Being a Busy Bee

Hello all,

At this moment I do a lot of things at the same time, interchangeable. I have to prepare for the exam next week, write my project, prepare my ITR, write a semiotic assignment and answer questions about the RMC 4 assignment.

I will share some of the things happened this week. Last week we had a very interesting guest lecture of Jan Rijkenberg, who wrote the book 'Concepting'.

Jan told us a lot of interesting and inspiring insights about his way of thinking and his book. What I found very interesting was that he told us that people are more interesting in mindware stuff and that we have to change the marketing toolbox. At this time we are going to 'the communication driven phase' (concepting) and 'the communicator' becomes the new type of leader. He gave a lot of interesting examples that had triggered me. A lot of the things Jan explained, we already knew. But it was very nice to hear it from another perspective. He gave us a title of a book: 'The naked Ape, that inspired him to write his book 10 years ago.

He also inspired me to read 'The naked Ape' for my second book presentation.

The class today was also very interesting. Geoff Maree told us about creativity and how we should use creative techniques in our application company. During the morning he explained us a lot of theory about the basic skills of creativity and showed us a lot of creative techniques.

This afternoon we used the creativity techniques in groups to come up with new ideas. This was a very nice exercise and we had a lot of fun. Time flew by and we came up with a lot of important insights. For example: When you organize a creative session, it's very important to have fun, have a nice, inspiring location, have a good preperation and try to focus on the quantity of ideas.

I have to quit writing because I have to do a thousand things.

Regards,
Sanne

The Imagineering Roller Coaster....takes another loop

A random day on the ‘Imagineering Roller coaster’… getting up at 8.15am, having a breakfast that will keep me energized till 11.30am. 9.45am, chatting to the classmates about stupid stuff, having a laugh and meeting a new face (the lecturer of the day). 10am Another day starts, with some interesting introductions, all eyes on the lecturer.

11.30am Inspired, walking towards the coffee machine discussing all the information we’ve just took in. 1pm Time for another energy boost called lunch. ‘Why can we never talk about something else?:)’ Imagineering, RMC, Creativity, Imagineering, RMC, Identity, Imagineering…. Lunch is supposed to be re-energizing, not here! Lol

2pm: Back to class.. joined by a bigger cup of coffee. Workshops, eyeopeners, writing down notes, discussions, interaction, presentations and more. 3.30pm The coffee machine + toilet is calling!!!! 5.pm Walking towards our bikes, talking, living, and breathing the topic of the day. The evening still about Imagineering… I always thought people who spend their evenings voluntary on studying, reading and searching the Internet are crazy. My brother, mum, dad, boyfriend, girlfriends know all the ins and outs about Imagineering cause I am breathing Imagineering, can’t stop talking about it and they are even considering the course next year. Luckily I can find the discipline to stop myself and find a few hours/day every week to check out.

This week:

Whenever we enter the classroom on Monday-morning, the smiling faces of my colleagues light up the room. You can feel we are all excited to hear what's next.  I keep being surprised by the variety of the subjects that pop up every week. Hans Bouwknegt and Semiotics last week, this week Robert Bood and Scenario Thinking...on Monday.

Robert showed us examples of his own experience and had us perform workshops together. The essence of scenario thinking in my words is to look for all the possible scenario's in the future and adapt your organization towards these scenario's to be ahead of the competition and stay innovative. Geoff Maree let us think about ourselves and what we define as creativity on Wednesday. This day was very inspiring and this coming Monday he will be in school with Marco Bevolo.

Kaj Morel… Identity marketing. Very interesting, we started the day with presenting each other. But not in the regular way of course!! This time the assignment was ‘present your fellow student as a brand’. Some came up with stories about the other, keywords of the so called brand.

We had a practical workshop in asking questions to your application company. Kaj gave us the questions and they were really good in getting the real identity. The questions gave ME a really new insight in identity marketing and/or Imagineering. Identity should be known in order to be appreciative and vibrant. Same in the personal life. If people lose themselves…and don’t know what their real identity is anymore they struggle to seek for their identity. We are all identities and relate to each other through these identities. Psychologists lead these people back towards their identity to relate to the world and others again. Consultants are these “psychologists” in the business world. Whenever businesses tend to lose their core identity some objective outsiteforce needs to lead them back to that identity. Yesterday we preformed all the workshop techniques from Thursday on the application company of Karim. For the first time I saw the effect on people and how we really CAN use these techniques in practice.

