The Vine

Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson, speaking at The Vine in Napa, asked the audience to raise their hands if they considered themselves an artist. In a room of 200 people, maybe a dozen responded.

If you ask a class of kindergarteners the same question, he observed, every hand goes up. So where, along the path from childhood to adulthood, do we start believing the lie that we’re not artistic and creative?

It’s a false belief that’s instilled and reinforced by many different sources—our own selves among them. I’ll allow that most do so unwittingly and with the best of intentions, but it’s a lie nonetheless. And far too many of us buy into it.

It’s fitting (and no coincidence), then, that profound insights into creativity can be found in children’s literature, as I was recently reminded while reading with my daughter.

Ish is the wonderful story of Ramon, a young boy who loves to draw—until a critical remark by his older brother causes him to fixate on all the ways his pictures are not “right.”

Fortunately Ramon has someone who believes in him, a younger sister who helps him see the beauty and meaning in his “ish” drawings. His trees, while not perfect, are tree-ish. His silly feelings are expressed in images that are silly-ish. And when he begins to write, even though he’s not sure if he’s writing poems, he knows they’re poem-ish. And that’s enough.

As the author Peter Reynolds tells it, “Thinking ish-ly allowed his ideas to flow freely.”

Now, of course structure and order and precision matter. I don’t want my dentist coloring outside the lines while performing a root canal. But an over-emphasis on exactitude can be the very thing that bottlenecks our creativity.

Jim Collins has famously pointed out that “good is the enemy of great”—that our willingness to settle for good prevents us from achieving greatness. But so too is perfect the enemy of great.

The next time you find yourself hitting a creative wall, think of Ramon.

Think ish-ly.

Some of the best books I’ve read scored, on average, three stars on Amazon. Likewise some of my favorite movies on Netflix.

It’s not that they got a lot of three-star reviews. Hardly any, in fact. Rather, they got a lot of fives and fours—and also a lot of twos and ones. They were willing to turn off some people in order to thrill others.

Three-star reviews are a product of trying to be acceptable to all, offensive to none. The world is full of three-star books and movies. And restaurants and cars. And businesses and jobs and careers. (There are not, however, a lot of three-star whitewater rafting expeditions. One way to transcend mediocrity is to choose a category that, by definition, can’t plausibly coexist with mediocre.)

One final thought…I don’t believe there are any three-star people. We’re far more unique and nuanced than that. But we do make a lot of three-star choices in the way we apply and express ourselves.

Photo credit: Carst van der Molen

We may find out.

Facebook is relocating its corporate headquarters from upscale Palo Alto to the decidedly more gritty, blue-collar community of Belle Haven in Menlo Park. And their design plan, from the sounds of it, involves knitting the campus (formerly a cloistered compound that housed Sun Microsystems) more closely into the surrounding community—physically and socially.

That process began this past Saturday with an “urban planning hack-a-thon.” Ryan White of Fast Company’s Co.Design participated, and he writes of the experience:

“Some 150 architects, designers, and students forfeited their Saturday and wired in for a 12-hour draft-a-thon that produced a bevy of ideas for connecting the isolated Facebook campus with the surrounding community and adjacent wetlands, as well as suggestions for redeveloping the area with better transit, denser mixed-use housing, and lively retail and business districts. …

“Facebook says it wants to change the fortress vibe and embrace the community. So to kick things off on Saturday, designers took morning bus tours of the adjacent Belle Haven neighborhood — several dozen local residents came along to lend their thoughts — and then broke into Red, Yellow, Blue, and Green teams. Teams of 20 to 40 each rolled up their T-shirts and began cranking out as many hand sketches and digital models as they could before an after-dinner deadline: a show-your-work presentation before a packed assembly of fellow architects, Facebook reps, Menlo Park city officials, and a sprinkling of nearby residents. The day’s mission, as Norman tells it: ‘creating a sense of community’ — or perhaps, more to the point, to create a larger sense of community, one that very conspicuously features Facebook. …

“Designers repeatedly sought ways to transform the area immediately adjoining the Facebook campus into a dynamic ‘hub’ of restaurants, retail and transit, a kind of physical manifestation of the company’s reputation for knitting people together.”

