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
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