This is only 1/40 of what we’ve heard and practiced today, it’s consuming your mind. In a positive way, it inspires, motivates, stimulates and is overwhelming to structure within your head.

For me the challenge in this course lies in ‘how to process’ all this information and make it my own. Next to this bulk of great information I try to read my book ‘ The Creative City’ by Charles Laundry. This also is very interesting because it is related to my application company which is a city. The application company is an adventure on itself, speaking to all the stakeholders, experiencing the passion for this city, the debating about the build up of these coming months etc. Etc…

My day to day life has changes intensly since I took this ride called ‘ the imagineering rollercoaster’.  This roller coaster is taking another turn every other day and I might not be able to get off until next year September… then the theme park ‘The dream called imagineering’ will open it’s doors to me.

Are you in for a thrill?....:)

Article Tip: Barnham, C. 2008. Qualis? From theory to practice. Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, 11, 414-424.

www.carlijnsimons.com

Back to Communication Basics

The past week the emphasis has been on the quite amazing phenomenon of communication. Signs, actually. And the bright spirit who took us back to the very basics of this ‘taken-for-granted’, ongoing happening was Hans Bouwknegt. Mr. Bouwknegt taught us the ins and outs of semiotics, in particular the use of semiotics in media. Terms such as the signifier and signified, connotations and denotations were mentioned; names such as Saussure and Eco were brought up; and we have been taught that creativity is based on knowledge, and NOT only on talent.

All together a very fruitful week with meaningful insights, and I am not only talking about the lessons and theory provided. As the deadline for the search for an application company is approaching in less than a week, I am still in desperate search for one. Unfortunately I was turned down friday by a company which would have been absolutely PERFECT for me. I always thought I was pretty adequate on a communicative level, which was happily (re)confirmed and most welcomed by the potential application company, after which they decided to employ the computer nerd. Naturally, there is more to the story and there is no-one in particular to blame, but it is still a major bummer! And so the frantic search continues.

There is also a time and place for happy thoughts this rainy Friday: SOUTH AFRICA!!! Ticket prices are reasonable, I will have Bobby as my travel-buddy, and I am already thinking of which outfits to bring = exciting!

Upcoming week will be a rather busy week, with 4 instead of 3 school days and the first set of book presentations! It had been decided to apply the newly developed book-presentation-concept to the third and fourth set of book presentations, so that we have more time to gather a greater attendance and make it an even more nerve-wrecking event. I am confident that there will be an elaborately written blog on these events in weeks 10 and 16 of 2010.

Yours sincerely,
Jessica

Autumn break! Holiday! Happiness??

Hello all,

Autumn break! Holiday! Happiness??

Is everybody enjoying his/her freedom?

Does this break mean that we become a little bit more happy in life. Do we get the chance to recharge our happiness during these 7 days of no commitments? Or is it the commitments themselves that keep some of us happy? A few heavy questions about life you’ll be able to think about during this autumn break.

Why?

Today I read an item on the website http://http://www.nu.nl/,this stated that the Erasmus university in Rotterdam has published a worldmap of happiness. And apparently we(Holland) are ranked 12th, where Costa Rica is leading the charts and Zimbabwe is the least happy country in the world.

An average inhabitant of Costa Rica has 66 happy years in his life, where Zimbabwe only has 12. We as the Dutch need to deal with 60 happy years in our life. Very remarkable is that the people of Iceland have 66.4 happy years in their life. So that automatically leads to the question: How important is money in once life? Given the fact that the last few years haven't exactly been prosperous for Iceland. And just as important, how has hapiness been measured

To answer this question. Or better put, to be able to understand this question, we need to look at how this research is performed.
Technical details (Veenhoven. R.. Happy Life Years in 148 nations 2000-2009. World Database of Happiness. Rank Report 2009-2d. Internet: worlddatabaseofhappiness.eur.nl)
1. Average enjoyment of life assessed by means of surveys in general public samples.
2. Life expectancy is estimated on the basis of civil registrations of birth and death around 2005. Source
3. Happy Life Years' is an estimate of how long and happy the average citizen will live in that nation in this era. Computation: 0-1 enjoyment of life multiplied by expected length of life.
I would like to invite you as readers of this blog to think about this, and preferably comment on this blog.

Enjoy the mind breaker for this week.

