Top Tags

Tag incubator

The Crystal Ball.

“Begin with the end in mind” is based on the principle that all things are created twice. There’s a mental or first creation, and a physical or second creation to all things. – Stephen Covey

One of the many things I’ve learned in project management is that “starting with the end in mind” is one of the best methods to ensuring a successful outcome.  When your team has a clear sense of what need to do from the beginning, task definition and assignment activities come naturally and the team is able to spend more time focusing on the “day-to-day” issues vs. continuously wrestling with an ever-changing scope definition.

A similar approach can work extremely well when envisioning your future.

An article in the Futurist magazine entitled “Envisioning your Future: Imagining Ideal Scenarios” suggests that:

… having a vision is to be an idealist.  This idealism should not be confused with unrealistic ideas; it should be used synonymously with having “a standard of excellence”.  A person that is by nature a visionary looks into the future as though it is filled with possibilities, not probabilities.

If I look at my future based from who I really am, and document a clear description of what that future looks like, my life starts to become what I’ve created for myself.

After much thought, I came up with the following personal vision:

“My vision for the future is comprised of positive experiences that intertwine my ‘personal’ and ‘professional’ lives into a single life structure.  Because of this, the long-held notion of “work-life” balance is lessened, and at its extreme, no longer required.  By thinking strategically, I am able to spend my energy on activities that pay dividends over both the short and long-term.  A continuous and purposeful stream of explicit and implicit challenges allows my mind to expand at an accelerated rate.  With this expansion comes possibilities, and possibilities spark further action towards an ideal state called “Ultima”.  My relationships are continuously expanding, but only at a rate where the relationships themselves are developing at a natural and lasting pace.  My ability to see the unique qualities of each person and strive towards relationships that are, at their core, genuine, helps build strong partnerships that ultimately become central figures in a life structure built around growth, energy, complexity, awareness and intensity.”

Fortunately, I think this is fairly representative of what I want my future to look like.  The next step is to take this concept and apply it to my design firm.

What does my business vision look like?  I’ll talk about that in my next post.

Next II.

I thought of a few other things with respect to 2010 goals …

Japan – One of my travel goals this year is to visit Japan, more specifically Kyoto and/or Tokyo.  Although with the prevalence of shinkensen (bullet trains), I’ll probably visit both!  Japan is somewhere I have always found intriguing and strangely enough,  one place that I feel some remote “connection” to.  While my initial interest in Japan was centered around their advanced railway system, the first chapter in the book I am reading now – “Japan Rising” – seemed to suggest an almost surreal tie to my own personality – a blend of opaqeness, paradoxes, power and purpose.  While I have much more to read, I may explore this connection in more depth in a future post.

Since travel to Japan will likely happen in the summer, my primary goal now is to start learning the written and oral Japanese language.  Today, I purchased Rosetta Stone’s Japanese Level 1 as it is highly rated and thus a good starting point.  I started working on it this evening and am very impressed with the simplicity of the interface and overall design.  After only fifteen minutes in using the software, I am actually able to comprehend simple sentences!  Future posts will be designed to reinforce what I have learned on my own or through the course.

To provide some foundational context, I learned there are four “writing systems”: Kanji, Hiragana, Katakana and Romaji.  Here is a brief description of each writing system from Rosetta Stone:

Kanji (漢字) is used for nouns, parts of adjectives and verbs, and Japanese names.  Hiragana (ひらがな) is used for words that don’t use kanji, in certain word endings, and in place of kanji characters that are difficult to read.  Katakana (カタカナ) is used for foreign words, countries, names, and technical words.  Romaji, which uses the Roman script, is often used for acronyms, company names, foreign words, or as a transliteration of Japanese characters.  Romaji allows learners of Japanese to read Japanese without learning the characters.

Since I am interested in learning the kanji writing system, I will primarily use Rosetta Stone with this method, but will switch to romaji if I can’t grasp what is being said – i.e. for me, it’s sometimes easier to read what is being said vs. a sole reliance upon the audio.

I also configured my Macintosh to switch between U.S. and hiragana (I don’t know exactly why kanji is not listed) through the System Preferences > Language and Text option.  Once configured, you’ll see the relevant language icon located at the top right-hand corner of your screen – as shown here:

When I switch to the hiragana input type, I can start typing in that character set using the set of Japanese typefaces that are installed within Mac OS X.  For example, these are the vowels a, e, i o and u: あえいおう.  I think it will be good experience to learn how to enter these characters as well as to physically write the kanji / hiragana symbols by hand.

Edward Tufte – In my earlier post, I mentioned that I was going to focus more of my attention in the information design realm.  Edward Tufte is considered a pioneer and leader in this space, and thus I recently acquired two of his books – Beautiful Evidence and Envisioning Information.  While I have considerably improved upon my graphic and information design skills over the past decade, I think it’s appropriate to take my development to the next level through books such as this.  I’ve updated my current reading list to include these new additions.

