Milk with sugar

One of the nice things about living not too close to school is that I take public transport a lot. And most of the time I quite enjoy it, since it's a treasure trove of interesting conversation and observation.

I've been thinking a lot lately about user generated content, and following from that, whether anyone can be creative. Better minds than mine have already said a lot about this, and I don't have the answer. The optimist in me says that everyone must at least have a few creative bones in their body, the pessimist says that judging by what comes out of most people they might not have anything remotely creative in them.

This morning on the bus I stumbled on a little treasure. I heard and saw a little boy and his mother on their way to school, and the boy asked all these really good questions. My favourite one was: what does tea with milk and sugar taste like without the tea? Just the milk and sugar? He drove his mum nuts and she quickly put and end to it, but I thought he was very insightful normal for a boy his age (he was about 6 I think). When and why do people lose this ability to wonder about the things around them and why things are the way they are?

This morning in Product Innovation, Mat Hunter from Ideo London came and spoke to us. I enjoyed his talk last year a lot (I can't seem to find my blog entry about it, so no link I'm afraid), so I was very much looking forward to this and I wasn't disappointed, he rocked. Insightful and humble, with great slides made for an interesting presentation.

[added: two interesting examples of crowdsourcing, i.e. the creativity of a group, in creative projects: Penguin's attempts to have a book written by using a wiki, and Aswarmofangels which is trying to get people to participate in and funding of a movie.]
[edit: thought about whether this was insightful or normal 6-year old behaviour. In an adult it is creative (or irritating, depending on how you look at it). In a 6-year old it is normal.]

Comments

[Rajan Prakash]

A saying I have heard "The moment a little boy is concerned with which is a jay and which is a sparrow, he can no longer see the birds or hear them sing. -Eric Berne"

[Nox Dineen]

Interesting conversations are the reason I miss taking transit. My subway commute gave me the most fodder for writing of any single experience in my life (maybe that means I need to kick it up and live a more interesting life).

There are some other interesting crowdsourcing projects out there. Cambrian House -- www.cambrianhouse.com -- (where I work), offers a platform on which anybody can start a project, and anybody (programmer, graphic designer, marketer, or any other skill) can join in the project for a set sum of money or for royalty points (to earn a percentage of future profits). We also have a project in development called Fundable Films -- www.fundablefilms.com, which is applying the idea of crowdfunding to film projects.

[Suzy]

Rajan: thanks for the quote, I like it.

Nox: thanks! I'm fascinated by the idea of crowdsourcing and crowdfunding, I'm reading a book called Wikinomics now (see also www.wikinomics.com) which talks about these phenomena too.