Regards,
Joep

Sharks in a Blue Ocean

Every single student of the Master in Imagineering class is very busy: attending lectures, preparing lectures with reading (academic) articles and books, finding an application company (or even already visiting one), learning for the oral exam, working on the Research Methodology Course (RMC), editing the Individual Transformation Report (ITR) and as a relief: planning the trip to South-Africa!
There are quite a few of us who already booked their flight to Johannesburg. The dilemma is to choose for celebrating ‘carnaval’ in The Netherlands or using the spring holiday to have a vacation in South-Africa.
Some things that we can already dream of doing over there are; visiting the Kruger Park, cage diving with sharks, the highest bungeejump in the world, riding an ostrich, visiting Mandela’s prison island, climbing the Table mountain, attending a football match of Ajax Capetown, having a ‘braai’, etcetera.

To continue on the White-shark-cage-diving. Let me explain this, you do it in an ocean of course, the Indian Ocean. It is quite a bloody ocean actually, because the tour operators throw in blood and guts to attract the nasty-looking Great Whites. The tourist dives in the cage underwater when they see a dorsal fin approaching, probably to get one of the greatest thrills of their lives; seeing a Great White Shark alive and in the wild! The controversy is that in this area the sharks started to associate humans with food now. But only the little pieces of fish that the boatmen throw in is not enough. They must still be hunting for their own food of course; seals.
In South-Africa, more precisely around Seal Island (close to False Bay), the seals are many! So there are many sharks as well! In this 'red ocean' sharks need to hunt with ‘surprise’ as main element, because the seals are much faster and (when escaping from an attack) can easily outrun their competition. The easiest option to surprise a seal is a vertical approach when they enter the water. This is possible because the physical environment is perfectly shaped for this. The main leaving and entering point of Seal Island is very close to deep waters, which gives the sharks the option of a vertical-approach-surprise-attack. With all the brutal force the sharks attack the seals from underneath and with this torpedo-like technique they fire themselves out of the water!
This is the most likely theory why Seal Island (South-Africa) is the only place in the world where sharks have this behavior. You could say they found a ‘blue ocean’ in hunting. Of course it is not really ‘an uncontested market space’, because the seals might change their behavior to evade the ‘jumping’ sharks, but in the world of hunting one would possibly not find another specie of animal that is not hunted on by any other animal… Let’s hope that in February 2010 the sharks will still be torpedoing themselves so we can be amazed then!

To ladder or not to ladder?

It took a while but finally the outcome of our laddering class-assignment was there: the value map that represented the value we expect that our mobile phones must represent.
On Thursday the 8th of October we started by questioning each other what features we like best on a mobile phone. From these ‘attributes’ we questioned further (using the laddering technique) to get to the customer values. Most of us had no experiences with this methodology yet. Thus we were also not completely aware of the 36 values of Rokeach or the 57 values of Schwartz. This made the coding (on Monday the 12th of October) even harder, plus the fact that we did it altogether and not very objective.
Attributes, consequences and values which were mentioned less than 3 times were scrapped. We needed another moment of a day later that week (Wednesday the 14th of October) to finish the implication matrix and the value map. See the pictures attached to this blog post. According to this the main value our mobile phones represent for us are ‘self esteem’ and ‘caring for loves ones’.
The use of this outcome is for mobile phone manufacturers to focus on attributes belonging to these values and for marketing agencies to communicate these values in their campaigns.

A part of the methodology of laddering, probing questions is also a technique used in other methodologies such as PAT (Profile Accumulation Technique), CIT (Critical Incident Technique) and mythological analysis. That’s why it was quite dominant in our two weeks of ‘New research’.

My next blog post will be about a more popular and less scientific subject: the blue ocean!

Which one of the three?

The moment of the truth: Monday the 12^th of October from 15h30 till 17h15. Within those hours were the presentations of three different concepts, which were kept really secret for each other. But all have the same intention: to share the knowledge of popular management books. I was pretty exited to hear the other presentations (and to do our own), because we will choose the best concept and implement it directly so that the concept will be up and running when the first book presentations will be held (in the week of November 16).

Because of the high potential of all three concepts, I may not present them on this blog in detail (since they’re not patented yet). So I will just give an idea of what the concepts were.

Group 1 started with the introduction of a nice viral marketing campaign and they explained their concept via the ABCDEF-model (with emphasis on the Brooding phase). They came up with a type of interactional reading.

