Berlioz - Romeo and Juliet

Berlioz’s symphonic treatment of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is a visionary work, a marvel of poetry and passion. From the orchestral tour de force of the popular Queen Mab scherzo to the sublime love scene, Romeo and Juliet is one of the high points of romantic music. Valery Gergiev returns to lead the Orchestra, Chorus, and soloists in this French classic.

For tickets, click here

Liz and I will combine our professional experience and training to present this overview of two major approaches and tools that assist individuals and organizations in transition. The attendees will be introduced to two models: Barry Johnson’s Polarity Managementâ„¢ model and the Osborn-Parnes model for Creative Problem Solving. With Polarity Managementâ„¢, one looks at situations through the lens of interdependent factors or values that work together, e.g., change and stability. The Creative Problem Solving method is centered around divergent and convergent thinking (another polarity) as the key elements of deliberate creativity. These two models combined can help one think and act in ways that use one’s existing thinking skills and suggest some ways to enhance those skills as one faces ransitions in life. This keynote presentation will serve as an introduction to a week-long workshop coming in the early months of 2008.

For more information, see the web site for the DuPage Executive Network (DEN).

Orchestra of Life Nite Flight presentation:
1. Prelude to an Afternoon of a Faun by Claude Debussy. Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Sir Georg Solti, Conductor.
2. This Majestic Mountain by Michael Hoppe from the album, “Solace.”

Springboard Class “C:”
1. Homeland Theme from the album, “Homeland,” by Michael Hoppe.
2. This Majestic Mountain from the album, “Solace,” by Michael Hoppe.
3. Circles from the album, “My Romance, an Evening with Jim Brickman,” by Jim Brickman.
4. Dear Father from “Jonathan Living Seagull,” from the album, “The Nature of America, A Musical Impression.” Cincinatti Pops, Erich Kunzel, conductor.
5. Canon in D Major, by Johann Pachelbel.
6. Shenandoah from the album, “The Nature of America, A Musical Impression.” Cincinatti Pops, Erich Kunzel, conductor.
7. Theme from “Dances with Wolves,” from the album, “The Nature of America, A Musical Impression.” Cincinatti Pops, Erich Kunzel, conductor.
8. Theme from “Lonesome Dove,” from the album, “The Nature of America, A Musical Impression.” Cincinatti Pops, Erich Kunzel, conductor.
9. Feather Theme from “Forrest Gump,” from the album, “The Nature of America, A Musical Impression.” Cincinatti Pops, Erich Kunzel, conductor.
10. The Magnificent Seven, from the album, “Round Up.” Cincinatti Pops, Erich Kunzel, conductor.

It has been my experience that a direct relationship between orchestral music and the human body exists. Stephen Halpern has been the vanguard researcher in this area. He has shown that a relationship does exist between music and the body. I choose orchestral music because I know it so well. However, I am quite aware that many many other types of music can be just as effective.

I look at the choice of instrumentation and the harmonic processes a composer uses. Through the workshops I led in St. Louis, I found a consistent response to my theories within the attendees, and now I would like to formalize some of the research and its application. I also teach the principles I use to choose music, and students become more aware of what they are listening to in their immediate environment.

As an example, I am offering my readers this suggestion. Go to iTunes or your favorite music store and get a recording of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No.2. Another choice would be any of the J. S. Bach Concerti for Four Harpshichords. Play the recording while doing your work today - these should be excellent choices for heavy thinking. Would like to hear/read your comments on this!

There still may be more changes coming, but for now, this feels like a good fit for me.

I will let the people at Ning give the best description of what they are: “Ning is the only online service where you can create, customize, and share your own Social Network for free in seconds.” It is like MySpace and Google or Yahoo Groups and You Tube all rolled into one.

“Ning is a platform for creating your own social networks. Our passion is putting new social networks in the hands of anyone with a good idea. With Ning, your social network can be anything and for anyone.

You start by choosing a combination of features (videos, blogs, photos, forums, etc.) from an ever-growing list of options. Then customize how it looks, decide if it’s public or private, add your brand logo if you have one, and enable the people on your network to create their own custom personal profile pages.”

Ning is truly innovative, which is why I love it. I have not explored it yet - I just saw it today - and intend to use it. What the people at Ning have done is create what they call a platform, or collection of technologies that keeps expanding and is unlimited to its members. I and other members can create what I define as a social network as I perceive and desire it.

I am excited about this opportunity. They do provide businesses the opportunity to create a branding of a social network. It will be interesting to see how this develops.

“CPSI offers processes, tools, networking, challenges, stimulation, concepts and solutions for unlocking your creative spirit and implementing new ideas. Whether you’re looking to increase creativity in your business, educational or personal life, we welcome you and invite you to join us in a celebration of applied imagination.

Unlike most professional and personal development conferences, CPSI brings together a wide diversity of backgrounds and geography, which enriches the variety of ideas that will lead to insight. You’ll rub elbows and learn with teachers, business executives, students, writers, doctors, philosophers, entrepreneurs, engineers, artists, researchers, managers, inventors, consultants, conflict mediators, HR professionals, healthcare professionals, community leaders, explorers, thinkers and dreamers. At CPSI, regardless of background we all recognize that creativity comes in many diverse packages and has endless application. So please come join us in a beautiful setting that encourages relaxation, learning, thinking and exploration!”