AdrianDaniels.com – With hosting plan finalized, I spent the past week refining the design and ended up taking a completely different approach to the design overall.  I recently posted a placeholder page which represents the overall “look” of the site – the lettering shown is “Adrian” in katakana lettering. If you are interested, you can visit the web site where I was able to obtain this translation.  While the design is nearly complete, I still have a fair amount of work to do in terms of the Flash conversion, thus I’ve set a deadline of February 1 to release the final version.

Incubator – You may have noticed that I’ve changed the title of this blog from “Big Generator” to “Incubator”.  This is actually part of a larger strategy which will be discussed in the upcoming weeks.  In any event, you can now visit this blog via the new URL which is http://incubator.adriandaniels.com.  You can also visit my other site via http://microcosms.adriandaniels.com.  If you have a WordPress blog and are interested in taking advantage of this subdomain mapping, visit this link for details.

Next.

Now at the official end of 2009, I thought it best to provide an update on some of the things I’ve been working on and thinking about.  Given my experiences over the past two years and the end of an analysis cycle that spanned a similar timeframe, I am moving forward with a new sense of who I am and what I need to do to make my life better.

First let’s review what was accomplished in 2009:

2009 Accomplishments

– Successful completion of Design Drawing I, Academy of Art University

– Further expansion and development of graphic design portfolio

– Further expansion of photography portfolio and related education

– One-year anniversary of Big Generator blog

– Creation of “Generator” publication (Big Generator – Year One) – to be released in late January

– Creation of “Hierarchy of Needs” project management publication

– Creation of “Microcosms” blog (fictional exploration)

– Concept development of new novels – “Five” and “Citadel 9”

– Completion of various personality, strengths and interpersonal / communication tests

– Closure of “Spark” Plane and creation of “Genesis” Plane (Planescape Advancement System)

– In-depth exploration of information design and the initial stages of starting a related business venture

– Relationship counseling and meetings with life / business coach

– Extensive BPD research

– Read nine books and made considerable progress on three others

2010 Plans

Branding: In a desire to formalize my personal brand, I am moving forward with the design of a self-entitled web site – www.adriandaniels.com – and should have the first version ready for release in the next several weeks.  At this stage, the initial version of the site will be comprised of four main areas – “incubator” (concept exploration), “microcosms” (fiction), “pixeldust” (illustration) and “atomik” (sound).  The site is intended to centralize projects and concepts that I am working on so that I can review my creative and intellectual development over time.

Books: I made a conscious decision in 2007 to read more books.  Now having read approximately thirty-two books since that time, I feel that I have accomplished what I originally set out to do.  As many of you have noticed, my current reading list has been rather lengthy.  To increase focus in 2010, I have reduced the current reading list with approximately five books that I am actively reading.  I am also thinking about creating a new reading page which could be classified as a “holding pattern” or “abandoned” section for books that are on the radar or have been temporarily set aside.

I also decided to move entries originally found within an “interpersonal” section into the “What I Read in 2007 / 2008” pages.  These pages were originally password protected but I no longer see the need for this level of privacy.  Given the significant educational investment in this interpersonal / relationship subject area, I do not anticipate spending a significant amount of time in this area in 2010.

Creative Writing: When I created the Microcosms blog earlier this year, I started to work on a novel called “Five” which was to follow five characters on a remote planet with a desire to connect seemingly isolated worlds.  While the concepts were developing fairly well, I was concerned that the sheer magnitude of the plot would soon become unmanageable.  Thus, I decided to switch gears and take on a more concise storyline.  In 2010 I will continue down this new path with a planned successful conclusion by the end of the year.  The title of this new novel is called “Citadel 9”.

Illustration (Anatomy): The past three classes taken at the Academy of Art University have been primarily focused on industrial design drawing and sketching.  As I would like to expand my sketching ability towards people / animals / creatures, I need to spend more time understanding human anatomy and the techniques associated with drawing and sculpting the human body.  To this end, I recently purchased tutorial videos from AnatomyTools.com and am planning to attend a future workshop on human anatomy later this year.  I will also spend more time learning through existing tutorial videos purchased through the Gnomon Workshop.  The ultimate goal is to use this knowledge and illustration experience to supplement / complement the creative writing pursued via the Microcosms blog.

Information Design: The self-analysis that I went through over the past two years led me to the area of information design. “Information design “… draws on typography, graphic design, applied linguistics, applied psychology, applied ergonomics, computing and other fields.” (designcouncil.org.uk).  Fortunately, this area aligns very closely with my strengths and interests and thus, this is the area that I will likely spend the most time in 2010.  Fortunately, a great deal of the other creative pursuits just mentioned will serve as catalysts / contributors to the ID creative process.

I have other ideas that I am still thinking through, therefore this list could expand or contract.  However, I feel fairly confident that these areas represent the core of what I’ll be working on in 2010.  It will be an exciting journey!