A thread running through the topic is the importance of play and creativity in solving the problems of the world. This isn’t hyperbole — the discussion really looked at the largest issues in the world.

From Jane McGonigal: the idea that in playing games, we are using our best version of ourselves; the mindpower that can be harnessed in playing games to make the world a better place.

Her goal: to make it as easy to save the world in real life, as it is in online games. And she’s not joking. If we could increase our game playing time from its current 3 billion hours a week to 21 billion hours a week, the world would be different place.

I look at gaming in a new light.

From Michael Wesch, social anthropologist from K-State: Good questions and illustrations of the world on fire — and brilliant insights on the changes technology offers. We can’t live the next 100 years like the last.

Media uses us as much as we use it; and there is no opting out. Media mediates relationships, when media changes, relationships change — including the structure of our culture.

Technology in our hands creates new potential. Question is how will we use it? How will it change us? Wesch articulates the razor’s edge between a hopeful future and a more ominous one with new openness and freedom, transparency, mass participation vs. the potential for more survelliance and control, deception, mass distraction.

His goal is to move his students from being knowlegeable to knowledge-able. He explains we need (and need to teach) skills to find, sort, analyze, organize and create knowledge.

He told the story of when the world was on fire. All the animals running to escape, but it was impossible — the fires were raging and soon they were trapped.

One little bird had an idea. The little bird flew to the stream and picked up a drop of water in its beak, flew back to the fire and dropped the water. And again, and again, and again.

What are you doing little bird? The best I can.

The heroics inspired the rest of the creatures (or variously, the gods) who joined in to save the day and put out the fire, by working together in the example of the littlest bird.

From Francis Cholle:  We need a higher level of creativity to solve sustainability questions. Creativity will be the the No. 1 leadership competency in the future.We need to play more to become more creative — play eludes our analytical minds. Our analytical minds can be a handicap to creativity.

The most important skills to master:

• Think holistically; there’s more to consider than the P&L
• Think paradoxically
• Listen for the unusual. Or, stop thinking and start feeling.
• Lead by influence, not by control

Plenty to ponder.  Thanks, TEDxKC.

This is from my friend Bill Ashworth, who writes a daily notice of things from the world of science:

Martha, a pigeon, died on Sep. 1, 1914.

Named after Martha Washington, Martha the pigeon had lived at the Cincinnati Zoo for 29 years.

She was the last of her species, and when she joined the choir invisible, the world suffered perhaps its most famous extinction.  For Martha was a passenger pigeon.

Martha, the last passenger pigeon, from permanent display at the Cincinnati Zoo

Once her kind had darkened the American skies and numbered in the billions.  Now, unthinkably, the billions had been reduced to one, and then to zero.

Upon her demise, Martha was frozen in ice and shipped to the Smithsonian, where she was stuffed and put on display, as a reminder of the peril of unchecked plundering of our natural resources.

But now Martha has been removed to some shelf in the bowels of the museum, so I guess we don’t need reminding any more.

Additional info:

Passenger Pigeon – includes Audubon’s estimate of the numbers and the sport of shooting passenger pigeons.

Passenger Pigeon extinction and massacre

Click to go to the Passenger Pigeon Society

Suddenly all is transformed and the tension takes on a new dimension. I am inside the construction site of the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Kansas City.

I admit to a constant fascination with the art of architecture and engineering — I’m stunned by the combination of mathematics and precision and emotion that is so evident in this structure.  Yes, emotion. You feel as thought the structure “knows” its purpose and embodies an appreciation of art and its impact on humanity.

Click on photo for a brief video

There is a tension in the structure — a struggle to balance, precisely, the engineering  requirements with the artistic goals. There is magnificence in the tension.

It’s both literal and figurative.

The physical structure relies on tension, with cables that flow from the curved shell to deep anchors. These cables support the glass atrium facade.

The imagery of the building is reminiscent of a musical instrument (a cello, in my mind). The tension wires are the strings, the arc of the structure is the sensuous body of the instrument, and its position on the landscape — the change to the horizon — is the music.

In this image, the participants who visit the building are part of the performance itself. We walk through the instrument and our movement resonates with the sense of breathing within the building. The building already feels alive with rhythmic tension.

You feel it inside the performance spaces where the beautiful woodwork is warming and comforting, where the chamber produces a cathedral-like sense of awe and grace. It’s a wonder at nature, like walking in a vast forest, but this time it’s the vast imagination, skill and mastery of the craftsmen that amazes.

