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Great Graphic Ideas: crowdSPRING

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Looking for a Little Creativity or Maybe a LOT?

If you know an outstanding design site, email me a link and tell me why you think it’s important to share. Then I can pass it along.

This week at the Feast for Smart Marketers I met Pete Burgeson of crowdSPRING. We had quite the conversation about this Chicago-based business that calls itself a “marketplace for creative services.”

Great Find: crowdSPRING
Permalink: http://www.crowdspring.com/
Target Audience: Design clients, creatives

Content: When Pete I started talking I asked how crowdSpring worked. He described the basic model as they do on the website.

I questioned a model based on work done on spec, but after a closer look I’m quite taken by what’s happening at crowdSPRING. Their model is intelligent and built to grow with their community.

  • crowdSPRING serves the new guys. Small businesses just launching need a professional presence that won’t cost them out of the market. Talented creatives starting out need to build visibility and a portfolio of clients.
  • It also serves who’ve been “around the block.” I’m fully confident that buyers looking for serious design work can find it here because there seems to be no requirement to participate in the “projects.”

    • I was able to browse projects, portfolios, profiles, and forums. Personal messages and forum conversations make it easy to connect with creative suppliers.

  • Creatives can upload portfolios next to their profiles. Profiles include a record of performance on projects completed through the site.
  • It’s community for learning and thinking, as well as a marketplace. The forums are filled with insightful discussion of design and of the projects on the site.

crowdSPRING is using social media in the best way . . . by making it easy for people to connect around ideas that they care about.

Go on, have a look. See how easy it looks when it’s done well.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

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What Determines a Creative Life? What Determines Success?

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Determination

“Square peg in a round hole.” That’s what people used to call it.

Even as a kid I knew it was a silly waste of time to put a square peg in a round hole. That was just plain common sense To make the peg fit, it wouldn’t be a square peg anymore. It would hurt the peg, and the hole wouldn’t like it.

What makes some people grow up to live highly creative lives? Is it in their genes — “the way the tree was bent”? Is a creative life determined by their experience?

Yet, what is astonishing is the great variety of paths that led to eminence. Csikszentmihalyi

Though the 91 creative people in the study that became the book, Creativity, had unique characteristics and traits that made them stand out. The life paths that led to their creative contribution were not particularly different from what you might find any group of 91 citizens.

  • Some were precocious. Some were prodigies. Some didn’t seem to stand out as children.
  • Some had serious hardship growing up. Some suffered the death of parents. Others had happy childhoods without incident.
  • Some were ignored. Some had guides and teachers who helped their development. Some had devastating experiences with mentors.
  • Some seemed to always know their calling. Some searched for years to find their path.
  • Some were noticed early. Some struggled for years to gain recognition.

Those same circumstances describe the people I call my friends, none of whom yet have changed the world through Creativity with a capital C.

 

It seems that the men and women we studied were not shaped once and for all, either by their genes or by the events of early life. . . . Instead of being shaped by events, they shaped events to suit their purposes. . . .

According to this view, a creative life is still determined, but what determines it is a will moving across time — the fierce determination to succeed, to make sense of the world, to use whatever means to unravel some of the mysteries of the universe. Csikszentmihalyi

 

Fierce determination to succeed.

Success doesn’t happen without giving ourselves over fully to what we’re pursuing. It’s not the barriers that stop us, it’s the way we respond to them.

If we’re determined, we maneuver over, under, around, or through them. It doesn’t matter how difficult the problem we stick with it until we innovate, create, or cobble together a solution that solves it.

ladder_over_wall_from_sxchu

Determination removes options other than success: We refuse to define our outcomes as:

  • the fault of our parents.
  • an imperfection in our environment.
  • the result of bad timing.
  • bad luck or bad karma.
  • something outside of us.

As determination to succeed is key to world-changing creativity, it seems to follow that determination and creativity are key to success.

How have determination and creativity contributed in your past success? What are you determined to accomplish now?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

If You’re Going to Expect Things . . .

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Shining Star by NASA

My dad used to say said, “If you’re going to expect things, expect most things from yourself first. If you’re going to be a star, shine the brightest. If you’re going to be a teacher, own the school.”

When I was young I’d try to correct him, pointing out that teachers don’t usually own the school. He’d have none of my argument. He’d just repeat the entire thing again.

“If you’re going to expect things, expect most things from yourself first. If you’re going to be a star, shine the brightest. If you’re going to be a teacher, own the school.”

It’s taken me most of my life to get close to understanding what he meant or at least I’ve found my own meaning, which seems to be what he was after.

I have few expectations. What I have are much wrapped up in the words, “be nice.”

I don’t expect the world to change just to suit me. It hasn’t done so up to now. I don’t suppose it will.

Expectations frame the future with an illusion of control. No wonder his advice was to expect most things from me.

I’m still thinking on this one. I expect I will be for a while longer.