Group 2 (myself) explained their concept via the ABCDEF-model as well and put emphasis on the Concept phase. They came up with a way to facilitate reviews and physical meetings of interested managers.

Group 3 came up with a concept that involved us as students in sharing the contents of popular management books.

We actually didn’t really do a voting for which concept would win this ‘pitch’, but instead we formed a group of members of all three groups. The best idea to reach our goal (spreading the knowledge of popular management books) is probably a combination of all three concepts.

The key is to make it work and hopefully exploit it in a way that we can be real entrepreneurs and earn some money with it. That is... if the management books don't show us how to do that!

Organising the results of laddering

This Thursday we had to practice how to the laddering research technique can be used. In order to learn how it works, we practiced it ourselves by finding out what we like about our mobile telephone. We asked each other about the key features a phone should possess, after which we asked each other why that feature is so important. This questioning went on until we got a sense of terminal values. Values that are in you as a person and that do not easily come out.

Meanwhile during the interviews our classmate Wilma found out that the green wall in our classroom is never looked at, while this is the most 'inspirational' wall, as it is being green opposed to the other walls who are all white. Most of us agreed upon switching the lecturers view to the other side. Maybe in the upcoming time the class rooms view will change suddenly 180 degrees ;-).

However, when we all finished our interviews we had to put each answer of the why questions on a yellow sticky note and bring it to the front of the class. We had to put each answer under the right header of abstract attributes untill terminal values. It went kind a like this in the beginning, but in the end we all contributed to putting the right yellow sticky notes on the right places and even clustering them together when we found out some answers were kind of the same.

Next week Bram wil maybe tell how the laddering results were interpreted further :-).

Using Endnote and experience research

This week we had to hand in the first RMC assigment. As I underestimated the assigment in hours of work, the weekend before was vanished into time to make sure the work was carried out in a good way.

The upcoming week was promosing a week full of new research methods given by Proffesor W. van Gool and associates. It promised to be less wonderfull as the three weeks of inspirational lessons before, however I know I need to know about the methods available concerning qualitative research as it will help me during my work I will be doing in the application company.

Monday we got a workshop about EndNote; a referencing program. We got explained how to use it to insert references from available databases and how to get these references to work within Word for writing the Business transformation report, our thesis of the Master in Imagineering.

The Wednesday we got a lecture of Nick Johns who flew over from the UK to talk about qualitative experience research. For example using the PAT methodology. It was quit interesting how photographs of a holiday can result into scientific research ;-).

There is another blog post about the Thursday is coming up. stay tuned..

R-to-the-M-to-the-C

Before the next blogger takes over on Monday, I promised to tell you something about Thursdays lectures. This week was all about the change in consumer behaviour that appears to take place in recent years. Although most of the information was already discussed in the last two weeks, it was nice to hear some different examples as well as other lecturers' views on Imagineering and customer behaviour. The different views of the lecturers and some students resulted in a number of interesting discussions. The flow of information was a bit less than previous weeks, but there was enough work to be done, due to another major part of the programme: the Research Methodology Course (RMC).

Next Monday, we have to hand in the first assignment for the RMC course. This course is developed in order to get our research skills at an academic level within eight months and have us writing a proper research proposal for our theses. The emphasis is currently on searching for relevant and reliable academic articles. The first exercise was to state three possible research questions, and find an academic article for each one. The next step then was to judge the articles' reliability and usefulness. I happened to find the holy grail, in this case an article about a research model which perfectly sums up everything I'm planning to study for the Emmen Zoo. The other two articles were about the role of the internet for Zoos and a study on destination loyalty among tourists. It really got me inspired and I ended up with some great ideas for my research. Not having done anything for the RMC up till Friday, with interesting and inspiring articles like that I managed to finish the assignment on Friday afternoon. It feels like I'm off for a good start. Hopefully I won't find a lot of my fellow students on Monday struggling to finish the assignment on time.

I'll see you guys around.

Getting started at the application company

This morning I finally had the time to post something on the blog again. It's been a busy first part of the week, with the second full day at my application company on Tuesday and my graduation party on Wednesday. Since I was the first to have an application company, I'll tell you a bit about my experiences so far.

