The speakers on the second day of Behance’s 99% Conference discussed radicalization, break up songs, and game playing. Somehow, they made them all applicable and inspiring.
Jared Cohen of Google, spoke about how radicalization, regardless of the country or religion, is really a problem of disenfranchised youth.
Starlee Kine, of NPR, shared some of the starry eyed orphan’s in her head and challenged the audience to write down one idea they have. Just to see, maybe it will materialize.
According to Aaron Dignan, play is nature’s learning engine. Awareness that game playing increases the reward circuitry in our brain and could be a powerful learning strategy is increasing. Dignan is an advocate for incorporating gaming in the work environment.
CMO of GE, Beth Comstock, consider’s the role of marketers in her organization to be instigators. At the same time she recognizes that people need instigators, but rarely want them.
Joshua Foer, author of Moon Walking with Einstein, encouraged all of us to take measures to get off of the “Ok Plateau” This plateau is where we all end up, once we have become comfortable enough with a skill. The plateau explains how the majority of us spend several hours a day typing, without ever increasing our words per minute rate.
Linda Rottenberg claimed that stalking is “an under appreciated start-up strategy.” She knows something about start ups, her company Endeavor, supports high impact start-ups in developing countries.
Laura Guido Clark challenged all of us to “Know who we are and own it.” She reminded the audience, that “you can’t ask a client to do something. that you haven’t done yourself.”
The last speaker of the conference was Andrew Zuckerman. He revealed the making of his Wisdom project. His talk was peppered with quotes from some of the wise people he interviewed. My favorite was “You can’t get to wonderful, without first going through okay.” Like Chuck Close, who confessed he didn’t ever feel inspiration, Zuckerman cited rigor and curiosity as being the catalyst behind any project, not inspiration.
