Yep. I’m in the deep end.

My work/life balance is ramping up, gaining speed and careening out of control towards Crazy Town. I am now officially behind in my reading and posting for all 4 classes this term. On top of that, I am transitioning out of my long-standing job into something entirely new. In the span of about ten days I made a connection with, interviewed and was offered a position at Roundhouse, a creative agency in Southeast Portland. One day later I gave notice. A day after that, I started training in my new role. Currently, I’m juggling two jobs and my MBA program. The randomness of thoughts and priorities running around my brain is akin to a neighborhood yard sale during a weekend in July — I have a little bit of everything going on up there.

It’s been an interesting time for sure. One of my courses this term at BGI is on organizational systems and I find it equally frustrating and fascinating. The irritation comes from the feeling that the class itself could use a healthy dose of organization but my interest is held by my own personal reflection concerning the state of flux within each group that I have an interest in — the Fresh Pot, Roundhouse and BGI. With the FP, I am leaving the fold but not quite all of my responsibilities. I will continue to help out however I can but as far as administrative/managerial duties — I’m pretty much done. With that, I would have expected my authority to dissipate as soon as I gave notice and informed the staff but so far, that hasn’t been the case. It’s strange and also very liberating at the same time.

At Roundhouse, the agency has grown so very fast that the number of staff has almost doubled in six months. To an outsider, it feels like a very flat and fluid setup. A part of me wonders if some of that structure is determined by the limitations of time since establishing a hierarchical structure takes serious energy and resources. BGI is of course, BGI. By that, I mean that above everything else, it’s an experiment. There’s a good mix of both hierarchy and flat systems going in the school. I know that at any time there’s at least five different people I can get a hold of to get clarity on an assignment, school policy, etc. The big question is whether or not all of those folks have the same map and are moving in the same general direction.

Of all the org systems that I’m a member of, the apple of my eye has to be my entrepreneurial team. Jackie, Eliza and Carrie are constantly in communication and motivated towards a common goal. I feel slightly (actually incredibly) guilty that they’ve had to deal with me during days when I am not at my best. A good chunk of that is the consequence of working two jobs and taking on grad school (see above). At least in the next week or two, one of those factors will change.

Here’s to the future.

It’s been a whirlwind couple of weeks. The break between terms sure didn’t feel like one. This was partly due to the general insanity of the holiday season combined with agreeing to do a short internship with BGI, and accelerating the opening of the third cafe for my employer, the Fresh Pot.

Technically, the pre-reading period was started during the break, which meant that for me, school never really ended. I had a nice collection of non-MBA related books that I was planning on cracking open prior to reading about organization theory. No such luck.

This term I’m studying the aforementioned organizational systems, operations, LPD (leadership & personal development) and the first stage of entre/intrapreneurship. My team from the beginning of the year has kept it together and we have moved our project successfully from the marketing phase into the entrepreneurship track. However, we still have a very long way to go and our new entre/intra faculty let the class know that we should get used to hearing the word “no”. At first, this made me a little nervous. But they’ve done a good job of letting everyone know that this is the best place to try and fail. One instructor referred to this as putting folks through anguish in an effort to get to a better idea.

Even though our idea hasn’t run into a “no” yet, the possibility combined with a few key points has given my team the necessary motivation to reconsider our project. It feels like we’re still turning it over in the oven, maybe taking some time to baste it and eventually, we’ll have something delicious.

Energy-wise, I wasn’t sure that it would be possible to rachet up school any further. Apparently, I guessed wrong. I now have a clear understanding as to why all of the second years were huddled in corners, constantly working on laptops and generally being unavailable during intensives last year. We have indeed taken it up a notch. Only 5 more months to go…

Is the MFA the new MBA?

Daniel Pink claims that the MFA is the new MBA. I’m coming to the end of the term and a major component of the past few months has been the work I’ve done in Creativity and Right Livelihood. The class has been an exercise in brainstorming, creative sessions, rapid prototyping, presenting, reflection and revision — exactly the type of skills that are being called for in the new economy.