The idea behind these application companies is that each student has the opportunity to immediately put everything they learned into practise. The Master thesis will be written as an advisory report for this company, although they won't be grading it. While most of my fellow students are still struggling to find an application company, I had the opportunity to start already in week 1 of the Master programme.
Months before the Master started, me and my girlfriend visited the Zoo in Emmen (http://www.zoo-emmen.nl/). She had worked there for a while, and through her I found out about the plans to move the Zoo from the city centre to a location outside the city. This involves designing a 33ha Zoo from scratch, but also reviewing all the human processes regarding customer contact and redesigning the entire back office to suit the characteristics of the new Zoo. I figured this would be the perfect application company for my Master in Imagineering. When I first met people from the Master, I told them about my ideas regarding the Zoo, and I found out that the Zoo had already asked them for advice. So I had a nice way in.
In the months after, I convinced the Zoo about how I could help them, and they agreed to employ me for one day a week, and in the course of the year expand that to two days, and finally full-time. In return, they would pay the tuition fee for the Master.

I started two weeks ago, and there wasn't a lot for me to do since the people I was supposed to work with were out of office for most of the day. So I just focussed on getting some basic things done, like requesting keys to the office and login data for the computer network.
A week later, I joined the marketing manager and the programme manager (who is in charge of the development of the new Zoo) on a trip to a market research organization in Zoetermeer. They where doing interviews with possible visitors of the new Zoo, who were selected on age, social class and income, and were asked to participate given the fact that they go on day trips every now and then. These people didn't know why they were there and what they would be talking about, neither did they know about the plans for the new Zoo in Emmen. Therefore they gave us a nice insight of how the average Dutch family would respond on the plans and, more importantly, whether they would like to pay us a visit. There was also a lot of nice feedback about for example the routing in the Zoo and the possible price for a ticket.
Having met most of the people working on the development of the new Zoo, last Tuesday I met a couple of people who keep the current (old) Zoo running. Together with the marketing manager I agreed on my activities for the coming months. I will be looking into how they want the visitors to experience the Zoo, then team up with some key members of the staff to find out how they think about their jobs, contact with visitors, the role of management and what they themselves add to the experience of the visitor. At the same time I will be doing research among visitors, probably using a questionnaire, to find out how they actually experience the Zoo and what they think about the role of its personnel. Then, in the remainder of the year, I will be doing a lot of supporting research to finally come up with a report giving advice on how the new Zoo can give the visitors an even better experience than they hope for, and how to arrange the entire organization in order to facilitate in that.
I put my plans on paper last Tuesday and right now I'm waiting for them to be approved, so I can start doing my research. It's already clear that I will have a lot of freedom to do what I want. There's an office I can use each Tuesday, but I can also arrange meetings somewhere else if necessary. I will also be doing several jobs throughout the Zoo for one day, to get a good picture of what everybody does and what it takes to keep an organization like that running. I'm anxious to start!

Today I'll be back in Breda after skipping an interesting guest lecture yesterday, because I had my graduation party in Leeuwarden. Hopefully it'll be easy to get up to date with all that's been said and discussed yesterday. Today will be about the 'Age of Experience', which to me seems like a pretty vague subject but I hope the lecturer will come up with some inspiring insights. I'll let you know how it all worked out.

A little piece about what's on my mind

A little more than a year ago, I bought a pair of running shoes. I had a room in Leeuwarden at the time and, since my life as a student was starting to develop some physical evidence, I figured it would be nice to do some running in the evenings. Before I knew, the summer holiday arrived and I had to look for an internship for the following year. I soon found one at a small record company in Den Bosch. This company was run by one man and had no other employees accept for two interns. There was also no such thing as an office or something, business was done at the kitchen table or standing around the computer in the attic. Together we decided that the two of us could do our work from our homes, and we would meet in Den Bosch once a week. Having no need to stay in Leeuwarden, I gave up my room and went back to living with my parents.
With not a lot of work in the first 7 months of my 10 month internship, I found myself hanging around the house, wondering what to do. It would have been great to do some running a couple of times a week, but I ended up spending most of the time behind my computer and slightly too much time in bed. I found our bumpy quarter-of-a-mile driveway quite discouraging, as well as not having someone to run with.
The year went by and I got this feeling of guilt every now and then, when I came across my shoes. Until I decided to wear them whenever I had to go somewhere. This summer, my running shoes have taken me to pubs in Utrecht as well as beaches in Biarritz, France. Most of the time not faster than your average grandmother. If so, on the throttle of my car.
Last week, the moment was there. Me and my girlfriend drove to the forest and ran (with intervals) for about 45 minutes. She turned out to be the perfect running mate. It all went great and when we got home we decided we would really like to do this at least twice a week. Now here's my situation:
I live in the country-side near Meppel, Drenthe. The Imagineering Academy is in Breda. In between is, well, the Netherlands. I get up at 6 AM to go to school, and when I get home around 9 PM, I'm too tired to do anything else but to have something to eat and go to sleep. I spend 3 hours in the train to get to Breda and another 3 to get back home. It's hard to describe what it does to ones body, to be sitting in an uncomfortable chair in a train that accelerates and stops every ten minutes, but I think it can be summarized as constantly feeling the urge to move. To exercise. To run… BUT NOW I CAN'T!

