Logic and Compassion, Facts and Nurturing, Fun and Exploring - check here

We continue the sometimes joyful and sometimes painful path to try to be better human beings - this is only possible because we can rise above logic, that we find the wonder and hope, the language and words to inspire us and keep us going. Thanks for visiting.

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Customer Connections, Eclectic Selections: Rembrandt vs Vermeer - insights for CRM and the dy...

I noticed that my 3rd post was a popular read, so am highlighting it now, 6 years later! I hope it merits your consideration for reading. Pin hole perspectives have their use, but they are not the whole picture.

Art history holds some lessons for us: Artist David Hockney in "Secret Knowledge" his 2001 book credibly claims that many of the most acclaimed European artists (Vermeer Caravaggio, van Eyck) used optical projection to increase the precision of their drawing. What it gave them was a way to very accurately draw what they saw from a pinhole (because that's what the optical aids provided). These pictures provided an "optical" look at the world - a very famous Vermeer painting "The Little Street" is an acclaimed example

Here, Hockney describes this painting as a window - we are outside observers with a one point perspective.

Rembrandt shook that world - and some say the difference might be due to the influence of Chinese porcelain painting imports and exports in his hometown. Chinese paintings and scrolls are drawn from a perspective that is dynamic and changing - the world as you would see it, walking along, shifting all the time. The view from the bottom of the hill is different from the view from the top of the hill. Unless you are in a helicopter, you would never see the whole thing from one point - but from the moving series of points.

Rembrandt took the perspective of the individual one further, not just physically dynamic, but emotionally dynamic . Take a look at his sketch: Child being Taught to Walk (c) Trustees of the British Musuem
(See http://people.csail.mit.edu/fredo/PUBLI/WillatsDurandAxiomathes.pdf for a picture of this amazing drawing). You can feel the anxious love of the toddler's sister, and the steady confidence of the mother, the pride and excitement of the father squating down ready to receive the tottering child.

Perspective in art is different in time and culture.


To read the rest of the article, click below.



Customer Connections, Eclectic Selections: Rembrandt vs Vermeer - insights for CRM and the dy...: "This post was inspired by reading Lawrence Weschler's article 'Vanishing Point' in the June 2005 issue of Harper's Magazine. Art history h..."

MIT OpenCourseWare: I'm invested

Health Care Organizational Ethics: Improving Health By Telling, and Hearing, Stories

Jim Sabin teaches at the Harvard Medical School and is a voice of reason that I appreciate.

His blog post resonates with the poem I wrote as a "cover+mashup" of Edna St Vincent Millay's poem

Upon this gifted age in its dark hour falls from the sky a meteoric shower of fact.....
There exists no loom to weave it into fabric

Mei Lin's riff quoted in this blog before but with the Stories highlighted

Upon our gifted age in our dark hour
Falls from the sky a meteoric shower of STORIES
of beauty and compassion that go unremarked and unrecognized
Wisdom enough to nurture lives and grow joy is daily spun
So let us conceive the loom to weave this wisdom into the fabric of our daily lives


Health Care Organizational Ethics: Improving Health By Telling, and Hearing, Stories: "The January issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine has a fascinating and important report of a randomized controlled trial of storytellin..."

MIT OpenCourseWare: I'm invested

Dan Pink's Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us

I was moved to post the RSA Animation of Dan Pink's Drive - which I have recommended countless times face to face but neglected to mention on the blog so now its here!

Why was I moved? I read the CIO article on Horrible Bosses and made the following comment today:


Great story, I wanted to respond to your clarion call:"I only wish I understood why even good employers sit idly while bad managers, festering inside organizations, shove their best and brightest out the door." Performance evaluation is more of an art than a science. In our rush to be objective, we neglect the fact that operating organizations are composed not just of processes and finance, but also intensely subjective humans. I look forward to the day when measures of emotional intelligence and social intelligence emerge in practical ways that allow joy to flourish in the environments we create for ourselves. After all, the joy of innovation and creativity is an unstoppable engine of future growth for organizations and economies.

When will we realize the folly of rewarding leaders on achieving self-fulfilling MBO's (management by objectives) while hoping for innovative and joyful workplaces?



May a new generation of leaders emerge to take this thought and run with it - you will have my whole hearted support!




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Monday, July 25, 2011

It's Time to Find Your Voice

What a great experience being on the steering committee for the Triple Helix Conference at Stanford. It was great to have a chance to reflect and write about the highlights of the conference at http://www.institute-of-event-management.com/time-find-your-voice


The two panels that I felt it most important to include in the conference were:

A. Knowledge Federation lead by Dino Karabeg, Professor of Computer Science from Oslo Norway (the terrible news of the slaughter of innocents has shocked us all around the world and our hearts go out to the families and friends). Rob Stephenson (the Harvey Project), Jack Park (XML Topic Maps Editor) and John Wilbanks of Creative Commons gave fascinating talks about different approaches to interlinking knowledge for the benefit of humanity.

B. Health as a Team Sport, lead by Dr. Ahmed Calvo, Senior Medical Officer of the 8000 federally funded HRSA clinics within the Department of Health and Human Services in the USA. John Hiles who drove the application of the simulation game: SIM city for the use of technical training in Oil refineries and health policy simulation. Dr. Michael Dinneen who is the Director of Strategy Management for the US Military Health System, and Luke Hohmann, CEO of Innovation Games


I was thrilled to get such high caliber dialog and discussion in both panels. The article that is linked to talks about the Trilicious Game that Luke Hohmann invented for teams to come up with creative solutions to triple helix challenges. What fun it was to play! What great new ideas emerged, it was wonderful to watch a full conference scale collaboration with teams at each table sharing insights from their different countries, combining ideas and coming up with innovations that were novel and significant.









MIT OpenCourseWare: I'm invested