Swallowing the whole MFA is the new MBA concept can be a touch difficult though. Especially when I know folks with MBAs working the same type of service industry job that I currently have. Taking that into account, the energy surrounding this feels less like hype and more like hullabaloo. Can we expect to see a MFA grad holding down the CEO position of a Fortune 100 company? I don’t the answer but according to this list — there’s a bunch of CEOs that are slacking off in the realm of social media. Now it could be that they’re coming from an older perspective of viewing that type of work as coming out of the marketing & communications department. But at the same time, it feels like there’s an opportunity that’s being missed. That’s not to say that someone with an art degree is going to automatically be better at navigating the waters of online communications. However, in my heart I believe that someone coming out of a creative realm is going to be a little more open in terms of adopting new technology. Of course, this also sounds like a ginormous generalization and I apologize if I’ve ruffled the feathers of any business school buddies that are already straddling the line between creativity and pin-stripe suits.

Personally, I’m coming out of this intensive completely frazzled and slightly overwhelmed. As the quarter winds down I realize that I’m trying to find my own way out in the business world — to have a vision of my future self after graduation in June. My classmates have been totally helpful and I’m totally grateful for their support. Can I reconcile my inner Lloyd Dobler with my inner Naomi Klein and the tiny Don Draper in my head?

We will see.

Well, maybe not that extreme — and I have to say I actually prefer the Alex Cox/Gary Oldman reenactment of this since Sid and Nancy walk off and up the new wave stairs together (which always kind of reminded me of this Siouxsie album cover) — but I did just realize that some portions of my marketing team pitch have been a little self-serving. Basically, as a team we realized that we’ve been so busy compiling data, doing research and composing PowerPoints and Prezis that we haven’t actually had time to sit down and really hammer out the details on our vision.

This became pretty evident as we sat down over Skype to figure out the text for our big end of the term marketing presentation this weekend. As we read aloud each section I began to squirm in my chair a little as I had an epiphany that the store design was pretty much my thing without any real input from my teammates. In four days, I’ll have to explain why we think this will work and what our thinking is behind the design. Looks like we have some conversations ahead…

As far as this weekend goes, I can’t believe how quickly the time between intensives has passed. It feels like I was just making that trip up I-5 a couple of days ago. For sure, it will be great to see everyone again and as an additional incentive my classmate Gene and I are scheduled to djay the customary Saturday night party on campus. Finally, I will take my revenge on every horrible wedding DJ I’ve been subjected to over the years.

I’m wishing myself luck.

So the first term of the second year is in full tilt right now. It’s amazing to consider that I’m nearly 1/3 of the way through the second year but yet there’s still so much to do before winter break. The image above is a quick and dirty design for my marketing team project using Google SketchUp. This was my first attempt at making something using that program but I found it to be pretty intuitive. A bonus is that people from around the world have taken the trouble to design everything from shipping containers, bikes, trees and people and then uploaded them for everyone to use. Thanks interweb!

Basically, we’re looking to get good food into underserved neighborhoods and we’re going to do it by building tiny yet awesome grocery stores out of shipping containers. Sweet.

So my marketing team is headed into the next intensive with a pretty good handle on our concept but we still need to write our marketing plan and compose, edit and practice our final pitch for the term. We did pretty well at the last intensive with our initial pitch and so the bar has kind of been raised for the next one. One thought we had is to abandon PowerPoint and to try something different — like maybe showing a physical representation of a 40′ by 8′ shipping container. Another though is to try using Prezi. I still have some serious nerves about doing the pitch but I’m getting better. It helps to think that everyone else is totally winging it, too. A BGI alum gave me a piece of advice the other day about doing presentations — she recorded her section as an MP3 and just kept listening to it over and over until it was second nature. Another recent grad told me that he likes to visualize the important bits of his speech as stones in a waterway and that he knows that if he can just hit those points that the rest will follow. Interesting.

