design Research Conference, which I am co-chairing, is getting to be a bit giddy much!

Here’s a video by Jason Silva (some crazy, excited guy whose other video Brian Donnelly played to start up his Design Research class that I guest lectured at) talking about patterns and networks. It came up in my google search when I was trying to find videos of Albert-László Barabási (the author of one of my favourite books during undergrad – Linked: how everything is connected to everything else and what it means plus Bursts: the hidden pattern behind everything we do, which I was reading over the break) to assess if he would be a good, exciting, outlier presenter for us.

The working title for our conference is The Adjacent Possible of Design Research, which is also connected to this long slew of things because in Jason’s video, he references Steven Johnson quite a lot, including his passage from Where Good Ideas Come From: the natural history of innovation wherein he brings up the term adjacent possible and describes what it means.

Jason Silva, I love your enthusiasm and energy! EPIPHANY ADDICT YES!

The lovely Frank Chimero speaking at last year’s Do Lectures in Wales about doing things “the long, hard, stupid way” and referencing Lewis Hyde’s book The Gift (which I’ve owned for 2 years and still haven’t made it past the first few chapters) in the context of how we might considerately make things for one another in the digital age.

PS: Jorge, less than seeing him as my new hero, I think Frank Chimero is a kindred spirit. I’d love to meet him one day!

PPS: Do Lectures are coming to the US this September 20 – 23! No info on the site beyond dates just yet, and I probably can’t afford it, but I’ll keep my eyes peeled anyways.

I was skimming through SeeID to see who submitted what, who was brave enough to opt out of the spring session, etc. and it got me thinking about the reputations we have all built for ourselves amongst our classmates/future group mates. When we first got to ID, we were making our group selection choices based on whim and silly first impressions. Almost half a year in now, I suspect that people have a pretty solid handle on who they work well with and who they want to avoid. So my question is: what do you want to be known for? Strong analysis skills? The ability to pull back and synthesize everyone else’s ideas? Your graphic design expertise? The international perspective you bring? Solid presentation skills? Strength in research?

I hope that I haven’t made it on anyone’s do-not-work-with black list yet!

Apparently my friend Laurel, aka Little Scream, found one and used it for her latest music video, in which it seems they emptied the POP Office of all its furniture – or else (more likely) rented an empty unit above or below POP’s.

*Blergh, sorry for the ad.

By admitting it and subjecting myself to peer influence, will I be motivated to change my behaviour? I wonder.

Had a talk with John this afternoon about how difficult it’s becoming for me to find time to actively take a sit and reflect on all the exciting, inspiring talks/meetings/classes/readings that have been assaulting my brain since this semester started.

Today for example: up at 630am to spend an hour working on my case study for Social Entrepreneurship; at school by 9 for Prototyping Methods class in which we shared our inspiration collages and got a tutorial from Ed in the shop about various ways to glue things and how to use the scroll saw safely; completely fascinated by the methodical, practical way Ed conducts himself in the shop and all the little tips he gives us (like when using Epoxy to glue something, keep the bit you used to mix the A & B components together on a piece of paper and write down the time so when you need to see if your pieces have hardened, you can test the bit, not your actual project); straight from the shop into a lunch time meeting with Jorge and new prof Laura F (whom I’d been emailing for several months about social innovation and Toronto, but had never met); brains exploded by her enthusiasm and all the great suggestions for many unknown but worthy potential speakers for DRC (including a strong injection of female options, which I loved); meeting ran late, headed straight into Anijo’s lecture for workshop which I’m digging because it’s a studio design class yet the material he covers in his lectures is still so deep/profound/rich that I felt the need to write in my schedule “Print/review Anijo’s slides. REFLECT.”; as the lecture ended, went down to Pilsen to interview some residents to learn more about what the Chicago Art District side of the neighbourhood is like, fell in love with it (reminds me a lot of Montreal and in particular the Atlas Lighting building); went on a walk around the block to see what the loft spaces look like, found out there was a Pilsen Alliance general meeting to discuss the community’s efforts to shut down some toxic power plants in the area; went to the talk (attended by a good 50 different people, English/Spanish, young but mostly old); dinner at Honky Tonk BBQ (beef brisket and pulled pork at the same time YUM).

Where was I going with this?

Right – so John says I should blog things out. At the time I replied that I had a growing list of blog topics I wanted to write about but still no time. Coming home on the train tonight, it struck me: I’m going to try and recite these brain bursts of excitement and inspiration to Siri on my 7-minute walk home from the train station and then just post them unapologetically with no grammar and maybe only minor corrections for her misunderstandings. This is the intent. In practice, I will admit to having tried about four times, unsuccessfully, to tell Siri about my day. I think I was too excited and talking too fast for her to catch it. Will try tomorrow.

Photo: The image posted accompanying a blog post notifying the world that Efterklang’s drummer Thomas is leaving the band after ten years. It has nothing to do with this post except for the feeling it evokes in me, but then again, this whole post is kind of ridiculous and probably barely makes any sense to anyone who actually reads it.

…

Now, how many of you remember to put on your seat belt when you hop into the back of a taxi?

Edit: Is it serendipity or just mad synergy? Now I’m skimming through my barely-read copy of Worldchanging (which I bought at the Toronto book launch and never really cracked open until last semester for another ID project), and there’s an article on placemaking in there too – a term I’d never even heard of until tonight!