Interesting Links

Here are some sites you may wish to check out.

Over at Willzhead, Will Samson and his readers are participating in the Pantry Challenge. It starts with his January 16th post:

" If you read this blog you are rich. You may not feel like it. You may feel as if you are scrimping to get by. But consider that you have both a computer (probably a newer laptop) and connectivity (probably broadband at your house) to read this. Are you with me so far?

One of the greatest signs of our wealth is the amount of extra food each of us has in our house. This is not something you would see in most houses around the world. I noticed this the other day when I was organizing my pantry. So, the idea occurred to me:

How long could our family eat from the food in our house without going to grocery store?"

Go there and then scroll forward to see how these families are faring. It's an interesting consciousness raising experiment.

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Another contest is called "Let's Be Brief" from Robert Hruzek's Middle Zone Musings. Robert and I both agree that constraints can stimulate our creativity. In his words,

"Roger wrote about imposing limitations on yourself as one method of enhancing the creative thought process. It’s especially true when writing; limiting yourself to a specific word count or small space makes you very aware of every single word you put on the page.

Have you ever tried writing within extremely severe constraints (time, space, words, content)? Sure you have! Not so easy, is it? What if you were given an assignment where you had to write a complete story, but were limited to, let’s see… we’ll make this a hard one: six – yep, you read it right – only six words?"

Robert's contest is a lot of fun: Go here to check out the fast-growing list of entries.

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Another site well worth visiting is Stephen Denny's Note to CMO. Stephen's tagline is:

"If you could send a memo to the marketing community and straighten everything out, what would you say? This is my "note to the Chief Marketing Officer".

I find his comments informed, perceptive, and provocative. Anyone who can reference Robert Ardrey's African Genesis to make a point about GIGO (garbage-in-garbage-out) and data mining has my vote. Also, I like that he often sums up his posts with something called key takeaways. Check him out!

Comments

[Stephen Denny]

Roger:

Very kind of you to put me in such good company and on your exceptional blog -- last night I posted a piece on the organizational "manifesto" wisdom I've collected at companies like Sony and elsewhere, and in doing so quoted Josephus; see how you influence us with the creativity inspiring wisdom of Heraclitus?

Thanks !

[Robert Hruzek]

Roger;

Thanks for posting the link to the six-word stories contest! It's remarkable how artificially severe limitations can inspire such creative entries. Can't wait for the big finish to see the total!

I'm also honored that you would mention me in the same breath as Will and Stephen's posts - great company!

Robert Hruzek

[Valeria Maltoni]

Roger:

The pantry comment really resonates with me. Having grown up in Europe where small apartments and refrigerators were and still are the norm, we tend to shop for a few items at a time and use them up *before* we accumulate more.

I see the buy 3 to get 4-mindset much more prevalent here, with the correlated result that people have garages filled with stuff and cars sitting outside in the weather.

The other thought is on constraints -- yes, they do help tremendously because they focus our attention onto a specific point. Your visual here is just priceless!

As for Stephen, he just made a point on Killing giants by using a painting from one of my all time favorites: Caravaggio. What more can I say?

[Roger von Oech]

Stephen, Robert: Thanks for creating interesting content!

Valeria: Thanks for weaving a thread through all three sites.

[Stephen Denny]

Roger: on the six-word story, here's all I got --

Charlie Brown: Live From Death Row.