The power of vulnerability – Brené Brown, academics, and me
I was reminded, while teaching a presentations course to social science PhDs today, of the vulnerability of academics as they conduct scientific inquiry. The whole nature of science is not knowing, but wanting to find out more. Complexity generates new and interesting questions. So vulnerability is a key ingredient in academic presentation. We looked at […]
Michael Pawlyn: Using nature’s genius in architecture
I’ll be teaching city planners, and so have decided to use this wonderful presentation (TED Salon 2010) by the designer of the Eden Project bubble dome, the biomimicry specialist Michael Pawlyn. The presentation is deeply architectural in nature. I’ll be asking: Watch the first minutes (0:17-1:50) and answer: What examples does he begin with? What […]
Branding: Smells, tastes, feels like home
New exciting challenge. Learning about branding for a company I’ll be teaching at. So here’s my first exploration. Bill said: “Branding is about managing how people instinctively react to your ideas and identity.” Interesting. He’s sent me an ad for an insurance company that the company has branded, made by a separate agency. So one […]
Keep calm and carry on
Keep Calm and Carry On was a motivational poster produced by the British government in 1939, intended to raise the morale of the British public in the event of a German invasion. It was never used, even during the air raids, but kept for the worst case. What could be more British! The poster was […]
Interview with an old potato
A few years ago when I was teaching English students at the LMU Munich, my students told me how in a creative writing class, Gill Woodman, head of Sprachpraxis there, had given them a bag of potatoes and told them to select one and imagine its personality, and then write its biography. Such a great […]
Little Big Berlin
What is it about this film that is so enchanting? Big, bad, smelly Berlin. Charming, diverse, unmistakable Berlin. All in matchbox format.
Jonathan Winters
November 11, 1925 – April 11, 2013, American comedian, actor, author and artist. In this slightly surrealistic training video from the 60s, Jonathan Winters demonstrates the 5 resistances in sales to the industrial buyer: ignorance, indifference, inertia, fear (or: indecision), procrastination He also stars in this sales training video for Mobil Golden Circle – 1966
