In the words of the historian philosopher, Thomas Berry: "We are not just passing into another historical period or another cultural modification.......But more specifically we are terminating the last 65 million years of life development." He says, it's all a question of story. "The old story, the account of how the world came to be and how we fit into it is no longer effective. Yet we have not learned the new story."
The Darwinian story about being stronger, bigger and better is no longer the story of survival. Survival of the Fittest is an exercise in agility and adaptibility. The flawless adaptation to your changing conditions now makes you the master in the Art of Survival. This is the age of knowledge. We are increasingly being rewarded not for our emperical know how of delivering facts but for our ability to make meaning - whether that is telling story about our brand DNA or our balance sheet make up. Management consultant Tom Durel, emphasizes again and again, "everybody thinks it's the return on investment that you're selling...but it's really the story about ROI that an investor takes away."
As we trend towards Type 1 civilization, we are increasingly defining ourselves to be a more homogenous race. When it comes to making a planetary cultural statement, denim rules as the fabric of our lives. To survive in the new post modern value conscious era, Levis Struass is a great story in adaptibility. I think in 2003 Levis Strauss came out with the Signature line. Notice the power of story and make belief at play. What visual cues and emtional expression do you get when you read Signature? Check out their label. Very similar to the vintage iconic label isn't it? What a marvelous way to harness the intangible into tangible.
We humans have been story telling since 100,000 or more so years. We seek out experiences that fire our imaginations and enchants our spirit. Stories are the pathway in. Start at basic. Who are You? Defining who you are is the abiding question for marketers including trade show design architects. Weaving a story along this question alone is an opportunity to create a brand for your company so powerful that your logo or mission statement pales in comparison.
Brian Tarcy, a journalist and an author reveals 5 secrets to the Mastery of Story Telling.1. Think chronologically. Start at the beginning. A good writer can make the beginning be almost anywhere, but an obvious place to think about is the day the company opened/was formed etc.
2. Use philosophy, but don't preach. People want to learn who you are and what you stand for. Your story is more than just what happened in year 1, year 2 etc. There is something deeper in it. Bring that out. But be careful on your tone.
3. Tell stories. Remember the the events that created who you are. Details are crucial. Use your five senses and make stories come alive.
4. Don't only use your own words. Talk to your employees, board members, anyone invested in your story and see what they remember. Use these memories to paint a three-dimensional picture. Ask more than one person to remember the same event.
5. Make the sum bigger than the parts. You are not just telling your story to tell your story, although it is a nice memento.
You want readers to believe in you the same way you believe in you. It should add up into one powerful thing. "Once people make your story their story, you have tapped into the powerful force of faith."—
Annette Simmons, Author, The Story Factor.Your brand belongs to you. Your story belongs to you.
The stage that you stand on in a trade show venue is yours. Shape your destiny, build your mountain. But start at the base and tell everyone who are you and how you did it.Sarmistha Tarafder
Choice Architect
Standing in front of the sacred rock, I gasped in wonderment.
What lay before me was a primal definition in astute presentation. It won't be a stretch by any standard if I do say that the Parthenon is the best example where mathematics presents itself in the form of high art. Yes, the golden rectangle have been the defining factor of this architecture. It is a Doric Temple.
When the great Phidias designed this temple to house goddess Athena Parthenos, I wonder if he realized that this rubble of a ruin would one day stand as a testament to the Athenian Golden Age and parade itself as the paragon of Western civilization. Perhaps not. Any here is why?
Nancy Duarte, the most sought after presentation expert says, 90% of the creative process is actually destructive. You create a slide presentation—and then slowly but surely see what you can peel away. What the mighty Phidias could not possibly achieve, disastrous geo-political affairs managed to turn the temple into a core shell of pristine elegance that seems to follow this destructive law.
When you are presenting at a trade show or an event try using using a single word on a slide to convey your core message. Want your audience to remember various benefits? Don not plaster all bullet-style on a single slide; Reveal them one at a time, unveil a mystery, create a story, and share an example or anecdote to illustrate each one. "Have an image or quote that accurately expresses your idea? Let it! "Don't be afraid to remove everything else from the slide, and let that one powerful image say it all."