The building soars and sings with echoes and self-reflections: it’s as though it folds in on itself, again creating a balance. The interior mimics the dramatic exterior, the lines of the exterior are reflected in the the parallel lines in the acoustically designed walls in the theater. The exterior curves are mimicked in the interior performance space.

Construction is change in action; transformation on a grand physical scale. Art, also, is change in action — a moment of tension, the creation of the artist conveyed through a performer to an audience. The impermanence of the moment juxtaposed with the searing meaning and perhaps, enduring memory in the minds of an audience.

This change, so welcome, so beautiful, so important to our culture. This building will play upon our identity and forever mark our commitment to our better instincts in innovation, art, engineering, craftsmanship.

It is a building of possibilities. It shows that there is unbound potential for us, as individuals and as a community.

The first musing is about birds and business goals, or knowing what you really want.

The scene: I’m sitting out on the patio alone early one morning, a glorious sky, cottonwood leaves dancing in the breeze, the air full of pinon and dewy freshness. Quiet. Until something like a high-powered, bullet-speed drone circles my head. I ducked a few times until I realized they were hummingbirds.

No more ducking, just delight. They swirled and swarmed, one protecting his area more fiercely than I’ve ever seen a hummingbird behave. And the noise! I’d never heard them so close, so loud, the whirring noise they make an indication of their speed and agility. I sat unmoving and felt so privileged to have them so close to me; it was a joyful time.

Later, talking about the experience with my friends (my hosts), they related a tale of a friend of theirs.

This young woman had overheard them talking about their hummingbirds, and she had interjected that she, too, would like to have hummingbirds in her garden. My friends showed her their feeder and carefully explained the preparation of the nectar and other secrets for attracting the birds.

A couple of weeks later, they chanced to visit her. Her hummingbird feeder was hanging, but she was out batting at it with a broom, screaming.

“What’s going on?” they asked.

“Well, I put up the feeder but all I get are these big moths,” she replied.

Oh no!

“Those ‘big moths’ you’re swatting are hummingbirds,” my friend explained cautiously.

As it turned out, the young woman had never actually seen a hummingbird. She thought they’d be different from the annoying little ‘moths’ that she didn’t like at all.

Her expectation was different from reality; she didn’t know that she was terrorizing the very creatures she thought she wanted.

It was such a strange story, it made me think about some of my own expectations, especially as they relate to business and setting goals, dreaming about what I really want.  Always healthy to take stock of what you desire, and make sure that (a) you can recognize it for what it really is, and (b) you’re not unknowingly swatting it away.

The second musing came from a chance encounter with an Indian woman selling pottery downtown. Her work was nicely displayed and pieces caught my eye, so I stopped and we chatted.

She explained her product. “I find the right spot, I dig the earth, I mix the water and make the clay, I shape the vessel and bake it, and then I paint it,” she said simply. “I touch it, everyday, from when it is dirt until it is finished.”

The piece I was holding had a unusual design. “My great-grandmother designed that,” she said. The pictogram showed a bird in flight when looked at in one direction; when turned in the other, it became a flower like a tulip or trumpet vine.

Sold.

This businesswoman knew her product so intimately, and was so connected to it, her act of creating it was part of the bargain of owning the piece (at least for a short time, as it was a gift). Her story was simple, moving and effective. It’s exactly what we all need in our business storytelling.

***

Final random musings:

• Congratulations to the city of Santa Fe for controlling nighttime light pollution. It’s working and it’s brilliant to see the stars there.
• While I’m at it, congratulations to Santa Fe for its Plaza concert series of free excellent music — a wonderful community service. Last week’s bands were excellent, drawing crowds of dancers and music lovers. I can’t recall when I’ve seen so many smiling faces.

I can’t stop watching.  Maybe you’ll like it too.

Thanks to Phil Eaton who shot this at Armadillo Aerospace in Rockwell, Texas, and to Burdr for promoting it.

Left me dismayed.

One instance was the governor of Kansas, speaking at an arts event, a beautiful, serene and contemplative scene in the Flint Hills. Thousands of people, maybe the majority of the crowd, from the adjoining state. The governor talks about the beauty of the event, but then goes on to bash his neighbors, recounting historical border wars and intimating that those from the other side of the line are less welcome.

