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

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

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****

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

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)

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

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.

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

General Ideas on Design and Creativity

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

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.