Creative Study Circle 

First pre-meeting   

(You will need that G2 Real Player to view the video. (disabled)
	In attendance at the Creative Study Circle.  Edwin Rutsch and Joan Kuenz The question at the meeting  was how to start  up a Creative Study Circle? We want to create a plan for setting up a weekly Creative Study Circle that will meet at our house on Sundays..

We reviewed study group material on the Internet.

• 1. Study Circles Resource Center  - The Center promotes and facilitates the organization of Study Circles. They have a great deal of very useful information about how to organize a Study Circle.
• 2. Simplicity Circles  a sample of a site that helps coordinate groups that meet on the theme of simplicity.
• 3. Knowledge Circles - they meet in San Francisco.. We want to check out what they do. It's a bit vague from their web page. 

Viewed a video of IDEO

Viewed a video made by Nightline where they showed the design process  of IDEO.  IDEO is a top design company in Palo Alto and they have a very creative process for creating new products.  The process is something that we could use for our Study Circles.

• Edwin's Notes on the IDEO process.  (I need to clean this up)
  • The task the team at IDEO was given was to redesign the shopping cart.
  • They split into groups 
  • Groups went out and studied aspects of the shopping cart,
  • They came back and shared their findings
  • They did the "Deep Dive" which seems to consist of:
    • Stay on the topic
    • Stay focused,
    • One conversation
    • No criticism of ideas
    • No judgment of ideas
  • The design process went through different stages
  • Later in the process they voted on ideas
  • Keep an attitude of  playfulness
  • I have seen this video several times and I learn something new each time I see it.  We may want to show it a few times at different study groups.
  •  
• Joan's Notes on the IDEO process. (Joan is still working on this)
  • 1. These are additions to above comments.
  • 2. Deep Dive is total immersion in the problem that needs to be solved.
  • The team is made up of experts in their individual fields.
  • It is important to encourage "wild ideas."
  • The team builds on ideas of others.
  • The process is referred to focused chaos.
  • Another description of the process is enlightened trial and error.
  • If you do not work under time constraints, the team would not get any where.
  • It is not necessary to ask permission.  The way to proceed is to try the idea and then "ask for forgiveness."
  • The recipe for innovation is an open mind, team work and a supportive boss.
  • Getting "out" is more useful than working at your desk.

   

We created a short  video to illustrate a story from Edwin's journal.

You will need that G2 Real Player to view the video.

On the walk home from the cafe I was  thinking of self-trust. I was looking at my feelings in the sense of sensations,  cold hands, sound of the wind blowing in the trees, the various background sounds, children playing, a feeling of tightness in my head.   I then had the urge to skip, but felt self-conscious there with people around.  I imagined skipping, I took a small skip and had a slight skip in my step, but could not just let go and follow the skip.  I went back and forth with wanting to let go and skip.  This went on  for 15 or so minutes, until I was alone on the trail and started skipping for a few minutes.  I then stopped,  sat down and started writing down this experience.

Edwin's  trip to Microsoft - explain the techniques they used..

A while back,  I took a trip to Microsoft in Redmond, WA for a conference of sorts.. The department that produces the TechNet  information service was doing some redesigning of their product and had invited the presidents of the different Windows NT User Groups to attend.  The approach they used was to pose a question to the entire group and then break up into smaller groups of 4 to 6 people and brainstorm on the question.  The questions were like, "What does Microsoft do well?  What does Microsoft not do well?"  We wrote our comments to the question on a whiteboard and prioritized them.  The entire group came together and each group presented their work to the entire group.. This might be a technique that could be used for the study circle at some point. 

To Do By Next Meeting; 

• Need to finish several projects that we started
  •   Place material on this web page
  • Edit video we shot of the meeting and place it on this page
  • Reshoot  'skip'  video because it was over exposed.
• Review study group material

Step to forming the Creative Study Circle

• Joan and Edwin to preplanning
• Promote and publicize
  • Get a core group started.
  • Create a flyer for the group and post it.
• Attend some other groups for ideas
•  

 Random Notes:

•  In the study group links they mention having a fixed time for a series of meeting? 2 months? 
• Want to use multimedia for the study group.
• Create an agenda with some times.
• What will be the format of the group?
• The study circle was seen as a way to make friends..
• Create a list of projects we can do.