For more information about this outstanding conference, go to cpsiconference.com.

I am in the process of selecting how to present this new blog. There is some discussion in the blogging community about whether a blog internal to a web site, like this one, should have a consistent look and feel. I am choosing to play with the look and feel and see what I like.

Welcome to the newest addition to my web site! I hope you will find interesting articles here.

I am reminded of my childhood, the vacations at Grandpa’s house, where I and my sisters would ceremoniously take walks with Grandpa to the Creek, where we explored what we imagined to be the great canyons and cliffs surrounding the roaring river. The walk down that alley to the creek was certainly a bus ride - Grandpa was always in control. But when we arrived at the creek, we were on our own to explore to our hearts content. Our imaginations were wild with adventure. Climbing down from the street down tot he water was like Tom Cruise on the cliff in the beginning of the Mission Impossible movie.

Back to the present. While exploring informal learning with blogs, wikis, and Web 2.0 technologies, I am pondering how innovation fits into the picture. True, just as we explored the creek at my Grandfather’s house, we were innovating in terms of our own personal experiences. However, I am sure that many other kids visited that same creek, climbed the same embankment. I am sure that our adventures and imaginative play was original, maybe not, but there is no documentation of our experiences, or theirs, to know.

The creation of new knowledge is my passion. How it is created, how the experience of innovating can be recreated, and why it happens in defferent situations fascinates me.

The technologies we are exploring in our Unworkshop3 are innovative in themselves in their application to learning. These tools are certainly instruments for transfering of knowledge between bike riders as well as bus riders. Unlike other tools for learning, blogs and wikis certainly make the process of moving tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge more easy and accessible (if not entertaining).

I am offering my readership to participate with me in my exploration of innovation in this technological paradigm. Can it be that innovation can be enhanced in this process? My wonder is that maybe it will have to be redefined. Honestly, I am finding that these questions are in my head, but i don’t understand why yet. And this is why I am inviting others to participate - I am exploration my own personal awareness here. I cannot put my finger on the question I am wanting to ask…or answer for that matter.

My mother is now a retired teacher from the high school in my home town. At the time of the story, the high school was a seven building campus, all located on the same lot of land. A new science building was being built on a new parcel of land across the street from the main campus. The superintendent (my mother’s boss) was under fire because he refused to allow sidewalks to be built. Parents and board members were concerned that the students would be able to safely navigate crossing the city street in the short time they had to get to the new building from their classes.

The summer ended, and the building opened on the first day of school. One temparary path of wood chips to each of the entrances was provided. The rest of the lot was sodded, but no other landscaping was done.

One month after the opening of school (and the new science building), the school board met. The superintendent invited parents, the architect and landscaper to the meeting. Upon the opening of the building, the superintendent relocated the meeting to the grounds of the new science building.

When the meeting recongregated at the grounds of the new building, the superintendent simply asked all there to look at the ground. They discovered that paths had been worn into the ground in an intricate, simple design of straight lines that directly connected many buildings of the main campus with the new building’s entrances. Also, they discovered a now grass-barren area off the side of the building that resembled a courtyard. The superintendent ordered the architect to build the sidewalks where the paths were and to create a courtyard.

Allow me to first say that I know that there are many versions of this story in circulation. I don’t know if the superintendent knew those stories when building this building. However, what I have stated is fact. He would not allow permanent sidewalks to be built until the students themselves created their own paths to the building. He allowed the students to discover their own paths to the knowledge. The students created their own user interface!

This true story serves as a powerful metaphor for me on so many levels. As a professional in designing and building web applications for the distribution and acquisition of information, I always keep this metaphor in my consciousness.

When I am asked to build a new tool, or to design an interface for an application, I first examine all aspects of the users. Who are they? How do they do what they do now? I spend time with the users and examine how they accomplish their tasks now. In two cases, I rejected the project because I saw the project proposal as an example of building a sidewalk without paths defined (the sponsor wanted to tell the users how to do what they do).

An example of how innovative this approach can be: My manager asked me to automate an emergency contact list our organization relies on. It currently existed as an Excel spreadsheet that was updated monthly. My task was to create a web based tool that allowed searching, updating and creating of new contacts on the fly. I asked my manager how he wanted to use the application, and how he wanted the application to be used. They were two different things, as it turned out. He thought about my question, and later came to me with a new specification for the project. He wanted me to design the application/tool so that he and the users could find a person by a) whom they report to, b) what they did in the organization, and c) by their location in the building. Once the application was implemented, it soon became widely used throughout the organization, even though it was designed with our specific division’s purpose in mind. But that one simple question instigated curiosity and innovation where it did not exist before.

In summary, I am paying more attention to the paths I follow and create in my life. As I mature in my profession, it is my focus to find and discover paths engraved in the ground, rather than to blindly and arrogantly build concrete sidewalks.