Design, Management.

a cry for help

My dear friends, will you help me out?

Please, START HERE.

It would be most helpful to repost, email, tweet, Facebook post this
survey for any fellow bloggers you may know.

This is for a most noble cause. It's called the "let's help Sarah graduate" cause.

Thank you so much for contributing and sharing, you are wonderful.

I can't wait to see what you have to say!

portfolio update

(It's actually legible over on my website.) So, scoot, scoot!!

 

worth noting

Some things from the week (the DMGT equivalent of a round-up, I suppose)

"Are We Being Creative Yet?" by Julie Kirby (Harvard Business Review) a look at neuroscience of imagination at work, and the idea of managing the classic "fuzzy front end" process with which we are all so familiar...
 
Forbes on the power of Twitter chats (which I participate in for Blog Brunch and really enjoy)
 
A peek into the design process of online media, accopanying the launch of new online travel magazine, Wayferer (she's a beauty!)
 
An old favorite: The Aesthetics of Management (downloadable PDF) by Marty Neumeier of Liquid Agency

A film I can't wait to see: Beauty is Embarrassing on the life and work of artist Wayne Wright

Emily Pilloton's TED talk on education design in the "rural ghetto" of Bertie County, North Carolina

 So many articles on Pinterest... NYT, Business Insider, Linked In, Fast Company.  

(photo here)

day in the life

My massive, two-quarter class ("Collaborative Online Innovation Networks") is wrapping up its 6-month (yup!) inter-institutional project as I type. With our final presentations behind us last week, my team with students from MIT, Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland, and SCAD is finishing up our resulting paper on social network analysis for international airline, Aeroméxico. It has been a really challenging project, but I'm pleased to wrap it up!

That said, the class has developed an impromptu project to occupy us until the end of quarter in March. SCAD recently launched an eLearning MA Design Management degree, which is intriguing to us as on-ground students. Every one of our projects is based in group work, so we're trying to understand how the program translates to remote learning.

Naturally, this starts with some experimentation, so classmates Jackie, Elisa and myself decided to record our day-to-day business photographically. Here is some of my not-so-glam Tuesday:

With both of my classes on Monday and Wednesday, my days off are often filled with errands, thesis and freelance work. (Not pictured: coffee, blogging and Good Morning America on the couch, laundry, a visit to the UPS store and grocery shopping. Boring.)

Around noon I sat down for lunch and some Tweet-ing. I've recently relocated from my desk to the dining room table for more surface area. Clay Shirkey requires some thinking space...

...of course I ended up on the floor anyway to finish some mapping on the big easel pad (going big helps sometimes, and is a great at-home alternative to the white boards we have at Gulfstream.) Per usual, you can see I work from my class notes and our group files in GoogleDocs.

Now, onto the fun stuff...

I dumped my school bag out to see what's what:

1. MAGAZINES: Us grad students love to share and bring current events into class discussions on a daily basis. Fast Company, Good Magazine and Harvard Business Review are favorites. 

2. PAPERWORK: Each SCAD class comes with a pretty strict syllabus. Though we don't always follow it day-to-day, every reading and landmark assignment gets done one way or another, trust me.

3. USB DRIVE: With an in-class or client presentation every week if not every day, we and our USB drives are attached at the hip.

4. SCAD ID CARD: Hideous. You wouldn't know that this school has a graphic design department of over 700 students by looking at this thing... Yick, but it is required to enter any building. 

5. MOLESKIN NOTEBOOKS: Some students take notes on their computers, but most rely on the good old-fashioned notebook (its hard drive never crashes. Plus, you can doodle.) Many of our discussions end up as visual maps, so freehand is the only way to capture a personal take on the subject at hand. Moleskin is the SCAD notebook of choice, by far.

6. THESIS BOOKS: Any second year MFA student can often be found clutching a pile of thesis books. Spare time is rare, but we manage to plow through the research somehow... I'm currently working through Permission Marketing (Seth Godin) and Here Comes Everybody (Clay Shirky.)

7. HEADPHONES: Work music: Spotify for the win.

8. WRITING UTENCILS: Extra-thick Sharpies for writing on butcher paper or easel pads, Staples Optiflow (my note-taking pen of choice), Le Pens for underlining in books, and Expo dry erase markers - a hot commodity in a building with walls made of white boards. 

9. POST-ITS: They are used compulsively for note-taking, "working walls" and critique feedback.

10. INDEX CARDS: When you have a lot of data and aren't sure how to organize it, put each thought on a card and go from there. 

Yup, welcome to my world away from pretty things. 
Now you know why I love Note to Self so much.

where in the world am I?

Reading. And also: lots and lots of reading.

What is with marketing books and their red covers? Men...

Hoping to finish the majority of my thesis literature review before winter quarter gets underway.

Wish me luck!

(top photo by Kate Spade)