The Imagineering-way of thinking includes the idea that people buy certain goods in order to achieve a certain personal transformation. I bought my shoes with the goal to lose some weight and work on my stamina. In my experience, the effect was rather, let's say, limited. Now I often get the chance to think about them, think about the opportunities I had to use them, and the chances that will come. Is their value lost? No. It's just a different kind of value. Somewhat… spiritual.

My name is Niels van der Haven and I will be posting on this blog this week. Tomorrow will be my second day at my application company, I'll tell you more about that later.

Guest lectures

One of the things I do like very much about this Master study is a weekly guest lecture presented by an authority in the field of Imagineering. Last week we welcomed Professor Koen vandenbempt from the university of Antwerp and he guided us into the field of strategic innovation. This week we welcomed Professor Ton de Leeuw, who was teaching till his retirement ,3 years ago, at the University of Groningen. As he pronounced his hobbies still are in the field of Research Methodology and Organizational Change.
To prepare this guest lecture we had to read an academic article with the title “Answers for questions to come: reflective dialogue as an enabler of strategic innovation”. In my humble opinion a tuff paper with lost of words in which the message would have come better across with less words.
After a short personal introduction Mr. Ton de Leeuw guided us through the process how to start your project at the application Company. He emphasized on the ways you can come up with questions. Where does the language from questions come from? We did some practical test with Q&A with a fellow student. During and after the break had had to make an assignment in combination with the prepared article. In small groups we had to raise & formulate questions about the article and how we could use the content in combination with our Application Company. In small group we came up with a model in which we combined the 3 basic blocks of the article: mental maps, reflective dialogue and strategic innovation. We all struggled with the content and set up of the article and it was quite a relieve when Professor de Leeuw told us his personal view on academic articles. "Always try to find your own words in which you can explain the message of the academic article to your grandmother in a way she can understand the raised topic”, he adviced. I was very happy with this approach since I’m quite a practical person with not a great appetite for academic words. Communication is, my background and I always try to find the words through which 'my' audience gets the message. And this is in line with the advice of Professor De Leeuw.

At the end of this interesting day I asked Mr. De Leeuw what he personally thinks about Imagineering. He told us that in the beginning he taught it was a bit vague. Since he’s an engineer he did look for the connection between Imagineering & Engineering, since Imagineering is a composed word. But now after a few years he explains the position of Imagineering by making a comparison between Marketing and Imagineering. A marketing question is: How can I control my client? an Imagineer will ask : How can the client control the organization (or you)? At that time is was already 5 pm, the end of our day at the university.

I like to stop todays contribution to the Imagineering blog with a nice hint from Professor De Leeuw. If you want to relax a second connect to You Tube and get inspired by the Bach Duo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZD8W2nO1lY

after watching….just a sustainable thought….
Looking at this clip I was fantasizing would it be possible to combine this way of playing the ‘piano’ with the cool sustainable dance floor in the Rotterdam Club Watt ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Xu7hO7G4n8
and more energy.... Energy generating dance floor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzb3VFi3Sew

… and a co-creation idea ….. yesterday I saw at the 8 o’clock news an item about a new aerobic wave: Zumba. Enjoying the Bach duo clip I was thinking about a combination of Bach on the floor & Zumba. Have a look at Zumba @ San Jose Convention Center http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ziHDH7YV2g