With my social media class it’s come down to the final project of the term — an attempt at social change for the better. My team came together kind of quickly and randomly. It’s comprised with folks that I haven’t worked with before and the project is kind of outside of my comfort zone but I believe in it nonetheless. We’re working on a website/social network/blog that provides a safe space for folks to discuss elements of sexuality. We’re calling it My Safeword and so far we have an idea, a couple of private blog posts and an invite only social network from Ning. We still have a long way to go but I’m amazed at how much we have accomplished so far when the idea itself was really just rough strokes. Look for an updated post on it in a week or two…

Guess that’s about it for now. Of course we have to go out with a song so how’s about some found footage for one of my favorite Fruit Bats tunes?

Thanks!

So this week it seems that everyone in my cohort is running ’round trying to finish their required creative sessions for our creativity course at BGI. This is kind of a double-edged sword for me since I really do relish the ability to sit around and spitball ideas but leading a group of peers and strangers is not really my idea of a good time.

I guess I should backtrack and explain what exactly a creative session is…

The shorthand version is that it’s a more organized form of brainstorming, that is, there’s a form and technique to it instead of just tossing out ideas popcorn-style. A well-run creative session is kind of a no-judgment idea incubator in which all suggestions are treated as valid. In fact, sometimes it’s the wild, not based in reality proposals that lead to the real winners.

One of the BGI faculty related a story in which he ran a creative session for a utility company that was having issues with snow and downed power lines. It seems that whenever heavy rain or snow hit, the lines would freeze and the accumulated weight of the snow and ice would bring the lines down, causing power outages in the area. The utility decided to bring in the entire company for a creative session. One of the small groups had fun with it and proposed having bears climb the poles to shake the lines and rid them of snow and water. To facilitate the bears wanting to climb an electrical pole, the group imagined placing pots of honey at the top. When they considered how to place honey pots on top of utility poles the group suggested flying them up with helicopters. At some point a woman in the group recalled her time as being a nurse in Vietnam. She remembered the massive downdraft that military helicopters created as they approached a landing. Suddenly the group had a legitimate answer. The utility would just fly helicopters up and down the lines after a major storm to blow away the water and snow. That solution came out of a willingness to be silly and suspend reality.

So far, I’ve taken part in four creative sessions. They’ve all been inspiring and fun and it’s a joy to see my classmates do so well at something that we have really only just learned about. During my third session, my classmate Laura was trying to discover ways to engage the community with our Change Agent in Residence program (CAIR) at BGI. One of our questions centered on the availability of time for enrolled students to read and learn about incoming CAIRs before showing up to school intensives each month at Islandwood (our shared campus). I admitted that I often do not have the time to adequately prepare for each CAIR and that I usually walk into the Great Hall on Thursday evening with very little knowledge of who is presenting and what their topic might be. I’m simply too busy doing school-work, work-work and basically just living, right up until the minute I hop in a car and head up north.

As we discussed the problem I found myself saying the words immersive versus ambient media out loud. My frame of reference for ambient goes back to Brian Eno, Gavin Bryars and well, Japancakes (see the YouTube video), but in this instance it refers to any kind of media that the listener has the ability to tune in and out of. My social media class at BGI devoted some time to this topic this week and apparently, the material stuck with me. By the end of the session we were talking about creating MP3 introductions of each CAIR that students could listen to in the background while working on marketing, accounting, etc for our coursework. It felt great to sit in a conference room with a bunch of other adults, tossing around ideas and using terminology that was totally foreign to me just two weeks ago.

Wow, I guess this is what happens in grad school.

Thanks.

Kairos is a term from ancient Greek meaning “the opportune moment of decision”. For my class in social media at my business school in the woods, we have been discussing the ways to motivate and trigger changes in behavior. This seems especially important in this class and in my marketing course as we are constantly being reminded to refine, edit and rework the elevator pitch for our entrepreneurship projects.

The video above has nothing to do with this concept other than an album title with the name “Kairos”, but it relaxes me just the same.

