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Tag Archive for: learning how to be creative
Big Idea Camp 2015 – Episode 19 #LetsChangeEducation
“Wall Street meets Scarth Street”
Ready for the best week of Summer?!? Welcome Big Idea Camp 2015. We combine the two best parts of school to create the most effective learning environment possible. Field trips (working with real companies and organizations) and team based competitions.
In school, getting out of the classroom was when you started learning (outside your comfort zone) and team based competition teaches students many different applicable skills such as, communication, empathy, leadership (more importantly followership), listening, initiative, trust, and of course teamwork.
In school field trips were the best! You got to learn from the experts in the field doing their real job. This is what we want to create. A real learning experience. We’re working with companies and a couple non-profits to offer the students real case studies on problems businesses are currently facing. You’ll get to offer ideas that may get implemented by an actual company. How neat!
It’s for highschool students (grades 9-12), you don’t need prior business education whatsoever. We’re going 9-4 for 5 days straight! You’ll never sit in a chair longer than 30 minutes. Big Idea Camp will keep you laughing, keep you on your toes, and get you thinking about YOUR big idea.
“Silicon Valley meets Qu’Appelle Valley”
7 hours of non-stop learning every day
6 team building challenges
5 field trips to local businesses
4 case studies with local organizations
3 pieces of limited edition team gear
2 energetic instructors
1 summer camp you’ll never forget
Find out more here: Big Idea Camp Dot See Eh!
If You Want To Be an Amazing (Blank), Study the Amazing (Blankers)
It’s a simple thought that has profound consequences.
If you wish to be the best, you must study the best.
If you want to be amazing at golf, study the great golfers.
If you want to be an amazing comedian, watch the great comedians.
If you want to be a world renown hypnotist, you’d be wise to study the greatest hypnotists in the world.
Never before has it been easier to study the masters of our craft. Whatever you do, whatever you’re into, you can find someone in the world who’s amazing at it and better yet you can subscribe to their YouTube channel.
Start following people you’d consider a mentor in your line of work.
For the past 5 years I’ve been listening to some of the greatest storytellers of our time. They study their craft, they try different things and they keep their audience coming back for more every week.
I regularly listen to Ira Glass from the This American Life podcast. Ira is one of the best storytellers I’ve ever listened to. If Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule is true, I’d be willing to bet that Ira Glass has told stories for well over 10,000 hours. He’s simply brilliant to listen to.
Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner from the Freakonomics series of books (Freakonomics, Super Freakonomics, Think Like a Freak), movie and now a podcast. I think Freakonomics should be one of the books you have to read in highschool, much like Shakespeare, but a new and improved fascinatingly remarkable Shakespeare.
RadioLab’s Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich
Another long time favourite of mine, RadioLab. You have to listen to it to believe it. But Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich entertain week in week out. The production on RadioLab is probably the best out of any podcast I’ve every listened to. The saying “you never get more out of something than what you put in to it” couldn’t be more true for RadioLab. They tell some of the most fascinating stories.
In the marketing world, I like listening to the Six Pixels of Separation podcast. The host Mitch Joel is Canadian, he run an agency out of
Toronto and Montreal. He always ends up asking the most interesting questions, he’s one of the smartest marketing minds in our world, you’ll see a lot more of Mitch Joel in the future. (oh yeah, and he’s CANADIAN! That’s awesome)
The BeanCast is another of my all time favs. Bob Knorpp invites 3-4 guests who’re 
are notable marketing minds from all over the world, you get a diverse opinion on many topics from Social Media to traditional advertising. Some of my favourite episodes are the ones with Peter Shankman, Edward Bouches, Scott Monty, and of course Saul Colt.
One last honourable mention goes to WNYC’s Planet Money Podcast. 
Always a new and interesting topic that the hosts seem to spin into the coolest story you’ve heard all week. You have to listen to Planet Money at least once, you’re guaranteed to learn a lot!
I want to be an amazing storyteller one day, I know that will take a lot of practice, but that’s the hard part you can’t fake past. But it’s never been easier to find our mentors, to follow our hero’s, and to watch the very people we look up to.
What amazing (blank) are you studying to be?
Unleashing Your Creative Genius: Touch The Snake
In a brilliant Ted Talk, David Kelly (founder of IDEO, an innovation firm on steroids) shows us how everyone can be a creative genius, it just takes a lot of mini steps.
The analogy he gives is a story from Dr. Albert Bandura (the greatest living psychologist in the world, also born in Mundare Alberta, fact) who is world renown for curing phobias in a radically short period of time, sometimes in 4 hours or less. His secret? He does it in many small steps,working up to the finale, the crux, the thing they’ve always been afraid of.
He’ll bring a patient into his office and tell them there’s a snake in the room next door. The patient obviously thinks it’s ludicrous that they’ll ever go into the snake filled room. He opens a one way mirror to let them see the snake, calms them down. Then opens the door and calms them down. Then into the room, then calms them down. Recognize the pattern?
It’s a series of many steps, over time, they contribute to a major outcome. It’s really how we humans get anything done.
With this process in mind, David encourages everyone that they can be creative and they can come up with novel, unique solutions to problems they never thought were possible before. In small steps, over time, you can be come a genius.