PLANNINGNESS 2014 SUMMARY OF HIGHLIGHTS – KIMBERLY GILLEM http://www.cassandra.co + http://www.thisisnoise.com

HOW TO FIND THE ORDINARY EXTRAORDINARY

ORDINARY > EXTRAORDINARY

•  SETUP: Ordinary is defined as “not unusual, different, or special”—essentially, a synonym for boring. To call someone or something ordinary is perceived as an insult.

•  BUT… Why is it that we are so quick to put negative connotations around this word? The majority of our lives are made up of ordinary things that might seem small, but can be some of the most meaningful parts of our days.

–  When we get a client brief, we’re so quick to mark it up with the proverbial red pen in order to make it “more interesting.”

–  Are we (as marketers/advertisers) telling stories that only our peers want to hear? What about everyone else?

•  I LEARNED: How to strip back our fascination with the extraordinary, and get in touch with ordinariness. How to think about ordinary truths.

•  MY FAVORITE: “We are deliciously ordinary.”

ORDINARY > EXTRAORDINARY [CONTINUED]

TIPS ON ALLOWING THE ORDINARY TO EMERGE:

1.  Find wonder and joy in the ordinary 2.  Represent what’s plainly in front of you

*It doesn’t make you any less creative to be interested in the ordinary. "I just happen to like ordinary things. When I paint them, I don't try to make them extraordinary.

I just try to paint them ordinary-ordinary." - Andy Warhol

3.  Don’t be too fancy or clever with language* *You may be a brilliant writer and thinker, but use ordinary language. Avoid the BS factor. Keep it simple. Reduce.

4.  Stop being lazy with shorthand* *Be more curious in your approach. Don’t fall back on assumptions/stereotypes.

5.  Be a better “noticer” * *Keep a notebook handy. Occasionally, regard your daily life as a naturalist or anthropologist would.

6.  Keep your eye on the prize* *Razor focus on objectives. Doing more makes the job harder.

TO EXPLORE FURTHER: •  Don’t believe our culture is obsessed with the extraordinary? See: Harry Potter, all Disney heroes/heroines,

Superman, et al •  “WWDADOS” – What would David Attenborough do or say? •  Read Purple Cow – Seth Godin •  Examples of ads that celebrate “ordinary” – Beats by Dre, Cheerios “How to Dad”

PLANNINGNESS 2014 SUMMARY OF SESSIONS — K. GILLEM

HOW TO BE COURAGEOUS

WHAT IS COURAGE?

Definition… Willful discomfort for good

Why not be courageous? Fear

What is fear? Of what? Pain (of some kind) Anticipation of pain (just as bad)

We are obsessed with worrying about pain.

“Pain point” “You hurt my feelings”

“Pain in the ass” Etc.

…There are all types of pain. Physical, social, financial, etc.

EMBRACE PAIN

TO EXPLORE FURTHER: •  Asch Conformity Experiments (see visual to the right) •  TED Talks by Brené Brown – “Power of Vulnerability,” critics, shame, etc. •  The Hub & Spoke Cycling Café, Victoria - http://www.thehubandspoke.ca/

•  Ideas and creativity are easy enough… What does it take to take the leap, and actually do something with them?

•  Magic can’t happen when you’re in your comfort zone

•  We’ve been conditioned to numb ourselves, to avoid pain every day •  ”I love pain” •  Courage is contagious

–  We’re hard-wired as tribes people

–  The need to belong is a powerful, fundamental motivator

CREATIVITY INNOVATION PAIN  

HOW TO MAXIMIZE FLOW

FLOW CONSCIOUSNESS

FLOW •  When we can make the most out of every moment. When we perform at our

best, and enjoy ourselves fully. A state when we are completely present without trying to be. –  “I wasn’t even trying.” — Michael Jordan, after scoring 49 pts –  “I just close my eyes and try to get out of the way.” — Tom Waits, on writing songs

WHAT GETS IN THE WAY?

•  Brain chatter (“The Monkey Mind”), caused by: –  Doing, doing, doing. Getting stuck in the “busy trap.” We cannot relax because we’re up against

decades of neural conditioning that has rewarded us for getting things done. –  S-T-R-E-S-S. Before 1940, this word only existed in engineering. Today we drain ourselves of the

“adaptation energy” that enables us to deal with life (with gross food and booze, not taking breaks, working too hard/long, etc.).

•  Content vs. Consciousness: “If I had X, my life would be better.”