To be continued …

Living in two worlds

Being a master student now is quite different with my student life back in 1980. The main reason for the difference as I experience it is the feeling of a ‘double life’ in the recent situation. After being the owner of a communication consultancy for almost twenty years it is a new experience to be back at school for 3 days a week, having lots of homework and regular assignments and I also want to keep an eye on the running business. I’m really happy & blessed that I found a loyal & very trusting friend & colleague who is taking the business lead for the next 12 months. But although we agreed on this is it difficult for me at this stage to disconnect. However being hooked at my communication office & work and taking the warnings from the teachers and old Master students (about the heavy study load) seriously I see it as a personal challenge to keep things in a healthy balance.
For me there is a third important aspect to deal with and that is a good balance between private life next to study and the ongoing business. Back in the 1989 my only ‘concern’ was having a great learning time with a enthusiastic group of student-friends and a nice room in an enjoyable student house. Now I travel by train between Nijmegen and Breda which also is time consuming. Although this is only my third week at the University it is very expiring being here. Seeing new and also welcoming old teachers from the previous NWIT period is great. So far they are all very engaged to this unique master concept. The study material in English is another challenge. Due to the fact that we have to read at least 15 academic articles per week (besides study books) my list of new English words is growing day after day and so is my understanding of the language. Besides the international character of the class I do appreciate this aspect of this international Master class very much. So far so good.

a new kid on the blog

Dear readers this is my first blog attempt. Let me introduce myself in a nutshell. I'm one of the 17 students for the Master of Imagineering at NHTV 2009-2010. I studied already once succesfully at the pre NHTV University for tourism NWIT from ... 1980 till 1984. I must admit it took some guts to start again 25 years after graduating. But here I'm ... back in a new area, with lots of new (digital) tools, some of my fellow astudents experience these tools as toys, but for me this is the biggest challenge. I'll take you with me on my journey this week. Are you ready to join me? ... enjoy & get inspired. Wilma

Seeing is believing!... Or not?

Innovation is now more important than ever. But why is it that hard to break free from our regular thinking? Since the industrial revolution we have created our current mindset and for many years this has been the status quo.

This means that we are used to think into certain dominant business recipes. If you are not able to realize this it is impossible to find new solutions. You will be trapped in your own thinking world. Therefore we need to implement a more explorational approach towards our business.

We need to find a new way to build bridges, a new way to look at our world. Therefore we need to throw away our believes, because they influence too much what we are able to see. Everything we see around us is created with our industrial mindset, which doesn’t make this an easy task.

But to experience this there is a nice experiment which in psychological context is called the ‘Stroop effect’. The only thing you need to do is read aloud the colour in which each of the following words is printed. DO NOT READ THE WORDS.

As you will experience this is quite hard to do. It is this hard, because your world is built upon the English or your own language. Now try to do it again but now the words are written in Greek. A language you probably not know and therefore have no beliefs about.

You will see it is easier now! This proofs that what you see is influenced by what you believe and therefore seeing isn’t just believing!

Rob - Future Master of Imagineering

Back to the Future

From ‘Newton’ to ‘Chaos’. With the new communication tools which are available to us, we can re-shape our world. We only need to be ready and embrace it!


With Imagineering we will focus on the journey towards this new world. We will explore new roads and try to break free from our industrial logic. This way we will find different flowers and plant these seeds. We will also create new lenses and use new insights.

A nice metaphor is the way we have been creating robots. In the last years robots were there to help us making life easier. These robots are electric machines which have some ability to interact with physical objects and are given an electronic script to do a specific task or do a whole range of tasks or actions.

But in this new world a robot needs to show emotions too. They need a little heart. Therefore this new version must have the ability to perceive and absorb data differently. Almost in a way we as humans do.

Bottom line is in order to survive in the future we need to find a way to measure intangibles as love and happiness. This way we can implement these into our processes and will we be able to really add value with our businesses and therefore create a more beautiful world!

Rob - Future Master of Imagineering

BREDA you later

It is the September 11th, 2009, in Breda. The Imagineering Masterclass of 2009-2010 has ‘checked-in’. This year a nicely mixed group will be given the tools to create beautiful worlds. But to actually transform the world, we first need an inner look towards ourselves.


I think that is what this Mastercourse is all about. Finding your own way to add value to people. Obviously you would say that within one week we can’t do a lot. But Imagine…

• That we can make a difference
• That small things can have a great impact
• That people are more connecting
• That you are able to re-open your eyes
• That random words create wonderful images
• That life is shared in new ways
• That love has many forms
• That there always is light
• Imagine…

An open-minded and positive approach will help us all to shape our journey. Therefore it is nice to see that our class of 2009 -2010 consists of different people with different backgrounds and different histories. This way we can share knowledge and beautiful stories.

Are you ready to check in too??