Why? Why didn’t he embrace all who were there for a common experience? Why didn’t he invite everyone to celebrate the moment, the place, the experience? It does nothing to diminish the location, but connecting and doing so with grace would have immeasurably added goodwill and welcome to the already-unique environment.

The second experience was from our mayor, who’s blundered mightily in failing to connect with peers and fellow city dwellers. He used his state of the city address to take a jab at a regional chamber of commerce. It doesn’t represent us, he said.

Wrong. I’d much rather be part of an organization that bridges difference than one that is built on divisiveness. Shallow and shortsighted comments, but especially offensive as he tried to make the case in these economic times. He rather compete than recognize that we have an opportunity to cooperate to build a greater good.

It’s easy to divide. Flags, road markers, schools, sporting teams all make us different by our affiliations. That’s easy.

It’s harder to look for commonalities and celebrate reasons to reach across the divide. I keep this top of mind, preferring to connect. Maybe I’m naive but it feels better to me and I’d like to think it might help, somewhere, sometime, in some small way.

One occurred while visiting a friend who lives in a remote corner of the city, who happens to have a property that abuts a small lake, fed by three streams. It’s an older house, simple and gracious, and it’s obvious that my friends there spend most of their time outdoors.  He took me on little walk through the property — first down to the lakebed, where I spotted the snapping turtles near the Russian iris in bloom, around little mounded flower bed overflowing and lush, then curving along the stream over to the upper gardens. Rounding the curve, there’s a sudden surprise — delight everywhere you look. From the tidy vegetable garden to the abundant roses and old-fashioned treats (pawpaws, buckeyes, Japanese dogwood, clematis, phlox, giant lilies and dozens more, both native and exotic) it was moment after moment of glorious exploration touching, smelling, joyous appreciation of this otherworldly garden. There were birds everywhere and we were on watch for a snake and other woodland critters, all the more fun. A magical moment.

A second moment that overwhelmed was under vastly different circumstances. We were attending a Bach Aria Soloists concert, held in the ample living room of a neighbor and acquaintance. There were about 60 people in this front room, listening in rapt attention to the beautiful music. Then, a cello solo –  Bach’s Suite No. 4, one of my most favorites. I felt as though the world dissolved for a moment and all that existed was this extraordinary sound, threading and hanging in the air, wafting and dissolving. I closed my eyes and held hands with my beloved and savored the moment, filled with joy.

A third moment was almost a blending of the other two — a combination of a beautiful vast horizon of undulating lush hills all around, and the Kansas City Symphony. I was happy just with the vista, watching the cattle and the wild swallows at dusk, the occasional cowboy riding along in or out of the view. I was enjoying this with some 3000 other people, quietly relaxing on blankets or foldout chairs, on this natural amphitheater-like hillside.

As I relived these moments later, it occurred to me that I was missing something. These were not random moments, but the result of hours and hours of devotion and passion. There was work, heartfelt work, handprints on each, that made the difference. I was the beneficiary of the passion that went into each of those magical moments.

Was it work? Or a slow accumulation of invested dedication and passion? There need not be a difference, I understand, between working and living, between labor and labor of love.

It’s not magic at all.

In the corporate world, I used to marvel at the degree of specialization in the workforce. Tasks were split into smaller and smaller bits and assembled across silo’ed organizations. And leaders wondered why it was so hard to get everyone focused on the same mission.

In technology, we continue to break everything into tinier and tinier bits. Think of network technology (packet switching, dissembling and reassembling bits right this instant!), and the increasingly specialized areas of research and academics. We keep slicing our focus smaller.

It’s the same with time. We’re driven by the clock, to make use of every minute. Too bad that too often we’re just satisfying ourselves with an illusion of activity.  Hmm, do I really need to check the stock market again? Or Facebook? Am I making a connection or avoiding one?

This week I found a nice way to connect. Individually, working alone but as part of a world movement. Another form of crowdsourcing, there’s a movement to make it easy for the app-carrying masses to spend a few seconds contributing money, time or intellect to others.

It’s a kind of hive-help to museums, schools and libraries. Called The Extraordinaries, it’s an app for micro-volunteering from your mobile phone. You can select a program to support, and within seconds, you can be helping with a project — for example, translating film dialog, tagging items from historic photo collections, supporting research.

Some of The Extraordinaries’ projects:  for Cornell University, collect data on urban birds; for the Smithsonian, help build a search engine for vintage photos and artwork by tagging images; help the Bibliotheque de Toulouse or the Brooklyn Museum tag their photo collections. You can help Greenpeace or the Library of Congress. Non-profits can apply to add their work to The Extraordinaries’ portfolio of projects.