HOW TO REMEDY? •  REMEMBER: You’re not a human doing. You’re a human being. •  Meditation is how we connect with our ability to be. •  It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, as long as you enjoy it.

FLOW CONSCIOUSNESS [CONTINUED]

3 STEPS TO CULTIVATE FLOW

•  Reduce distortion. Boosting our signal-to-noise ratio.

•  Accept and move on. An end to the uselessness of frustration.

•  Follow your path. The intellect is a terrible navigator. Nature is made up of binary code — attraction and aversion. Move toward the things you are attracted to, until they are no longer appealing.

TO EXPLORE FURTHER: •  EEGs (Electroencephalography) - Jazz Musicians, Babies, Meditators all experience the same brain activity (E.g.,

After much practice, during improvisation, the musician experiences a phenomenon called flow, where the performers “lose themselves” in the performance. Creativity is amplified, as the performer is one with the music.

•  David Lynch’s Catching the Big Fish •  Vedic Path Meditation — www.vedicpathmeditation.com •  NY Times The ‘Busy’ Trap — http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/30/the-busy-trap/ •  Norman Doidge’s The Brain That Changes Itself

HOW TO DO LOW FIDELITY DATA MINING

GETTING SCHOOLED

ON STARTING A NEW PROJECT… •  Often we start without answers/data.

–  E.g., How many runners run with a smartphone? (This data did not previously exist.)

•  More important, though, is what we do know. –  E.g., What do we know about the relationship between runners and their

smartphones?

•  Quant vs. qual is a false choice. They are intended to fuel one another.

TRACKING DOWN AVAILABLE DATA

•  Sources: Buzzdata, The Census Bureau, Data.gov, Data Market, Freebase, Google Public Data, Infochimps, Socrata, etc.

“BE FUCKING INTERESTING”

MINING FOR DATA •  Mining gives us ore, not bars of iron. As such, mining for data is just

a starting point.

•  What’s interesting??

–  The unanticipated at scale – things that unexpectedly correlate –  The MOST typical –  The LEAST typical –  Outsiders that look like insiders

•  Deciding that we’re in pursuit of questions, not truth, creates opportunity.

We are looking for the truth We are looking for answers We are looking for the interesting  

TOOLS TO IDENTIFY THE INTERESTING

Convert a range of rich data and datatypes to a common structure we can use to compare.

–  Converting to binary (1’s & 0’s) allows us to measure it dispassionately and objectively. Think of it as beginner’s mind.

Once the data has a common form, we can begin to derive our own cases and associations from it.

–  Almost any info can be converted to one or more binary data points.

Introduce new, outside data into the equation. –  “I wonder how ________ is related to _______?” –  E.g., population density, average rainfall, birth rate, cost of living, air quality, water tables,

sales data, average home price, book sales, product recalls, gas prices

Run the numbers.

Look for the unanticipated. –  “Don’t fall in love with the numbers. Fall in love with the people/stories behind the

numbers.”

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IN ACTION…

•  POLLITT: An open-source library for identifying and rendering outliers and anomalies in data sets — designed for use with Google documents and libraries. https://github.com/iandfitzpatrick/pollitt

•  RUNNING SURVEY: https://almightyian.wufoo.com/forms/2012-runners-digital-survey/

•  RUNNING DATA: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PTGoMBjvXmnTyZ01qRntAk9d_LiOT9N32AlhGphlm_E/edit#gid=66939

•  RUNNING POLLITT RESULTS: http://email.bealmighty.com/pollitt/

•  FULL PRESENTATION: http://www.slideshare.net/heavyset/low-fidelity-data-mining-for-planners-from-planningness-2014?ref=http://planningness.com/planning-ness-2014-presentations/

TO EXPLORE FURTHER: •  Read more about “beginner’s mind” •  Check out Wufoo.com for surveys •  Using quant to inform qual (reverse of current approach)

HOW NOT TO SEE

HOW TO SEE

ü  Look for the “splendid details of the world”

ü  Flex your perceptual attention muscles

ü  Trust in the genius of observation ü  Every person has a hole in the back

of each retina, but our brains fill in the gaps (metaphor: we see what we expect to see)

ü  Don’t push people with many questions, just listen to what they have to say

TO EXPLORE FURTHER: •  “Umwelt” •  Chatted about impact on qual methods: shop-alongs (call respondent on phone and have them describe their

experience), USAMP shopalongs, etc.

JWT NY: PLANNINGNESS GRANT

THE END.