What did you expect this would be?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

image: NASA photo

What Will We Be When the Social Media Market Grows Up?

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Attention Is Not a New Idea

Creativity at Work

Thanks to everyone who participated in yesterday’s discussion of Creativity with a Capital C as described by the criteria set out by Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who also wrote Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. As I enjoy rereading this favorite in this new time, I hope you’ll stay with me.

Unlike instinct, learning must be acquired by every new person again and again. As a culture gains more information, individuals must pay more attention or focus in on narrower domains of study. As a culture gets more complex subdomains become too huge for one person to assimilate.The more mature the culture, the more it favors specialized knowledge.

Csikszentmihalyi points out that

Nobody knows who last Renaissance man really was, but sometime after Leonardo da Vinci it became impossible to learn enough about all of the arts and sciences to be an expert in more than a small fraction of them. Domains have split into subdomains, and a mathematician who has mastered algebra may not know much about number theory, combinatorix, topology — and vice versa. . . . now all of these special skills tend to be acquired by different people.

Therefore it follows that as culture evolves, specialized knowledge will be favored over generalized knowledge.

Consider three people — a community builder, an event planner, and a social media manager. The first two need to focus their attention on studying one thing. Their jobs are defined and somewhat narrow. The social media manager must study both of those areas plus many others.

We need to master a domain before we can innovate or create new ideas. As domains add more information, experts are forced deeper into narrower bits.

Mature markets form niches — it’s the natural evolution. Limited attention limits our options. To know anything well we must focus on less.

At the moment, the social media market is young and not well understood. Relatively little information is available. As more information is added to the common pool, it becomes less possible for one person to be fluent in all of it.

Do you see social media domain splitting? Are social networking sites becoming more specialized? What we will be when the social media market grows up?

I wonder.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Can Social Media Produce World-Changing Creativity?

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Creativity with a Capital C

Creativity at Work

Every two or three years, I return to the book, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the author of the book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Creativity is based on a rigorous study of 91 internationally recognized creative people as part of his “effort to make more understandable the mysterious process by which men and women come up with new ideas and new things.” He called it Creativity with a capital C, because their contributions had world changing impact.

The study included writers, astronomers, Nobel Prize winners, actors, Historians, paleontologists, scultors, painters, architects, scientists, biologists, musicians, photographers, economists, philosophers, inventors, composers, physicians, chemists, psychologists, politicians.

According to Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, three things must come together for culture changing Creativity to occur.

  1. a domain that contains symbolic rules
  2. people who bring novelty into that domain
  3. a field of experts who recognize and validate the innovation

All three are necessary for a creative idea, product, or discovery to take place.

Can the Social Media Produce World-Changing Creativity?

Every morning, we wake up to the challenge of being creative in our lives. As Lateral Action points out this morning, Creativity is Economic Priority Number One. Some cynically don’t see value in thinking beyond the fundamentals, but that doesn’t change the challenge continues to grow. The present shift moving programmable and scripted jobs offshore requires a high concept, creative and human response.

I see us with the toys of social media communication. Some days, I wonder how many of us are caught up in the playing. What’s the value Plurking on Plurk about Plurking? How much of that is really necessary to understanding the humans think? What problems does it help us solve?

Conversation without a clear purpose is still conversation that doesn’t go anywhere. Collecting friends isn’t a noble goal in itself.

How are we to put these virtual applications toward getting the world to work?

  1. Is social media a domain that contains symbolic rules?
  2. Are there people who bring to it novel ideas?
  3. Has it established a field of experts who can recognize and validate an innovation?

Can social media produce world-changing Creativity with a Capital C?

I wonder.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Series: The Enneagram – a Brief Introduction

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Enneagram Series by Mark McGuinness

I’m pleased to announce that over the next two weeks, we’ll be featuring a series — a sneak peek at an upcoming eBook!! — on the Enneagram. The series is written by Mark McGuinness of Wishful Thinking, a specialist coaching and training service for creative businesses such as design studios, ad agencies, film and TV production companies, computer games developers, architect’s practices and fashion designers. Mark studied the Enneagram as part of his training as a psychotherapist. He has used it for his own personal development and in his work with individuals, families, and organizations.

The series appear over the next two weeks. The six articles will be posted in the evenings between 5-6pm CDT on the following schedule.

Monday, June 25: What is the Enneagram and Why Should You Care?

Wednesday, June 27: The Heart Types

Thursday, June 28: The Head Types

Monday, July 2: The Body Types

Wednesday, July 4: Using the Enneagram – Working on Yourself

Thursday, July 5: Using the Enneagram – Working with Others

The Enneagram Names

basic-enneagram-names

This illustration and the others in the series produced by Sandy Renshaw.

Besure to drop by this week and next to check it out. It’s been weeks in the making and worth every minute. Thank you, Mark!

–ME “Liz” Strauss