Readers of this blog will have already noted the myriad political, zoning and funding obstacles that stand in Facebook’s way—welcome to our world—and indeed Menlo Park’s mayor is anticipating loud, contentious opposition when the design concepts are presented at the next City Council meeting.

Undoubtedly it will be years before the fullness of the plan is realized, and many of the project’s rough edges (rough in a good sense, as in creating traction, not splinters) will be sanded down along the way. Such is the reality of urban redevelopment.

But when the world’s largest cultivator of digital community turns its attention to the physical realm, we should all be watching their progress with great interest.

And rooting for them to succeed.

[ NB: the rendering above is one of multiple concepts generated at the charrette, not the actual plan. ]

I recently finished—and was thoroughly moved by—Paul Murray’s much acclaimed novel, Skippy Dies.

Many book reviews have already been written, so I won’t duplicate the effort here, other than to comment it’s been a long time since I was so vividly reminded what fourteen felt like—the sheer intensity of being, so easily exhilarated and yet so easily crushed—and how much of that experience we unwittingly carry with us into adulthood.

There’s one passage in particular that seems worth sharing, as it’s resonant with many of the themes we’ve explored throughout past Vine gatherings.

Murray reflects:

“Maybe instead of strings it’s stories things are made of, an infinite number of tiny vibrating stories; once upon a time they all were part of one big giant superstory, except it got broken up into a jillion different pieces, that’s why no story on its own makes any sense, and so what you have to do in a life is try and weave it back together, my story into your story, our stories into all the other people’s we know, until you’ve got something that to God or whoever might look like a letter or even a whole word.”

Somewhere Margaret Wheatley is nodding her head.

If Catcher in the Rye had a three-way with Lord of the Flies and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, their love child would look a lot like Skippy Dies.

Don’t read it if what you want is feel-good (it’s an Irish tale).

Do read it if what you want is to feel.

Up ’til now, speaker videos from the last three-day Vine conference have been locked away, Rapunzel-style, hidden behind by passwords known only to attendees of the event.

Enough, we say!

If they can Free Willy (four times, including a remake, for crying out loud) then who are we to keep such edifying talks all to ourselves?

Presentations from The Vine conference in San Diego are now unlocked and can be viewed in their entirety here, or by clicking the header in the right-hand column labeled, appropriately enough, Videos.

There you’ll find filmmaker Ric Burns‘ riveting story of New York’s recovery from near financial collapse (the ’70s version, that is, eerily relevant to the meltdown that was playing out right before our eyes)… Charles Leadbeater‘s deep and thoughtful perspective on boulders, pebbles and the power of collaborative creation… the spirited, funny and insightful performance poetry of Rives… the profoundly moving improvisational pieces performed—for the first time ever together—by musicians Michael Jones and Stephanie Winters… and more. (All of the talks are posted, except for the one we no longer speak of. If you were there, you know what I mean.)

One thing to note, the volume runs a little high on these. Adjust your speakers accordingly.

Hope you, and others, enjoy the resource.

Super Bowl XLV between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Green Bay Packers is being heralded as an historic matchup. Pitting two of the league’s most iconic franchises, it’s the first-ever title game in which both teams are more than 75 years old.

I’d add this to the significance: you’re hard-pressed to find two sports franchises anywhere in the country so tightly woven into the culture and identity of their cities and regions. (Although you could make a strong case for the Boston Red Sox or the New Orleans Saints.)

It’s been said that there are two topics that will draw complete strangers into conversation: the weather and a winning local sports team.

“Sports are us,” observes Eric Angevine, “and we are sports.”

For better or for worse.

For the record, I’m predicting…Steelers 27, Packers 24.

