Real-izing your Dream

This page is about finding your passion, improving your creativity, and making a difference. More on creativity and design can be found on the Sustainability page. See also Green Jobs and Internships

Utne Reader lists of 150 works that fire the imagination Part 1 and Part 2has quite a few influential green thinkers.

What Is Your College Degree Worth? an interview with the author (audio) 6/11

Interactive

LinkedIn (founded by College 8 Fellow Reid Hoffman) has launched a new feature this week that helps students “visualize potential career paths based on their field of study, search for relevant job opportunities, find and follow target companies matching their career aspirations, and discover and connect with people who themselves are connected to these potential career paths, companies, and key influencers.” video overview Link

Video

Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams (74 min youtube version). longer Google video version****

Steve Jobs' famous commencement speech from a legendary entrepreneur, co-founder of Apple.

Sir Ken Robinson has written numerous books on how to find your dream/passion. He has also done phenomenally wise and popular video talks on education and creativity: original 2006 talk and 2010 followup TEDtalk, CBS News segment 1/10. Newer talk.

Steven Johnson shows how history tells a different story. His fascinating tour takes us from the "liquid networks" of London's coffee houses to Charles Darwin's long, slow hunch to today's high-velocity web. TEDtalk. 4 min summary of book ideas

JK Rowling: The fringe benefits of failure (TEDtalk) (text version).

"Wrongologist" Kathryn Schulz makes a compelling case for not just admitting but embracing our fallibility. (TEDtalk).

Why you will fail to have a great career In this funny and blunt talk from TEDxUW, Larry Smith pulls no punches when he calls out the absurd excuses people invent when they fail to pursue their passions.

Economics writer Tim Harford studies complex systems -- and finds a surprising link among the successful ones: they were built through trial and error. (TEDtalk). Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure

Bart Weet­jens is developing a new approach to the land ­mine detection problem: train­ing giant pouched rats to detect explosives in minute amounts which combines two of his passions TEDtalk video.

The Proof is a really intriguing (really!) story about proving Fermat's Last Theorem.

Richard St. John's 8 secrets of success TEDtalk

How to Communicate Your Idea:

Structure of Great Talks TEDtalk

How to Pitch Your Ideas TEDtalk.

How to Stand Out. Marketing guru Seth Godin spells out why, when it comes to getting our attention, bad or bizarre ideas are more successful than boring ones. TEDtalk

Audio

The 21st Century Skills Movement seeks to reform education to better prepare students for success in the modern workplace. Those skills include creativity, innovation, critical thinking, communication and collaboration. KQED Forum 132/10

Books

Barbara Sher helps people identify and follow their dreams. Wishcraft is online for free. She has made several very fine PBS programs sample.

The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything by Ken Robinson, see video above). Also Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative.

Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure. Tim Harford three principles/examples (video) Economics writer Tim Harford studies complex systems -- and finds a surprising link among the successful ones: they were built through trial and error. (TEDtalk). Audio interview.

How writing improves creativity

Roger von Oech is a very good writer of popular books on creativity.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is the smartest researcher on creativity. His best known work is Flow. here's TEDtalk video on Flow ***

How To Live Your Dream of Volunteering Overseas

Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life by Gregg Michael Levoy.

Julia Cameron: The Artist's Way (1992). It's not about how to paint or write or dance -- it's about how to nurture the part of you that's afraid to paint or write or dance. Cameron's pathway to creativity is through health and fulfillment, not purgatorial pain. Brenda Ueland: If You Want to Write (1938). Shining with the visionary high-mindedness of the old American avant-garde, this classic on unblocking your inner writer recommends watchful laziness, cheerful egotism, and flat-out joy.

General Ideas on Design and Creativity (see also Sustainability

Gamestorming is a technique of using game dynamics (role-playing0 and visual thinking to create new ideas. Website. book, More, including visual notetaking.

Jonah Lehrer's new book, Imagine: How Creativity Works, audio interview and excerpt (full text interview) podcast

IDEO, the hottest design firm around, has a Social Impact] design group that has created a free downloadable Human Centered Design Toolkit, a free innovation guide for NGOs and Social Enterprises. You can search their projects. Method cards/app

One of the greatest musicians/producers around Brian Eno, developed Oblique Strategies, a set of cards to jumpstart ideas. he is also one of the driving forces behind the LongNow ten thousand year clock.

Bruce Mau has been inspired by nature, wants to redesign the world, and he may well rock yours. Another profile Interactive version of his "An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth" Here's a text excerpt. Here's a downloadable complete version. Video compilation. Longer interview.

As a creative director at Ideo, Paul Bennett reminds us that design need not invoke grand gestures or sweeping statements to be successful, but instead can focus on the little things in life. TEDtalk video

Tim Brown on creativity and play (TEDtalk video).

Yves Behar has produced some of the new millennium's most coveted objects, like the Leaf lamp, the Jawbone headset, and the XO laptop for One Laptop per Child. (TEDtalk video).

Elizabeth Gilbert muses on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses -- and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person "being" a genius, all of us "have" a genius. (TEDtalk video).

Stanford Seminar on People, Computers, and Design (CS547) video Exmple: April 23, 2010 Ed Catmull, President, Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios: Recognizing and Addressing Blocks to Creativity

Dean Kamen, inventor of Segway, speaks about creation of prosthetic limbs. TEDtalk video. he has also created an amazing power source and water distiller for Third World countries TEDtalk video.

Inspired By Nature

Climbing devices based on geckos

Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature by Janine M. Benyus TEDtalk video.

"Captain Organic," Ross Lovegrove embraces nature as the inspiration for his "fat-free" design. TEDtalk video

More TEDtalks on this theme.