There are people in the water swimming in place, waiting for a boat they want to climb in.
It’s your responsibility to build that boat.
Stay Positive & Go Find Yourself A Crew
Garth E. Beyer
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Tell Me What
I walked around campus earlier today and saw a couple of people (separate instances) giving something away. They had stacks of something and that was it: them and a stack of something. How could I ever be intrigued to know why I should take it if I have no clue what it is.
Show me a sign. Hollar out what you’re giving away. Tell me what it is.
People rarely express any interest or start to care about something if they don’t know what it is. News writing is a perfect example. Before a writer develops the nut graf (the why you should keep reading paragraph), they tell you what has happened, what the focus is, what the story is.
“Free Bible”
“Pocketbooks for students”
“2014 calendars”
What was it that they were handing out? If they had told me, then I would have been curious why they wanted to give me a free bible, why I need a pocketbook, why they were giving me a calendar when I only ever use the one on my phone.
I’ll never ask why if you never tell me what.
Stay Positive & Yes, There Can Be Mystery, But At Least Say You’re Giving A Mystery Box Away
Garth E. Beyer
Enlighten Others
Don’t Fund It
Don’t try to find funds for your venture, don’t pursue investors, don’t take out loans, don’t sell your soul. The moment you make a promise to deliver if you receive funds for it, they own in some instances part of what you deliver, but in most instances, all of what you deliver because you have to shape it to please the investor.
Discover what else you have available,
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friends. What skills do they have that can help you?
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interns. Who can you help by asking them to help you?
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space. Where can you collaborate, experiment, brainstorm?
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tools. What do you have that someone else can use better?
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internet. This isn’t a question. This is a demand. Leverage the web.
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knowledge. What un-used knowledge can you share?
Stay Positive & You’ve Got What It Takes
Garth E. Beyer
Enlighten Others
Why Are Manhole Covers Round?
I once heard that those who interviewed at Google were asked why manhole covers were round and not any other shape.
I can’t help but say it’s because the artistic ability to work with something round (rather than the traditional square canvas), which allows for some phenomenal creativity.
The real answer is that a round cover is the only shape of a manhole cover that no matter how it is turned, it won’t fall into the hole.
But, you know, design still matters after choosing a shape.
Stay Positive & Shape Is Only Part Of Design
Garth E. Beyer
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Enlighten Others
Art Isn’t For Squares
and this story isn’t only for painters. We’re all artists.
Being an artist is simple:
1. You have something that you use
2. You have something that you use it on
“But the painter’s basic challenge, the manipulation of colors and forms and metaphors on the flat plane with its almost inevitably rectangular shape, is no longer generally seen as art’s alpha and omega, as the primary place in the visual arts where meaning and mystery are believed to come together,” said Jed Perl, art critic for The New Republic
The square canvas has become the sign of an amateur. So has PowerPoint slide themes and fill-in-the-blank business plans and pre-written sales dialogues.
I’ve written almost exhaustively about the age of redesign that we are in. Artists of all kinds are experimenting not only with what they use, but what they use it on. I have noticed a fault, though. There’s a whitespace that needs to be filled.
3. Something new to say, express, or feel.
Michael Levenson, writer for The Atlantic said, “Brilliant new forms are good in themselves. But they’re even better when they inform new ethics, showing us how to acknowledge our contradictory modern selves and still marry for love (Woolf), or how to go on when you can’t go on (Beckett).”
Art isn’t for squares,
but it is for people who understand their “how” of making a difference.
Stay Positive & Find Your Whitespace And Fill It
Garth E. Beyer
Here are two articles that compliment one – another.
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Enlighten Others
I Don’t Care If You Come Up With A Defintion For Journalist, But I Do Care That
you come up with a universal definition for “mass shooting,” rather, a set of definitions.
FBI defines “mass murder” as one where at least four people are murdered during the same incident. People base “mass shooting” off that definition by saying that a mass shooting is when four or more people are shot during the same incident.
That’s like saying a person living in poverty thinks the same about a five dollar bill as a billionaire.
If you asked anyone on the streets to attach a number to the word “mass.” No one is going to say one, two, three, or four.
Take a step back from all the news you’ve read in the last 10 years. Now think about all the times you read or saw “mass shooting.” Was it really mass?
I think the FBI and laypeople can learn something from the U.S. Homeland Security Advisory System. They have levels of risk alerts. Instead of stating there will be a terrorist attack, they rank the possbility.
Or maybe the FBI can pull from the Fujita Scale. A scale that classifies the level of severity of a tornado. For example, a tornado producing gusts of 90 mph would be considered an “EF 1.”
Imagine if you switch “mph” with “deaths” in the Fajita Scale. Then you substitute each EF 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 with something that expresses the range of deaths in that category.
Which “X” would you substitute with “mass shooting”?
Certainly not them all.
1. Why not call the situation what it really is. If four people died, it’s a four person killing spree. If 36 died, it’s a 36 person killing spree. Now we don’t have to deal with which is a mass shooting and which isn’t. Calling a four person killing spree a mass shooting then calling a 36 person killing spree a mass shooting is insensitive to those closely connected with the 36 person killing spree.
2. If it’s a matter of word count or syllables to the media, I would rather have a lengthy accuracy than a short generalization. Wouldn’t you?
3. Notice how throughout this article, you felt the same for a “mass shooting” that involved four people versus a “mass shooting” that involved 36 people. Just because you get specific, doesn’t lose the impact. Any number of people dead hits those closest to them the same.
Enlighten Others
Seeing Is Doing
Milton Glaser said, “The great benefit of drawing is that when you look at something, you see it for the first time.”
I like to think this applies to me and my writing the same as it does to you and your form of art.
I could read everything that Malcolm Gladwell has written, then, if I were to type out a story, word-for-word, from one of his articles, I would still be seeing that story for the first time.
Of course, seeing is something much more than observing the image of something, it’s more like seeing into it.
You could craft the same business plan Jeff Bezos has written for Amazon and even after studying every part of it, transposing it would still allow you to see it for the first time.
This concept of fundamental to education. You can be told of a technique or an idea, but you won’t truly see it until you apply it or do it yourself.
Stay Positive & Seeing Is Doing, Doing Is Seeing
Garth E. Beyer
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