This is a follow up to the “Being Creative in a Digital World” session I ran for Channel 4 staff last week. We used Web-Ex, following Mark Berthelemy’s experience of using this after bad weather stopped him taking this course in person last year!
The session was very well attended, by staff from across the departments at Horseferry Road. Rather wonderfully, after a discussion about how much nicer it would be if they were all together rather than at separate desks/meeting rooms, the attendees organised themselves into two rooms very close to each other. As a presenter, I certainly found it easier as the conversation and contributions flowed far more, and were much more vocal than other web-sessions I have been involved in.
Unfortunately, it seems that either attendees had not received or had only just got the links to the ‘pre-reading’‘ – and they were under pressure to finish early for a 5 hour ‘all-staff management presentation that afternoon! Because of this, we had to begin with a deeper exploration of what ‘creativity’ might be – and I was pleased to note the diversity of views and perspectives about how creativity might impact the work that we are asked to do, especially in the ‘creative industries’.
How, exactly, can you introduce ‘creativity’ into the writing of the corporate Annual Review, which takes 9 months to produce involving every aspect of the organisation – for example?
Concerns about barriers emerged from the conversation, and the mixing of ‘creativity’ and just doing your job really well was a theme that we returned to over, and over. Creativity is not the same as effective work practices and the blocks to being creative are as much internal (from within yourself) as they are external (from managers).
I presented a set of tools and stages to adding creativity to daily working life. The discussion moved towards the idea that creativity is in all of us, that new ideas can come from a range of sources, and the tough bit was how to herd and capture ideas.
I noticed that many of the participants did not realise how many possible sources there were for new ideas, and how digital tools could organise these to make them useful in work. I was surprised how few seemed to use Google Alerts, or similar automated searches – either on the web or on social channels- to follow areas of interest. We looked at how tools, like Evernote, could make recording ideas – whatever the source,
For example, by ‘shouting out’ to my PLN on Twitter, I was able to get some great responses to one question from an attendee (Jennifer) , about how to make more of twitter at events, and how to combine these to inform debate and discussion:
- http://islandgovcamp.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/remote-attendees-participation-plan.html
- http://www.socialbro.com/
- http://visibletweets.com/
- http://twitterfall.com/
There was some useful feedback at the end of the session that I could have given more detail around specific tools to boost creativity. I had avoided this, for fear of being too specific and getting caught up in the ‘how to use’, but the feedback was clear. I will in future provide 5 tools, as examples, to promote discussion and practical experimentation during the session.
Participants asked for more details on online tools, and the list, hosted by Jane Hart on her amazing site – as a great place to learn about new tools and find one that suits: http://c4lpt.co.uk/directory-of-learning-performance-tools/ or summed up visually here.
I really enjoyed the discussion and sharing that took place in this session and look forward to the next one!
If you’d like me to bring this session to you and your team please contact jenny.bourlet@capita.co.uk.
Otherwise, get in contact with me to speak or provide training on education, technology, publishing and innovation.