 Rob - Future Master of Imagineering

FAQ

What is the purpose of this blog?

The "alchemists of co-creation" blog is a  platform where the Master in Imagineering students of the NHTV can share their thoughts, opinions and everyday experiences as a student in the Imagineering Academy. Each student chooses their own format and uses their own style to express themselves. Through this online platform, potential students interested in the Master course can gain an insider's perspective into what it's really like.

What does the Imagineering course involve?

To find out more information about imagineering and the Master course, go to http://www.imagineeringacademy.nl/.

Contact Us

For more information about the Academy of Imagineering, you can go to http://www.imagineeringacademy.nl/.

For comments & suggestions on the blog, you can send an email to the administrator at 071265(at)nhtv.nl.

To see some videos about the Master in Imagineering, see the YouTube Channel of the Academy: www.youtube.com/user/ImagineeringAcademy.

About Us

The 2009-2010 Master in Imagineering class blogs about their experiences during the course. Every week at university, one of the sixteen students takes on the authorship of the blog and writes about his or her own perceptions & thoughts. Here is a little bit about each of them:

Carlijn Simons
I started off as a Tourism and Leisure student, lived in the US for a year, then came back and started at the Academy for Leisure and did a minor in Imagineering in my final year. A long road with only one goal in mind, searching for MY ultimate destination in life. This Master program gives me the chance to put my mind to the test. The best part of all is analyzing all this information and making it your own. For the first time in my studying career all the information I read and listen to are interesting to me.The interaction with other professionals and students from all over the world, the discussions about the way we look at the world and how we all grow and learn keeps me motivated.

There is a small bestselling book that really struck me, because the title put my vision on life into words. If you do not own the book yet, give it a chance because it is worth it: It's not how GOOD you are, It's how GOOD you want to be. (Paul Arden, 2003)

Jessica Alink

Hi, my name is Jessica Alink, born on the 10th of Januari 1986 and a Media & Entertainment Management graduate. My ambitions are to get married and become a mum, but before that I want to apply my Imagineering knowledge, preferably outside of cold and rainy Holland.






Bram van Boekholt

After graduating in Commercial Economics (Marketing Management) I was doubting what to do. Traveling didn't necessarily give me insights in how to spend the rest of my life (although seeing as much of the world is an ambition), but being part of the organizing committee of the World University Championship Cycling 2008 did. I experienced that organizing a world championship from scratch can not be done only via a standardized process, especially not an event for young people. It involves creating a platform for people to contribute to 'our' (and so 'their') success. And after some more traveling I decided to enroll myself to the Master in Imagineering to make this mindset my own.

Kishore Menon
*********************************************************
I was in search of happiness for a long while,

then I stopped seeking and I found.

for me,

Life is a beautiful story, one gets to co-author
*********************************************************
:-) kishore

Jennifer Dahm
Hallo!:) Ich bin Jenny aus Deutschland., 23 Jahre alt und seit 2006 Studentin in Holland. Well, now I am actually the only German in this course but I still love to go to school! Why? Because of the ambiguity and creativity in this course. My classmates and me share the fact of an open and creative mindset, which makes co-creation a great experience! No matter in which way – be it business or personal, we come along very well! I even made some good friends in a short period of time which is just great. My dream was and still is to be significant to the world. Okay, that is far-fetched. Let me say it like this: I want to make a difference, be it just for one person. I want to facilitate others to create meaning in their very own way in order to share this with others. This is not only valid for persons, but also for companies because they belong to us in this ever-growing network society.

Bobby Verlaan

Who does enjoy life? Who does make meaning for themselves and tries to be meaningful to others? I like to take the human perspective in organizations as a starting point. Too many times I see things go wrong because procedures prescribe us to act as an robot to the other. That's one of the main reasons why I chose to follow the Master in Imagineering. I acknowledge the experience of an organization is the most important holistic way of thinking of the service a company is offering its clients. That's why trying to positively redefine
the service with the organization itself is an exciting and meaningful future job to me.
Lieke van der Zanden

I like the word WOW! Wow when something new happens. Wow, when you meet someone inspiring. Wow, when you reach something you never expected of achieving.


Wow is inspiring, it surprises me, it gives me a certain feeling, that motivates me to search for new Wow experiences.

Wow is different and special for everybody. Creating a Wow is challenging. To me Imagineering has the WOW factor. My new challenge is the Imagineering challenge to create a new WOW….