The mystery of this Doric temple is gradually revealed when you study the divine proportions. The total height of the building is approximately 1.618 times the height to the top of the columns, and the frieze sculptures (called triglyphs [columns] and metopes [sculptures]) on the entablature closely follow the same proportion.
The mathematical ratio "phi" is a tribute to the phenomenal Phidias. The sculptor of the goddess of wisdom have successfully spread his ideas & moved people over centuries.
Don't just share your ideas or your data; make meaning. Again in the words of Nancy Duarte, don't focus solely on changing minds; put some effort into changing hearts. Powerful imagery and though-provoking video are excellent tools for connecting your audience to your message emotionally—which is how we humans make decisions.
Sarmistha Tarafder
Choice Architect
Lounges have now gained tremendous momentum in the design of trade show exhibit spaces and special events. Dedicated sitting spaces are now integral part of design directives. These areas are resolute in providing a communicative approach to information exchange and information gathering. In today's era of viral marketing and virtual interacting, it is a featured highlight of face to face marketing. When 46% of executive decision makers make purchase decisions while attending a show and 51% of executive decision maker requested that a sales representative visit their company after the show and get this: 95% of the executive decision makers meet with their current suppliers at a trade show it is only makes sense to promote the right kind of atmospheric conditions that fosters such conversation. And a lounge does exactly that. It is a luxurious conclave where talent meets target.
If you have a smaller space e.g 20'x20' or so and if you find the above statistics valuable; you might want to think about a club design layout. However, if you have a larger space you might want to pledge a portion of it to elegant setting with flamboyant and interesting furniture that speaks to the sensuality of the limbic system. The lounge inside your space is a grand setting for show casing your latest innovation. For it is good to know that 50% of the trade show attendees wants to see "What's New" in products and services and 90% of the trade show attendees have not been called upon (face-to-face) by any company exhibiting at the show in the 12 months prior to the event.
Why not make the experience delightful?
Research from Cap Gemini Ernst and Young states that “Consumers don't differentiate retailers by their value propositions.” Brands don't distinguish themselves by having unique products or services as much as they do by the experience they present. A memorable experience is one that thrills or excites customers and prospects. As kids we thrived on thrills. We remember our first touch down. We remember our first voyage on Pirates of the Caribbean. We remember our first festival of colors. As adults, we continue to seek thrills in our professional and personal worlds. "We want the thrill of getting high response rates to a direct marketing campaign; the thrill of exceeding our sales quotas; of earning that next job promotion in record time. Businesses that understand what excites their customers are those that stand to gain higher levels of customer loyalty, no matter the challenges their markets face." Jeanette McMurtry, MBA
Lounging in Cappuccino and Hot Pink is all about the ideal setting that peeks the thrill of "what's new" and what's exciting in a monotonous day to day survival. Next time as you plan your space, think about the ways that you can distinguish yourself in those precious moments of interaction that we call face-to-face marketing in the hyper competitive marketing world of business-to-business.
Source for the above statistics : CEIR.org
Sarmistha Tarafder
Choice Architect
It is a fierce, foamy world of 'what ifs', 'what can be' and 'what might be' that we live in. I say fierce, because competition to stand out and stay ahead was never this acute in the written history of mankind. I say foamy, because never before we were aware of our own potential. We are immersed in the froth of promises and possibilities that constantly appear each moment, only to disappear the very next moment. We experience magic in every single breath. We indulge in the process of continuous creativity consciously and sub-consciously. We are on an enhanced evolutionary path. This means mankind as a whole is rigorously pursing the 80-20 rule. [Eradicate 80% of things that yield only 20% of the value in any undertaking. Then re-direct and refocus the freed up resources to leverage radical levels of change.] Nature does it. A single snowflake holds wisdom of the eternity.
Think about what is impossible today but if possible would change the way you do business. At Skyline we are proud to have done exactly that. We have bent at will the linear laws of physics that reflects the highest degree of imaginative thinking and is almost perceived by others as revolutionary — crazy— in its departure from conventional trade show exhibit design and build. And, enough craziness and daring produces heightened spikes of innovations which results in new concepts and new constructs.
