Wednesday, June 24, 2009

HOW Design Conference: Austin: 1st Day: 2nd Afternoon Session

My afternoon session got off to a creative jolt. "Group Brainstorming: Caffeine for the Creative Team" presented by Stefan Mumaw and Wendy Lee Oldfield was an excellent bracer after my huge chicken fried steak for lunch. They outlined 13 brainstorming principles for groups. They also hawked their books "Caffeine for the Creative Team: 200 Exercises to Inspire Group Innovation" and "Caffeine for the Creative Mind: 250 Exercises to Wake Up Your Brain". One of the chief ideas that I felt had merit was to limit a brainstorming session to less than an hour and a half. They called these sessions "brainsqualls" because they came and went quickly and produced many possibilities. They also suggested announcing the brainsquall session to give people enough time to generate ideas. This workshop was chock-full of great tidbits and it was liberally sprinkled with fun arty-sketchy-doodly exercises. And, I met some great people at my table. We also got to play with play-dough. How bad can that be? I give this session an A.

1 comment:

kokopelliwoman said...

Hi, Blythe! I must admit that I had purely selfish reasons for suggesting you blog the conference. Free professional development!! And personally tailored, no less! Thanks for sharing the good stuff.