Strands of Genius: Deliverables, Sandwich Philosophy, Shoshin
Plus: Purpose in Life, Giant Space Dog, ARF Creative Effectiveness
WRITING FROM | Chattanooga, TN
WORKING ON | final touches on new keynote, traveling to said keynote for ARF / NYC
LOOKING AHEAD
Sept 24-25 | Chattanooga, TN
Sept 25-28 | New York, NY
Sept 29-? | Chattanooga, TN
:: WHAT’S NEW & WEEKLY GRATITUDE ::
Hello and welcome to back the universe of Strands! We have missed you, why not stay a while and have a cup of tea. We like to imagine you all savoring every bit of strands like a biscuit dunked in a cuppa but of course inevitably some will fall into the cup and be lost until later (this almost makes sense in English Faris assures us). We hope that strands is the strangest and most inspiring of the newsletters in our *waves hands broadly* industry but we are always KEEN TO HEAR FROM YOU because we love you. What do you like or want more of? What does Faris do that annoys some of you? When are you coming to visit us in Chattanooga?
It is the 24th of September 2024 of the Common Era and we are very excited about a gig at THE ARF Creative Effectiveness (xAI) conference this week in NYC.
(Hiiiii everyone we know and love in NYC, this is where we say we’re really sorry but we are only popping in and out this time around. But if you’ll be at the conference, come say hi!)
HEY NYC AD FOLK ARE YOU GOING TO BE AT THIS?
On THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 26th 2024 Faris is giving the closing keynote at the ARF Creative Effectiveness Conference after a whole list of of heavyweight experts so he better be entertaining.
His new talk, Measuring the Unmeasurable, will (hopefully) absorb and reflect on all the days content while poking at the challenges and considerations in quantizing creative things and their effects on human emotion and buying behavior, featuring quantum mechanics.
Hey we love doing talks, we really really love it and people usually seem to like it too. So, as budgets get unlocked for next year….do keep us in mind, hey?
This week, we’re especially thankful for:
Marissa, Marisa&David&Coleman, Stephanie, Rob Salmon Theory’s whatsapp groupchat, Alex&Collin (happy birthday!), more quantum mechanical metaphors, Dragons (both in show and podcast form - this episode of Rest is History was sponsored by SkyTV UK to promote the launch of second season of HOD and is great. I like this kind of marketing, I wonder how many people listen weekly vs from archives, I wonder lots of things about podcast advertising - do any of you know A LOT ABOUT IT and want to guest curate strands, that would be cool), People vs Algorithms, & YOU. Yes, YOU, specifically, right now.
Hi! Thanks! Appreciate you. Maybe share with a friend if you like what we do, no worries if not. Muah.
:: THE LINKS ::
DELIVERABLES
Paul Ford is an excellent OG internet writer and this piece about DELIVERABLES is very germane to our consultancy practice and probably to yours too and your agency and so on. Also, there is excellent insight about public speaking and how Power works in the modern ‘corporate and political' world’ (since they have essentially merged…). “Learning the Python programming language will give you a certain kind of power over computers, but being amazing at PowerPoint is how you gain control over other people.” (F Train)
SANDWICH PHILOSOPHY
Faris has been thinking writing something like this a while so now he doesn’t need to. Sandwiches are amazing and fascinating and this pub quiz philosophical argument has also entertained us all over the world and on Twitter. “For some reason, reading about Socrates asking Euthyphro if what is pious is pious because it is loved by the Gods or whether the Gods love that which is pious was not really making much of a dent in my students’ understanding of the world, so instead I had them try to prove that they knew what a sandwich was. I put them in pairs and instructed them to create as clear and literal a definition as they could—one that encompassed all things they knew to be sandwiches, while providing criteria for excluding all those things that were obviously not sandwiches.” (Medium)
THE IMPORTANCE OF A BEGINNER’S MIND
Our friend Neil Perkin wrote a lovely piece on the importance of maintaining a beginner's mindset, or "Shoshin" throughout life. While adults are constrained by expectations and expertise, children naturally approach the world with curiosity and openness. They're playful, and don't have as much fear when it comes to trying something new. Neil’s got more about Shoshin and some suggestions on how you can practice cultivating a beginner’s mind. (I also loved reading how Kevin Kelly described optimism... ‘Optimism is less of a temperament and more of a choice…it’s almost a skill’.) (Only Dead Fish)
Want to chat, comment, question, compliment?
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:: PURPOSE IN LIFE AND THE GIANT SPACE DOG THAT WILL CONSUME US ALL ::
One of our dearest friends who is a source of great wisdom and references, R, sent us this and it’s great. The account - theforestjar - does these lovely, extensively research and considered animated shorts about complex ideas.
i.e.
Very nice. The Giant Space Dog is, I think, essentially a macro-metaphor for eschatological religions and doomer-prepper-apocolypto thinking in general.
If we can ever be of help to you, even outside of a formal engagement, please don’t hesitate to let us know.
rockON,
faris & rosie | your friends over at geniussteals.co
(still want more? @faris is still “tweeting” while @rosieyakob prefers instagram stories)
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It's called Genius Steals because we believe ideas are new combinations and that nothing can come from nothing. But copying is lazy. We believe the best way to innovate is to look at the best of that which came before and combine those elements into new solutions.
Co-Founders Faris & Rosie are award-winning strategists and creative directors, writers, consultants and public speakers who have been living on the road/runway since March 2013, working with companies all over the world. We have a distributed team ourselves, an accounting team is based in Tennessee where our company is registered, our admin extraordinaire is based in Playa del Carmen, and our collaborators are all over the world. Being nomadic allows us to go wherever clients need us to be, and to be inspired by the world in between.
Hit reply and let’s talk about how we might be able to work together :)