I stumbled upon Conan O'Brien's 2011 Dartmouth college Commencement Adress online. When I started watching it, it was background noise for work, but as the speech proceeded, I found myself glued to the screen and had dropped everything that I was doing. It was a fabulous mix of comedy and hard truths. The comedy was what I expected, but the serious message delivered seriously was the highlight and earned him a standing ovation.
It was amazing go back into the archive of TED to find videos of my heroes. I was just watching one of them, the most successful entrepreneurs of our time, Sir Richard Branson, talking about the decisions that he made and how it dramatically altered his course of life. It is a beautiful story in flesh.
Growing up he was dyslectic child, school never interested him, but being a born explorer and adventurist, he took all his ideas to the limits. You can clearly see his mindset and lifestyle imprinted in everything he does. He's constantly walking on the edge, and when he came to talk about his successes and failures, he said "there is a very thin dividing line between success and failure". He went on to share about his personal experience of nearly losing everything.
Monthly Design Review has been a crucial part of the growth for my company Big New Ideas, started at the end of 2009 as a magazine to explore applications of design theories and methods. It soon became clear that producing a quality monthly publication wasn't sustainable. In January of 2010, the original contributors the magazine gather for beer at SALT Space in Flatiron of New York City, the one-off gathering turned into series of intellectually simulating conversations around design and creativity. Since then, we began to meet on the 3rd Thursday of every month. Towards the end of the year, we began inviting an array of speakers to inspire our creative community and stimulate conversation including Scott Belsky of Behance, Simon Sinek and Viktoria Harrison of Charity:Water.
Check out my Monthly Deign Review Video Interview:
Join us in February for a round table discussion on the topic of: Conversations in the Age of Facebook.
- RSVP on Facebook or monthlydesignreview@gmail.com - Come and share a story, examples, and thoughts. (5 minutes or less) - And together we will try to make sense of our collective experience.
MDR
Conversations in the Age of Facebook
Inspired by our December guest speaker, Simon Sinek, who stated that, “We cannot have a real conversation on Facebook.”
MDR in turn asks you, “What kind of conversations are you having on Facebook?”
-What are some memorable conversations you’ve had on Facebook, or about Facebook? -What makes a face to face conversation different from one carried over Facebook statuses, and comments? -Do you express yourselves differently on Facebook? -Do you respond differently on Facebook?
-And suppose “realness” is measured by how truthful and revealing you are about yourselves. Is a Facebook conversation less “real?”
-And as designers, what changes would you make to Facebook to facilitate “real” conversations?
Location / Date / Time
Thursday, February 17th 8pm.
The Salt Space 1158 Broadway 5th Floor Entrance on W 27th St.
Monthly Design Review is a spin off from Big New Ideas, started in 2009. It is a monthly gathering of creative individuals in New York City, where we invite a speaker monthly and generate conversation around the value, power and purpose of Design.
We’re honored to host Scott Belsky, CEO & Founder of Behance, at January’s Monthly Design Review. Being that Monthly Design is an experiment, our format changes from month to month. With the new year ahead of us, we have big plans for Monthly Design Review and are thrilled to have Scott kick off the new year helping us all focus on making our big ideas happen. Scott Belsky believes that the greatest breakthroughs across all industries are a result of creative people and teams that are especially productive. As such, Scott has committed his professional life to help organize creative individuals, teams, and networks. Scott is the founder and CEO of Behance, a company that develops products and services for creative industries. Behance oversees the Behance Network, the world’s leading online platform for creative professionals; The 99%, Behance’s think tank and annual conference devoted to execution in the creative world, and Action Method, a popular online/mobile productivity application and line of organizational paper products. Scott is also the author of the national bestselling book Making Ideas Happen. Ideas are worthless if you can’t make them happen. Many of us believe that great ideas inevitably lead to success. Nothing could be further from the truth. Whether it is the perfect solution for an everyday problem or a bold new concept for a creative masterpiece, you must transform vision into reality for an idea to have value. This book chronicles the methods of exceptionally productive creative leaders and teams – companies like Google, IDEO, and Disney, and individuals like author Chris Anderson and Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh – that make their ideas happen, time and time again. Location / Date / Time Thursday, January 20th 8pm. The Salt Space 1158 Broadway 5th Floor Entrance on W 27th St. RSVP As seating is limited, please RSVP via our Event on Facebook.
Monthly Design Review is a spin off from Big New Ideas, started in 2009. It is a monthly gathering of creative individuals in New York City, where we invite a speaker monthly and generate conversation around the value, power and purpose of Design.
Patrick Neil and the 21 Foundation is launching a film about the future of learning, and highlights the fundamental problems with education today. To solve the education problems today, we'll have to understand the world we will be facing in the future. This short trailer sums it up:
Monthly Design Review is a spin off from Big New Ideas, started in the beginning of the year. It is a monthly gathering of creative individuals in New York City, were we invite a speaker monthly and generate conversation around the value, power and purpose of Design.
Our next meeting is on Thursday December 16 in Flatiron district of New York City from 8 to 10pm. I am excited for this month's Monthly Design Review meeting where we have Simon Sinek, author of Start With Why, share with us. He will be expanding on his TED talk, speaking about leaders who inspire action and discussing the importance of starting with 'Why'.
For a couple of months, at Big New Ideas, I've been tinkering about the idea of a weekend event that brought together creatives to use our skills to help a local non-profit. I believe in what many non-profits do and I believe that as designers we have a role to play. However, with our society is moving at an ever quicker pace, and time commitment is getting harder, something needed to be done.
That is when the idea of the "24 Hour Design Jam" (As it is currently called) came about. Where every month, we get 6-8 creatives together and over Friday and Saturday apply the creative process to develop an appropriate brand and plant the seeds for a nonprofit's online presences. This weekend was the first 24 hour jam we did with a local non-profit in Providence, RI called Young Voices. They are a youth led advocacy group training young people to become leaders in their communities.
The Team: Aya Pogrebinsky; Greg Nemes; Joshua Vizzacco; Julie Sygiel; Marc Pageau; Marie Kaziunas; Chace Baptista, the founder/co-director of Young Voices and yours sincerely Tino Chow.
It was an amazing experience! I knew it was going to be fun and never so much fun, and on top of that it feels really good to have worked along side with other young people who believes in the sames things I do and is as passionate or even more passionate about help others. And Young Voices have a new website!
The big idea is for us to work with a couple more non-profits by assembling a different team each time, so that we can find a formula that can be scaled and done anywhere in the world. Follow us on Facebook.