Figuring out what is the opportune time is usually something I’m pretty good at. My time behind the counter and in class has given me plenty of time to observe, consider and reflect on behavioral patterns. However, it’s more than just picking your spot but also being ready and willing to commit (and possibly make a fool of myself) that gives me pause.

Time will tell if I can adapt to this hang-up and for sure, time is the one thing that’s in short supply right now.

Thanks.

I love this.

A quick caveat though, anyone that knows me or has witnessed me standing behind the counter in the same battered pair of Diesel jeans, coffee-stained Vans, t-shirt and hoodie should automatically take a discount on my knowledge of the comings and goings in the fashion biz. However, I do love the idea behind this TEDx talk from Johanna Blakely…

For me, one of the key takeaways is this slide right here:

What exactly does that show? Well it shows the gross sales of industries with strict intellectual property protection compared to those with little or no IP safeguards. Blakely’s talk highlights the benefits of this approach to copyright. Basically, that foregoing copyright protection results in “the virtues of copying”. The three big consequences being: 1. an increase in the democratization of fashion leading to more options for all consumers, 2. a faster establishment of trends, and 3. the acceleration of creative innovation.

Why is this even on my radar? Well last week I was trying to catch up on my NPR Planet Money time. School has kind of hammered down my podcast listening availability into nothing, but over the weekend I was determined to get back in the game. The Planet Money team is working on a long-term project to design, source, manufacture and sell their own t-shirt. Their latest post/podcast relating to the project was an examination of the difficulties in creating a worthwhile product in the clothing sector. I was amazed to hear that the fashion industry has been, for the most part, hands off in terms of soliciting copyright protection for individual designs. Granted some of this view is based on court findings that assign the label of “utilitarian” to articles of clothing — meaning that no one company may hold the patent on the notion of a shoe, shirt or jacket. This approach has led to an open acceptance of shared influence. I’m not sure if it can truly be called collaboration but the slipperiness of an idea feels something like an ongoing, global creative session.

Now contrast that with the poor state of the music industry. The bigwigs at Sony, Warner, RIAA are all riled up trying to figure out where the revenue stream went. There was a recent article from the New York Times about the music police (no, not the Dream Police) from BMI. The article speaks to the difficulties in collecting royalties from commercial users of music. Basically, it’s okay to go to your local record store, buy an album, go home and through it on the turntable (yes, I know I’m being archaic). But if you do the same thing and bring the record with you to listen at work while you, I don’t know, give someone a haircut — then you’re breaking copyright law.

It’s strange how this seems to run smack into the idea of personal property. If I buy a house then it’s my prerogative to paint every room  lime-green, festoon the front yard with pink flamingos and install a doorbell that plays The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald — right? However, ASCAP and BMI seem to be saying that the LP/CD/Digital Download that I bought really isn’t mine — at least in terms of what I can and cannot do with it. Somehow this just feels, I don’t know, un-American.

Here’s an interesting bit from that New York Times article:

It is worth noting that during the years the recording industry lost nearly 60 percent of its income, BMI and its competitor ASCAP had steady increases in profits. BMI has done so by going after how people use music commercially, regardless of medium. As the president and chief executive of BMI, Del Bryant, likes to say, “You have to be in the future a little bit.”

That bit of info is totally surprising to me since it would seem that BMI and ASCAP are trying and succeeding in monetizing a product that is quickly moving closer and closer to the axiom of  “information wants to be free”.

But is there an unknown social cost that isn’t being taken into account here? I’m all for performers/composers getting paid but shouldn’t we also consider the needs of the listener, as well? If the publishing rights organizations continue to squeeze small business then will we eventually begin walking into cafes, grocery stores and boutiques that are completely silent? Another consequence is the increase of canned music in commercial settings. This seems to be the greatest travesty since it not only ensures that PROs don’t get a cut but also promotes a kind of overall mediocrity.  It’s a long-shot, for sure, but maybe we should be looking for a different business model on this.

