Keynote: Sarah Lewis

Sarah Lewis is an Assistant Professor at Harvard and is speaking to us this morning about the gift of failure and innovation. She begins her session by describing an image of a sun in a warehouse. She considered how we create our lives. How do innovators, artists, entrepreneurs achieve their path-breaking creative results.

Creativity is something we all want, and ideas that certain hemispheres of the brains are responsible for creativity have been proven wrong. She talks about Martin Luther King Jr., and finding a transcript of his from seminary. She points out two Cs on his transcript…in public speaking. How did that teacher feel when King went on to be a masterful public speaker? How did King’s experience in seminary contribute to his success?

What do these stories mean for our lives? Lewis explains how she became inspired by a friend who provided more energy, and allowed Lewis to feel more alive. She tells a story about a friend who couldn’t swim, but was watching a child who began drowning. The friend saved the child, but passed away. She explained how this death of her friend inspired her to pursue the things she didn’t feel she was capable of doing.

Lewis has written “The Rise: Creativity, the gift of failure, and the search of mastery.” She discusses group think and how that has allowed us to innovate. Previous spaces that were private are brought to the public, and she explains how this helps the broader community. She explains how all of the individuals discussed in her research were gritty, but they also knew when to quit.

In considering the topic of mastery, she shares some images of medalist; with bronze and silver medalists looking disappointed. Why is this? They’ve achieved so much, but it’s because of counterfactual thinking…thinking about what might have been. Success is achieving once, while mastery is being able to achieve again, and again, and again. Mastery is a constant, curve-line pursuit that requires failure.

She discusses dysfunctional persistence, the concept of being unable to see things anew because you have done things so frequently. For example, in testing the same course over and over again. It was found that those who were furthest away from the domain of knowledge (deliberate amateur), were often the individuals who held the solutions.

Lewis discusses the film industry and the blacklist, a list identifying productions that weren’t being picked up…films such as Juno, The King’s Speech, and Lars and the Real Girl. The blacklist was able to undo previously held beliefs by decision-makers in the industry by creating public domains for risk taking, a feat that was yielded (in the film industry) production of incredibly successful masterpieces.

Referencing Angela Duckworth, the author of Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. If you haven’t read that book, you NEED to check it out. It explains so much and was truly inspirational. Some of the examples made my ‘problems’ seem like small potatoes, but it inspired me to become a grittier person within my profession.

Grit makes me think of Brene Brown and how she studied the concept of Shame for YEARS, and when she realized shame was really Vulnerability, she went off on a new research endeavour, not really leaving behind her previous research to begin her new research…after decades! While she was able to use much of her Shame research, it would have also felt devastating to drop that much research and start over…but she did it! And her research is helping thousands of individuals.

Sarah closes out her session by explaining that all of the individuals she has discussed today are gritty, but they all knew how and when to quit. She discusses how we should take failure and use it as a learning experience within our own creativity and learning endeavours.

Keynote: Baratunde Thurston 

This morning, while I kept myself busy working from the only functioning wifi I could find, Baratunde Thurston walked by. He looks super down to earth and I’m excited to catch his session this morning! Thurston is a futurist comedian, writer, and activist, and today he’s talking about how digital storytelling doesn’t need to be boring.

Baratunde discusses his regular use of ‘irrelevant and imadertia’ in casual conversation…a phrase that was non-existent…thanks, mom! But he also discusses the professional moves his mom made in order to leave her children in a good place when she passed. She was always ready for ‘the gram’, in reference to a photo of his mother as an activist. In discussing the learning materials he experienced as a child, he references This is Apartheid…just some light reading. Clearly his mother was a very influential woman in his life and his learning journey.

23 and Me told him he was less Neanderthal than his sister, and this is an incredibly power argument he now holds against his sister, but she was quick to point out that he was way whiter than him…the author of How to Be Black…which I don’t believe is referenced in the book…because How to Be 81.6% Black was definitely a less catchy title.

• Within the book, he wanted some scientific validity, so he had 3 black women, 3 black men, and 1 white Canadian male as a control.

He explains how it was odd for him to create an analog product. He explains the process of trying to insert some digital into the analog, optimizing for social and online distribution. He chose an interactive process for writing the book, which recorded his writing and editing process. This software allowed for interactive chat, which he muted (to avoid spelling corrections and overall distractions), but when he was finished writing the book, he reviewed all of the chat logs and found it interesting to read through other people’s stories and reflect…including some folks confused about their own race and heritage, such as one gentleman concerned about his relationship. She was Chinese…he was 1/2 Jamaican and 1/2 Regular Black, so their kids would likely be Dominican…or something. Of course!

All stories usually begin before you think it begins, so Baratunde says we should all rewind. Our stories usually are part of a previous story.

The topic of toasters came up, and he compares this to the epitome of wealth…we purchase a single-purpose appliance, designed to make bread hard. In purchasing a toaster, he went to the Amazon, and purchasing journey yielded a 1* review with a great story of Scott, a man who just wanted a toaster to make GOOD TOAST. Scott was so upset that he wrote this review…where he asks very philosophical questions, like “why 3 times?”. This is a guy who has had so many toasters, he could be a Toast Scientist.

What a story! Whenever you’re feeling down, just go to Amazon and read some reviews. Here are a couple of my favourites:

• The Mountain Adult Unisex T-Shirt – Three Wolf Moon Classic

After the Amazon review story, he discusses the process of creating critical stories, and provides the examples of working on The Daily Show. Critical stories that needed to be produced daily. He discusses the 2016 presidential debates and the process for attempting to live tweet and produce these debates. It’s a process. A very well-orchestrated process…that yielded hilarious (and accurate) results:

The big thing that Thurston wants us to take away from this session is: In the future, we’re all Dominican…or something!