Brain food for change
December 31, 2008 by baldguy · Leave a Comment
i ran across an interesting site that addresses “doing” over “thinking about doing” in the form of a manifesto…enjoy!
2. Forget about good. Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you’ll never have real growth.
3. Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.
4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child). Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.
5. Go deep. The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.
6. Capture accidents. The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.
7. Study. A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.
8. Drift. Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.
9. Begin anywhere. John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.
10. Everyone is a leader. Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.
11. Harvest ideas. Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.
12. Keep moving. The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.
13. Slow down. Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.
14. Don’t be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.
15. Ask stupid questions. Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.
16. Collaborate. The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.
17. ——————————. Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.
18. Stay up late. Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world.
19. Work the metaphor. Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.
20. Be careful to take risks. Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.
21. Repeat yourself. If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.
22. Make your own tools. Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.
23. Stand on someone’s shoulders. You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.
24. Avoid software. The problem with software is that everyone has it.
25. Don’t clean your desk. You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.
26. Don’t enter awards competitions. Just don’t. It’s not good for you.
27. Read only left-hand pages. Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our “noodle.”
28. Make new words. Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.
29. Think with your mind. Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.
30. Organization = Liberty. Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between “creatives” and “suits” is what Leonard Cohen calls a ‘charming artifact of the past.’
31. Don’t borrow money. Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.
32. Listen carefully. Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.
33. Take field trips. The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.
34. Make mistakes faster. This isn’t my idea — I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.
35. Imitate. Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You’ll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.
36. Scat. When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else … but not words.
37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.
38. Explore the other edge. Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.
39. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms. Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces — what Dr. Seuss calls “the waiting place.” Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference — the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.
40. Avoid fields. Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.
41. Laugh. People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I’ve become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.
42. Remember. Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.
43. Power to the people. Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can’t be free agents if we’re not free.
How it all started…
September 28, 2008 by baldguy · 3 Comments
Have you ever felt you were on the verge of something big, but you couldn’t quite put your finger on it? That’s the way we have felt over the last year as we began the java journey.
First a dream…a dream of creating a business that would be socially responsible and eco-friendly. What does that look like? It looks like a guy and girl with two little boys in tow trying to create a business that isn’t all about the money! After working in coffee growing countries doing relief work, we had the bright idea that we can create a business that “empowers coffee growing communities” rather than “exploiting coffee growing communities”!
Then an idea…an idea which my wife shared with me upon her return from a recent visit to Seattle to visit a girlfriend. Eventually the idea took the form of a fully functional mobile coffee-espresso-coffee roasting-buggy that runs on bio-diesel with the power for all of the equipment supplied by solar-power! This idea has now morphed into the Bald Guy Brew International Head-Quarters in Boone, North Carolina.
Throw into the mix some timely conversations and divine guidance, and boom: the bald guy brew! Now that you know the “short” version of the story, here are the official Bald Guy Brew values which guide our decisions and planning.
Eco-Friendly
The BGB is committed to using organic, shade grown beans. By purchasing eco-friendly beans, we support farmers using sustainable practices which maintain an equitable partnership between birds, farmers, consumers, and the environment.
Socially Responsible
By offering certified fair trade coffees, we are making an ethical choice because every pound we sell will make a difference in coffee growing communities. We also donate 10% of every sale to the International Justice Mission to help fight the battle against children who are either forced into slavery or prostitution.
Artisanal Coffee
Call it what you will, but there is an art to roasting coffee. By cupping all of our coffees, we are able to determine the right time & temp. profile for roasting our coffee…ensuring that our customers get what they pay for: the best stinking cup of fresh roasted coffee they ever tasted!
Building a Green Business
April 19, 2008 by baldguy · 7 Comments
A few weeks ago, a friend of ours asked if I would put together some thoughts on the challenges we have faced in creating a “green business”. The result: a three part series on why we decided to go green with some or all of it to be included in the next issue of Carolina Mountain Living…enjoy!
So you wanna go green?
First thing you need to do is ask yourself the question: “Why do I want to become a green business?” The second question you need to ask is: “What makes a business green?”
We purchase green coffee that is primarily Organic & Fair Trade. We designed a van that uses solar panels, propane, and bio-diesel to power our coffee equipment, which was right in line with one of our goals of being an “eco-friendly” business.
However, that didn’t make us a green business…at least by our standards. We believe that in order to be a “green business”, we need to focus on the amount of energy used and our carbon footprint, not to mention putting to use the three Rs of conservation: Recycle, Reuse, and Reduce.
Read more
wednesdays at the bald guy brew
March 5, 2008 by baldguy · 11 Comments
i love wednesdays at the bald guy brew. beginning around 10:15, our international head-quarters morphs into the cooliest kid friendly coffee shop in boone! moms, (as well as a couple of dads!) kids, coffee, and gold fish fill the room as the High Country Mommies meet for fellowship, stories, and fun. it just wouldn’t feel right if they didn’t show up…thanks for putting us on your calendar!
bring your own cup…just a buck!
February 21, 2008 by baldguy · 5 Comments
yep, i think it is official:
we are the only roaster in boone, nc that is serving fresh roasted, fair trade and organic coffees for $1.00 if you bring your own mug, cup, or thermos. ok, don’t get too happy and bring a 30 oz thermos or a stinking beer stein…i do have a family to feed.
Costa Rican Coffee
January 29, 2008 by baldguy · 2 Comments
This past week, I’ve been in Costa Rica looking at “Fincas de Cafe” (coffee farms). Man, what a hoot…from climbing on the sides of mountains (I don’t see how they can harvest coffee without falling) to being eaten alive by red ants (don’t stand on ant hills when taking pictures), I’ve definitely learned a lot about this side of the process.
In a few hours, I’ll be leaving for Boone, NC. I’ll try and get the photos together with more thoughts on Wednesday.