When the first flower sprouted in the high mountains of the Andes, some millions of years ago, it was a revolutionary breakthrough. It evolved into the high civilization of the Incas. If a flower can achieve such a feat of wonder, imagine what you can do!
This time of the year impels me to be contemplative and to be in flow with Nature. It is amazing to see the 80-20 rule being played out again and again. It is in the graciousness of giving up that we supercharge our evolutionary process. It is the wellspring of our conscious creativity.
Thank you. Thank you again.
bended tree—
with twiggy fingers
trailing along crust
of snow…can you
bear the weight? lacy
tendrils of frost nip
at your ankles and
this heavy wreath of
crystalline drips
from your crown. How
do you stand winter’s
icy blast--folded under
so? your aged limbs,
a scroll, creased in upon
bowed body and tied
down. do you pray?
do you stare directly
into the sun--this
divagating philter in
which you beek? await
the liberating thaw…
then you will arch your
back in piquant awakening
and reach once more
for brumal skies.
http://onestoppoetry.com/
Sarmistha Tarafder
Choice Architect
Conventional wisdom reserves that right hemisphere of our brain is endowed with processing of visual, spatial and emotional manipulation. The left hemisphere is there to serve us for linear reasoning and language functions. However, the irony is there is no direct scientific evidence collaborating the idea that different thinking style lie within the domain specification of each hemisphere...."the neurophysiologists and neuropsychologists who specialize in the human cerebral cortex are starting to view the left-righters with something of the wariness which the astronomers reserve for astrology." - William H. Calvin.
The Art of Thinking is a dance between the critique and the creator within. The brain constantly combines, substitutes, adapts, modifies, magnifies, substracts, adds, re-arrange and reverses bits of information in order for thinking to happen. It is like a cerebral symphony where billions of neurons participate as master musicians. Perhaps, for this very reason there is little agreement amongst scholars about the definition of the two kinds of thinking. However, the thinking pattern of the geniuses reveal that they are skilled both in the Art of Science and the Science of Art. They can reduce the sun to a yellow spot and they can easily visualize a yellow spot as the life enforcing sun.
In his book, Cracking Creativity, Michael Michalko explores the art of holistic thinking exhibited by geniuses.
1. Know how to see, not just look at: “The invisibility of the obvious”. Great sales people are so good that you do not know when they are selling.
2. Make a thought visible: You interpret via the tangible. "Identify and secure elements needed to draw reasonable conclusions." Be a consummate sketcher.
3. Think fluently: "The holistic experience that people feel when they act with total involvement." It is being in the "flow" as embraced by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
4. Make novel combinations: Liquid Paper and Velcro owes their existence due to this novelty.
5. Connect the unconnected: The ever popular Reggae emerged due to the connectivity of traditional African jazz, American jazz, old-time rhythm and blues, ska and rocksteady. Eric Lewis is one such connector. He created a new musical identity: ELEW......it is rock, it is jazz, it is classical piano.
6. Look at the other side: Roger Martin calls this multi-dimensional “integrative thinking”. Martin interviewed more than 50 successful leaders, to find a distinct common characteristic: "the predisposition and capacity to hold two diametrically opposing ideas in their heads. And then, without panicking or simply settling for one alternative or the other, they're able to produce a synthesis that is superior to either opposing idea."
7. Look in other worlds: It so happens we have abundance of green plants here on Earth. However, that does make a plant green. When the scientists studied light absorbed and reflected by organisms on Earth (that which attributes to the greenery), determined that if astronomers were to look at the light given off by planets circling distant stars, they might predict that some planets have mostly non-green plants.
8. Find what you are not looking for: The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius who also happened to be a monumental philosopher found equanimity in the midst of conflict.