Photo credit: melissajonas

Under the category of ‘not exactly the smoothest PR move,’ a Pulte Homes division president was caught removing neighbors’ lawn signs displaying an anti-Pulte message.

It’s a case of childish behavior on both sides, actually, beginning with a neighborhood tizzy over Pulte’s purchase of lots in what was originally planned to be a village of entirely custom-built homes. But custom sales stalled, the developer sold some of the lots to Pulte, and protest signs began appearing in front yards.

(You can certainly see why. I mean—horrors!—those luxury production homes attract all manner of riff-raff. Before you know it, your tony little enclave is a suburban ghetto.)

In an ironic twist to the story, the Pulte prez lives in the very same community—in a custom home, no less.

Think the next HOA meeting will be a little dicey?

This idea has been advanced by many others, much more eloquently than I will here, but it still bears repeating.

People don’t buy square footage. Or floorplans or elevations or parks or schools or real estate values. (And they certainly don’t think of homes as “units.” Can we strike that from our industry’s vocabulary?) Those things are the rational factors we cite to justify an emotional decision we’ve already made.

We buy a home because of what it helps us become. A safer neighborhood (perceived or real) helps a mom or dad feel like a better parent. A LEED-certified building near transit helps the environmentally conscious feel redeemed for reducing their carbon footprint. A community designed around urban farming helps a foodie feel affirmed about her localvore lifestyle, and gives her another means of telling that story to others.

As our friends at Strada are fond of saying, “This is not a toaster.” I don’t want to hear how much extra storage space I’ll get. I want to be part of something that I can believe in. (And that goes beyond the product, by the way. YOU have to embody that something too.)

The auto industry is really good at creating badges of identity—and their raw materials are steel and rubber.

Why can’t we, working with wood and glass and stone and landscaping, do even better?

NB: A framed print of Hugh’s cartoon above hangs in my home office. You can get one here if you’re so inclined.

The New York Times Magazine has a fascinating article about Geoffrey West, a theoretical physicist who set out to study cities—specifically, whether there might be fundamental laws governing their patterns and growth.

“We spend all this time thinking about cities in terms of their local details, their restaurants and museums and weather,” West says. “I had this hunch that there was something more, that every city was also shaped by a set of hidden laws.”

As it turns out, apparently they are. The article elaborates:

“After two years of analysis, West and Bettencourt discovered that all of these urban variables could be described by a few exquisitely simple equations. For example, if they know the population of a metropolitan area in a given country, they can estimate, with approximately 85 percent accuracy, its average income and the dimensions of its sewer system. These are the laws, they say, that automatically emerge whenever people ‘agglomerate,’ cramming themselves into apartment buildings and subway cars. It doesn’t matter if the place is Manhattan or Manhattan, Kan.: the urban patterns remain the same.” (Emphasis added.)

Without giving away too much of the article, West’s findings reveal (in his interpretation, debated by others) a bit of an urban Gordian knot: The denser we are, the more innovative and productive we become. The more we innovate and produce, the more resources we consume, and the harder it becomes to sustain that growth. Unless, of course, we innovate our way to new resources.

Cities, West concludes, may be the only solution to the problem of cities.

(Click for full-size images)

I’m thinking the placement was intentional. A vicious cycle of customers.

Your move. Be sure to lift with your legs, not your back.

Dreams can be had for 99 cents. But the cheap, shitty trinkets that end up in landfills—those will set you back a dollar or more.

The Social Web, version 0.0.

The weather’s always nice, your marriage will be happier, your kids will never need braces, and your golf handicap will drop to single digits.

Even in sidewalk graffiti, there’s always an idealist. And always a cynic.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

NB: All photos posted through a Creative Commons license, with thanks to the creativity and generosity of the artists who freely shared them.

The New York Times Magazine features an article that’s perhaps serendipitous—in that it’s a perfect lead-in to next week’s Vine salon—or perhaps simply indicative of how prominent the food-as-community movement is becoming.

Christine Muhlke set out to write a column about farming and food artisans. Along the way, she discovered that it’s really a story about community.

