Archive for July, 2009
Take the bus
When the solution is someone else’s job, we get this.
From the Planetizen photo pool. Cartoon courtesy of packfan1996.
The Vine Salon Series
I’m excited to let you know about a new direction for The Vine.
In a year of tight calendars and tighter budgets, we recognize that The Vine in its traditional format (three-day conference in a resort setting) isn’t a realistic undertaking. But we also believe that the principles of The Vine take on even greater importance in challenging times such as these. We’re not willing to simply take a year off, nor are we willing to substitute an online “webinar” for in-person, human collaboration.
And so, fittingly, The Vine is venturing out into the community.
Staged in various cities throughout the region, Vine Salons will be smaller, shorter, more frequent, and more accessible gatherings — while still providing the rich content and meaningful exchanges you’ve come to expect from our three-day conferences.
THE VINE SALON at IDEO
The first of these salons — Tuesday, November 17 — will be a workshop on User-Based Design Solutions created and hosted by IDEO.
Held at IDEO’s headquarters in Palo Alto, this is a rare opportunity to go inside the world’s most celebrated design firm and participate in a collaborative, rapid-prototyping, “design thinking” process as it’s brought to bear on the mission of The Vine: that is, to discover new ways of creating vital, human-centered, sustainable communities.
The workshop, led by IDEO’s Smart Space practice, will run from 11am to 5pm. After that we’ll enjoy a wine and hors d’oeuvre reception from 5-7pm, with selections from IDEO’s on-site winery.
Attendance will be limited to 75 people. More info, including how to register, is available here.
Other salons are in the works — likely locations include San Francisco, Los Angeles, Orange County and Denver, for starters. We’ll post more details as they come together.
The Vine Salon Series is generously supported by Target Corp., for which we are indebted to our friend (and past Vine speaker) Nate Garvis.
People like us
Seth Godin has a great post today about cliques forming communities, and communities creating social norms (like handshakes) that help us determine where we fit.
People like us like people like us.
He’s writing about online interaction, but it transfers easily to the realm of physical community.
To paraphrase Seth…If you’re not attracting the people you want to be attracting to your communities, perhaps you’re not acting the way they do.
I’m not talking about cliques in a divisive, Sneetches sort of way (and neither is Seth). I’m talking about wanting to belong to something that matters to me. I’m talking about your values, what you stand for, what it means to live in a community you’ve built—and the ways, big and small, that you signal all of this to the rest of us. In the way you design, the products and partners you choose, the way you engage (or don’t) with the local community, even the way you answer the phone.
Are you like me? Do I belong there? How can I tell?