9. Awaken the collaborative spirit: 'Do Us a Flavour’ An open competition was enacted to design a new crisp flavor for Walkers. The best flavors were then voted on by the public. http://www.walkers.co.uk/flavours/
It is said that the master polymath, Leonardo daVinci always looked at his finished painting from a far distance to get a different perspective. By distancing yourself from the pattern of how you are conceived, you change your perception of who you are, thereby allowing yourself to see something that you could not otherwise see.
Sarmistha Tarafder
Choice Architect
As I fly over the clouds from a land, where the mountains talk to you and the fog cloak you only to whisk you away to yet another dimension; to a land that has been lyricized as Christmas by the Bay and that which I call home, my heart fills with immense gratitude and joy. I feel elated that I live in an age where I get to immerse myself in the endless span of the blue sky which the masters say is our true nature. Realization of this nature of mind is our innermost essence, the truth that we all search for through out our lives. Looking out the window as I contemplate on the clouds below, it becomes clear to me why metaphorically it is always the sky that describes the mind. It has been said that our minds our embodiment of perfection. It is so perfect that not even the Buddhas can improve upon it, "nor can sentient beings spoil it in their seemingly infinite confusion." The sky is our essential nature and the confusion of the ordinary mind are the hanging clouds. When we are down below, looking up, it is unbelievable that there could be anything beyond the clouds. Yet, as I fly above I experience a limitless expanse of clear blue sky.
It is often asked where is this buddha nature? And it is said: "It is in the sky-like nature of our mind. Utterly open, free, and limitless, it is fundamentally so simple and so natural that it can never be complicated, corrupted, or stained, so pure that it is beyond even the concept of purity and impurity. To talk of this nature of mind as sky-like, of course, is only a metaphor that helps us to begin to imagine its all-embracing boundlessness; for the buddha nature has a quality the sky cannot have, that of the radiant clarity of awareness." It is simply your flawless, present awareness, cognizant and empty, naked and awake.....(The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying)
Profound and tranquil, free from complexity,
Uncompounded luminous clarity,
Beyond the mind of conceptual ideas;
This is the depth of the mind of the Victorious Ones.
In this there is not a thing to be removed,
Nor anything that needs to be added.
It is merely the immaculate
Looking naturally at itself ............ Nyoshul Khenpo Rinpoche
On this enlightened note, I start the official season of sharing and singing, dancing and dodging, giving and receiving. Thank you and thank you a thousand times for being part of my odyssey!
For it's Christmas by the bay
A time to celebrate
In the San Francisco way
It's Christmas by the bay
I'm with you in my favorite place
On my favorite holiday.
Sarmistha Tarafder
Choice Architect
Commanding over 10 million Twitter followers and over 33 million Facebook fans, Lady Gaga, is also the creative tour-de-force and a key player of the Polaroid team. Her fame is sensational. She gracefully glides between the worlds of technology, music, artistry and marketing. She is the fearless, daring marketing scientist that we all applaud and strive for!
As [trade show] marketers, we are constantly working to leave behind a blazing trail in a crowded industry. Lady Gaga was trying to do the same thing in the over-crowded music industry. Gaga won where others lost.
Here are 3 "gaga" lessons that intrigues me.
Marketing is a Core Belief System: It is a Lifestyle: Gaga has made fame and marketing her lifestyle. Every performance or song release has marketing as a part of its DNA. It is the mindset of the "Gaga" brand. In her very own words: "I used to walk down the street like I was a f*&^ing star... I want people to walk around delusional about how great they can be - and then to fight so hard for it every day that the lie becomes the truth.”
Marketing needs to be in the DNA of your company. Employees in all departments should create content and aid in the company's goal of market domination. Integrate marketing into your business culture.
The Marketing Bedrock: Humility and Appreciation: Gaga has worked tirelessly on accumulating her fans. She drives loyalty by tweeting her fans directly (sometimes on an hourly basis). If you have watched any of her shows you will know how the pop diva keeps re-defining humility in a profound way!. [Watch the video below: you will get the drift] Treat them well and they will make you a superstar is her marketing mantra. Professional photographers are barred from her concerts but she allows her fans to record and distribute videos of her live performance on YouTube.