Recently Rob Dickins, former Chariman of Warner Music UK, suggested that the music industry should move towards a significant lowering of prices for its product. $1 for an album’s worth of music may seem absurdly low but the decreased cost could remove the powerful incentive to simply not pay at all. We all know that the cost of making 10 digital copies of a record is the same as making 10,000 so why not try this with niche markets at first?

I don’t know the way forward but I’m interested in watching the process. Thanks.

Well, Bobbie certainly had a few choice words about the media’s role in promoting/subverting change at the time. This week I have found that I’ve become totally obsessed about the convergence of media and design in my daily life. I’m all twisted up now with a brain full of marketing theories banging up against my inner Naomi Klein. Except that there’s a corner in my mind where an itty-bitty Don Draper lives, too. So what can I do to reconcile the two of ‘em?

In addition to the already large and growing pile of deliverables for school, I am now adding one more thing to the list — collaborating on a marketing manifesto. What does that mean? Well, it means it’s going to be a kind of “gut check” document that can be referenced as I progress in my career. It’s still in the soft, forming, kicking it around phase but I feel like I have a lot of energy to put into it (although, I’m not sure about the time).

My days and nights are getting longer and I find myself rushing home from work only to spend hours at the computer reading, reflecting, researching and writing while really just hoping to have some time to go for a run with headphones blasting.

On a somewhat related note, I just stumbled across this blog entry via Google Reader about the Five Beliefs That Inhibit Good Design via the Harvard Business Review. Food for thought.

Last but not least, this week was the start of the NBA season. A time which I am normally super stoked for, but I’m realizing once again that school time constraints will ensure that I spend more time reading about the league than actually watching it. Oh well. By the way, here’s an example of one of the more meta hoops commercials to come down the pike in a while. Courtesy of the local advertising humdingers Wieden+Kennedy.

Wow.

This post isn’t really about kickboxing. More than anything, this week I have tapped into my inner Lloyd Dobler during my hours at the desk and running around for school and work. I’m only a few weeks into it but already the pace is starting to overwhelm me a bit. The interesting thing is that most of my schoolwork has been very subjective and not numbers driven and usually — this is where I thrive. I spent most of my undergrad sitting around, reading, reflecting and writing but so far this term, it’s kind of kicking my ass.

So this week I have tried to spin a bunch of plates at the same time. I have market research questions to well, research. A ton of reading to do in all four courses and the beginning stages of a presentation plus a case study on a fictional West Virginia brewery. On top of that, a few of my classmates and I are trying to figure out ways to promote the school as well as create some fund-raising opportunities for working groups and scholarships. One easy way to do this is to make some schwag. I’m all about this. I love working on small projects with a creative bent. However, we soon ran into the sworn enemy of creativity — bureaucracy. And this is where Lloyd comes in…

I have a class this term that has a two-pronged attack on uninspired work. It’s called Creativity and Right Livelihood. The course is very inward focused but collaborative at the same time. One of the main tenets is that every idea is a contribution. The wallflower in me agrees with that statement wholeheartedly. My internal snob would argue that some ideas are definitely better than others. The static between the two voices came to a head when I had a flash of inspiration and realized that doing this kind of work, for this kind of institution was exactly the type of thing that gets me really jazzed. Lloyd Dobler didn’t know about BGI — mainly because he’s a fictional character and the school didn’t even exist during the time-frame of the movie — but still, I think he would have appreciated knowing that somewhere out there a group of people were hanging out in the woods discussing how to make business a less depressing option for all of us.

I’ve already started to move past my frustration with the project. Writing it down has helped for sure and I also know that in the grand scheme of things that this was a really, really small issue.

A few things that I have learned from this are:

• That collaborative design is possible (although I’m still not really convinced about doing it via email).
• That my desire to edit, re-edit and edit some more has its drawbacks as well as some hidden benefits, too.
• Sometimes putting your head down and moving on is also a really good thing.

Thanks.