In interview after interview, food producers and enthusiasts inevitably described their passion, their craft and their livelihood in relationship to the larger network around them. As one farmers’ market baker tells her, “People hand me money all day and tell me they love what we do, so it’s not really work at that point, it’s my social life.”

But this is not just the rarefied territory of university towns, foodie blogs and Michael Pollan book clubs. What’s most exciting and consequential, in my opinion, is the potential for farming and food to help repair and restore broken neighborhoods.

Muhlke writes:

The strongest example of a food community I’ve seen was in Detroit, where a vibrant farming scene has sprung up literally from the ashes. In a neighborhood that is a true food desert — there are no national chain grocery stores within city limits; more than 90 percent of food providers are places like convenience and liquor stores — I watched young men and old women socialize while picking collard greens in abandoned lots brought back to life by the Urban Farming organization. There was no fence, no supervision, no charge. Some of these people — neighbors — haven’t spoken to each other since the 1967 riots, the Urban Farming organizer Michael Travis told me as we watched.

“The new food movement is still labeled as Do It Yourself,” she observes, “but it’s really Do It Ourselves.”

NB: The Vine, in collaboration with Hart Howerton, will host a salon on innovative ways of integrating new development with existing agriculture (enhancing the value of both) on October 28th in Fairfield, CA. A limited number of seats are still available. Details are here.

Jessica Jackley, co-founder of Kiva, shares a beautiful, inspiring perspective on the power of tapping into a caring community. Kiva’s phenomenal success, she says, is not one of frictionless lending transactions ($150 million in microloans in $25 increments), but rather allowing people throughout the world to engage in one another’s stories. It’s a powerful and deeply personal talk, well worth 18 minutes of your time.

Much has been written of Las Vegas’s CityCenter, ranging from rapturous to scathing.

Reality lies somewhere in between, and I think Paul Goldberger may have nailed it best here.

For all of its modern architectural splendor and LEED credentials, from a planning standpoint CityCenter is no more urban—in the Holly Whyte walkable, accessible, inviting sense—than its kitschy neighbors up and down the Strip.

Or as Goldberger so eloquently puts it: “CityCenter is the Las Vegas you already know, but in modernist drag.”

Don’t get me wrong, the place is spectacular. It’s well worth visiting. I’m just not sure it’s worth emulating.

Photo credit: Trey Campbell

One of the defining characteristics of a community is that it establishes and enforces a set of social norms…as I recently experienced.

I was in San Francisco for a lunch meeting at Slanted Door, the über popular restaurant that anchors the Ferry Building, a marketplace for local farmers and artisan producers. When ordering food, we deferred to the connoisseur among us, a regular who seemed to know the menu by heart. When ordering drinks, we went solo, and I asked for a Diet Coke.

Oops. I might as well have ordered the baby seal appetizer.

After a pregnant pause, our waitress coolly informed me, “We don’t serve soda here.” And the italics are hers, not mine. She spat the word out, as though it left a vile taste in her mouth.

(In my defense, a guy at the next table had a plastic bottle of Diet Coke sitting out in plain view—smuggled-in contraband, I now realize. No matter. His heresy did nothing to mitigate my own.)

Awkward as that moment was, I love that they have a deeply held set of beliefs and values—and that they’re not shy about telling you when you’ve stepped on them. The waitress was saying, in effect, “Go get your fucking Diet Coke at McDonald’s. We stand for something here.”

I didn’t do an exhaustive search, but I’m guessing you can’t buy a Diet Coke anywhere in the Ferry Building. To do so would be an affront to their community of independently owned producers, suppliers and retailers, and to the like-minded customers who flock there.

I had the iced tea. It was exceptional.

Photo credit: mulmatsherm

Hugh McLeod writes:

Don’t you think we’re taking this whole Social Media thing a bit too seriously?

Put down that phone, and grab your kid, wife, boyfriend and remember why we’re here.

Exactly.

Right after I tweet this.