Appreciate customers and fans for their support. Conduct surveys to ask for input and demonstrate how that feedback is reflected in your business changes. Offer free training, education and surprise gifts for customers to show your appreciation for their business.
Take a Marketing Stand. Drive Your Purpose. Be Fearless. We all target and segment our markets. We do so, because we simply cannot be everything to everybody. Lady Gaga takes it a step further. She does not mind annoying people that she knows she cannot please. It might not be politically correct but being a people-pleaser is just plain boring. Again in her own words, “If you don't have any shadows you're not in the light”
In your business, being controversial isn't about taking risks. It is about doing something unexpected and out of character for your industry. Take a different stand on a topic than most others in your industry would take. Imagine dialogues. Imagine talking with a role model to gain new perspective and insight. Or you can imagine how some role models would discuss your problem. Think about how things originate. Take an object and think about what elements are involved in its creation and how. This will open doors to thinking differently.
Above all, face fear. What Gautama Buddha preached more than 2500 years ago, Lady Gaga undertakes a contemporary evaluation of the same precept.
The whole secret of existence is to have no fear. Never fear what will become of you, depend on no one. Only the moment you reject all help are you freed........Gautama Buddha
“All that ever holds somebody back, I think, is fear. For a minute I had fear. [Then] I went into the [dressing] room and shot my fear in the face..........” Lady Gaga
Sarmistha Tarafder
Choice Architect
"The infinite! No other question has ever moved so profoundly the spirit of man; no other idea has so fruitfully stimulated his intellect; yet no other concept stands in greater need of clarification than that of the infinite . . ." David Hilbert (1862-1943)
The very title "Return on Infinity" is in itself ridden with self-contradiction. How do you even begin to harness the infinite concept of "Infinity". Given that the concept has been contemplated by artists, philosophers,
mathematicians and common man since before the beginning of written history, it is infinitely pompous of me even to delve into it. However I do have to acknowledge:
unconsciously, I use it as a design crutch every single day. Consciously, I might as well give it proper credence.
Famed intellectuals have presented varied concepts about their understanding of infinity. It is as though infinity upholds different meaning for different appeals. As the underground, Russian poet,
Joseph Brodsky so rightfully said,
"The poetic notion of infinity is far greater than that which is sponsored by any creed." Rudy Rucker in his book, Infinity and the Mind, undertakes a captivating journey to that frontier of the universe he calls the "Mindscape," where he explores infinity in all its forms: potential and actual, mathematical and physical, theological and mundane. Rucker clues us on
Kurt Friedrich Gödel's rotating universe, in which he postulates possibility to travel into the past and spells out an interpretation of quantum mechanics in which billions of parallel worlds are produced every microsecond. In the kingdom of infinity, mathematics, science, and logic merge with the marvelous. It is a continuous ebb and flow of hard logic and fluid mysticism. The
conundrum that arise from this merging, explains the illusive human mind: its potential, its powers, and its frailty.
In their temples, the Egyptians from antiquity followed a simple layout that mirrored the concept of infinity: the creation of the universe: both metaphorically and structurally. In their usual customary creations, architects, industrial designers and 3D trade show designers are known to play with the flow. The flow of the infinite curve that is. However, architect
Serge Salat, takes a giant leap beyond. In 'Beyond Infinity', he brings the abstraction of infinite into finite. It is a multisensory voyage painting “the possibility in the contemporary world to create new beauty and dream through a fusion of classical culture and innovation”. Perhaps, this is the first time in known history one gets to delight on the stark theory that space and time is immersed in an unending subdivision!
Enjoy![Paradoxes of the infinite arise] only when we attempt, with our finite minds, to discuss the infinite, assigning to it those properties which we give to the finite and limited; but this I think is wrong, for we cannot speak of infinite quantities as being the one greater or less than or equal to another.
Galileo Galilei,
quoted in Infinity and the Mind by Rudy Rucker.Sarmistha Tarafder
Choice Architect
A metaphor is an image or a story to represent an idea that is abstract or intangible.