The Extraordinaries, backed by a strong investment team featuring Kapor Ventures of Silicon Valley and Esther Dyson, among others, has secured $1.135 million in funding.  The company describes itself as for-profit social enterprise and is applying to become a B-corp.  (More on that later.)

Tiny bits of time, given to a bigger cause. This can’t help but catch on.

A son, husband, father, successful businessman, a rugby player. The service was overflowing, and speaker after speaker talked about how beloved he was.

It was profoundly sad — made nearly unbearable by all the funny photos of him clowning with his kids, grinning like mad, adoring them. The photos ran in a loop on a giant screen, continuously reminding us of his life.

I realized that I only knew part of him.

We had been acquaintances, tied by the rugby circle. But as an outsider to this theater, I only saw him from the sidelines. I thought he was loud and crude, and yes, funny in that rugby way — but not much more. I didn’t see him as the best athlete in the group, nor the smartest strategist. But he did bring the team together, usually with laughter. So I liked him but I didn’t get to know him well.

It wasn’t until much later, when he contracted the disease and decided to use his very existence for something larger, that I saw him from another perspective. And I wished I’d paid attention to him sooner.

He was in a wheelchair but not not relenting from fighting that f***ing disease as he called it — he was loud, lively and brash, still outspoken and sometimes crude. Since he couldn’t make an entrance quietly, he made everything larger than life. He was a spokesman for the cure, he was an advocate for stem cell research and he challenged everyone to help beat it.

Last September, he traveled to Aspen to watch his Kansas City Blues teammates at the annual rugby tournament there, easily one of the best events in this sport. The Blues have never missed a tournament and frequently win. This year, as always, every level of the club was gunning to beat the Gentlemen of Aspen.

He gave a little talk at the halftime of the game, over the loudspeakers, for the work that would lead to an ALS cure. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but it wasn’t about him, it was about winning. It was emotional only for its bold statements of truth.

At the end of the final game, a rough battle, hard fought between the Blues and the Gentlemen, the entire Aspen team walked to the far corner of the pitch to shake his hand or give him a hug. It was an extraordinarily gracious gesture from a team of rugby warriors, brothers all.

It was larger than life, just like him. Full of courage, laughter, love.

I’ve seen it firsthand in my family under a couple of different circumstances. In his later years, my father was afflicted by a form of dementia, and it changed not only him, but also my mother, brothers and sister and me. My younger sister recognized it quickly and accepted it the easiest: “Sometimes he doesn’t know me,” she said matter-of-factly one day. She was right.

Later, near the end of her time, my mother also lost much of her memories and most of her capability to make good decisions. Slowly, she retreated into herself, her interests diminished.  But even in her foggy state, she was able to give me advice. Near the end, I was visiting her, and told her of an upcoming, exciting trip I was planning to Brazil and Argentina. “Well, just don’t get lost,” she said firmly. It made me laugh at the time, but it was still good advice — and it told me she still knew me and still cared about me.

Now, I’m starting to see the confusion touching another member of the family — my sister. It’s the unmistakable loss of short-term memory, diminishing her capacity to react and make decisions. It’s like watching a slow retreat, a slipping-away, a loss of focus that’s frightening.

But it’s frightening only for those of us around the situation — I don’t think it’s frightening at all to my sister herself. She’s happy, cheerful, laughing, mostly content with her days.  As she always has been. I don’t see any fear in her; so what brings the rest of us fear?

Change.

As one who studies change, I’m watching this “case study” with particular attention (I’m part of it, after all). But my measured assessments of the situation are filtered through my own emotions — and my own fear.  I can see the various reactions to change in others. There’s the reluctance to accept it (we can wait), the desire to avoid it (she’s still happy and healthy). I can see my own reactions.

I note that change brings lessons worth relearning, now that I’m face-to-face with my own emotions. We’re human, and we react to change with our emotions first, and with our intellect second. Emotion is the stronger influencer; I have to recognize it, accept it, embrace it and give it it’s due.

My new task list: Take heart, Have courage, Be strong, Go forward.

UPDATE May 14, 2010: Found a great post that gives another view, with a nice bit of useful wisdom for a lot of situations — instead of focusing on what’s lost, find joy and pleasure in what remains. Check it out at the KevinMD blog.