The classic metaphor "The Melting Pot" and its message holds a tremendous power on the national imagination – the promise that all immigrants can be transformed into Americans and be part of the American democratic wheel of freedom and civil liberty. Another overused contemporary metaphor that comes to mind is “war”. It is one of the dominating visuals of our current mass psyche....The war on cancer, the war on drugs, the war on terrorism, the war on middle class...We are devoted to war games and ponder about the violence in our society.
Nothing rivals the human body when it comes to metaphors. Since the time of Aristotle architectural metaphor attributed to human anatomy and vice versa. "What walls and beams provide in houses, poles in tents, and keels and ribs in ships, the substance of bones provides in the fabric of man." In our modern techno-machinist society, the computers are described in bodily metaphors. In athletic interplay or in armed conflict human body is nothing less than a high performing machine. In creative expression of ballet, human body is an art form. In fashion, human body is a display. In metaphysics, human body is a vehicle for the spirit and in the skilled hands of Richard Macdonald human body becomes the celebration of spirit.
Metaphors are powerful aid to our imagination. Metaphors shape and define the boundaries of how we think about problems and how to solve them. Metaphors capture our imagination by speaking the language of the brain. It is the language of experiences, attitudes and influences. Metaphors appeals to all our senses and makes dry business messaging a common play ground that is shared by Visuals, Kinesthetics and Auditories. Metaphors make communications easier, richer and quicker to understand. Capture the imagination and you Capture the heart.
Come up with a metaphor to represent your personality or your marketing message. When you are presenting at a company meeting or special venues like trade shows use the magic of metaphors to direct your audience to their senses and transport excitement, imagination and dimension. Your audience will thank you.
As I draw an end, the perennial metaphor about human body comes to mind. In the Katha Upanishad 1:3:3., it has been said “Know that the Self is the rider, and the body the chariot; that the intellect is the charioteer, the mind the reins and the five senses the horses.”........ I will let the richness of this metaphor feast your brain. Good Luck!
Sarmistha Tarafder
Choice Architect
The avant-garde movement in art and literature of the 20th-century that sought to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind, for example by the irrational juxtaposition of images is often termed as surrealism.
Science says that the human nervous system is bombarded with roughly 2 million bits of information. To maintain sanity, our conscious mind filters out most of the stimuli. In 1956 George A. Miller discovered that the number of objects an average human can hold in working memory is 7 ± 2. The rest, that 2 million - 7(± 2) bits are dealt by the unconscious. Such is the glory of our unconscious mind. The unconscious mind is the store house of immense creative potential. It is 90% of our total mind power as opposed to the 10% of the mind that we usually use in our normal waking state. Another way to look at it is 90% of our total mind power is not normally accessed while sleep. We spend 1/3 of our life asleep. It is the inscapable law of life. However, the subconscious mind never rests or sleeps. It is always active, controlling all our vital forces.
Dr. John Bigelow, a famous research authority on sleep, demonstrated that at night while asleep you receive impressions showing that the nerves of the eyes, ears, nose, and taste buds are active during sleep, meaning our brain is at work. He says that the main reason we sleep is because “the nobler part of the soul is united by abstraction to our higher nature and becomes a participant in the wisdom and foreknowledge of the gods.” Often, we have experienced the creative intelligence of our subconscious at work in our dreams. A consistent way to tap into your dreams is to sleep with a dream journal. When you are at the edge of half-sleep and half wakefulnes, write down the dream in one sentence. You will be amazed the doors that will be opened in that surreal state of mind. As Brad Holland so skillfully pits it: "Surrealism: An archaic term. Formerly an art movement. No longer distinguishable from everyday life."
Surrealism surfaced in the 1920s as a literary movement responding to the illogical mass killings and social turmoil after World War I. Surrealist writers, including former Dadaist Andre Breton, were motivated by Sigmund Freud’s work in exploring the unconscious and sought direct access to the deepest levels of the human mind, unfiltered by logic or reason. By the early 1920s, graphic design and visual art expressed dream-like imagery, ideas mined directly from the unconscious and Salvador Dali became the leader of the Surrealist Movement. The melting watches became the marquee surrealist works of all times.
Sarmistha Tarafder
Choice Architect