Business, Thoughts

Innovation Day at Claromentis

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Last Friday we had an innovation day at  Claromentis and the result is a thought provoking issue for me. I don’t post that often about business, but this one really got me thinking.

Basically the engineering team – Desing, Dev, Testing – had a day off away from the demands of scheduled tasks to work on anything they felt like – perhaps a project they had been thinking about but never had the time to do, or new technology that they felt could help our platform. We then scheduled a meeting at the end of the day where anyone could present their idea – along with free beers. Great way to spend a Friday..

As this was our first try at this we didn’t really make a big deal of it, just scheduled it and let people respond as they wished. The results were really amazing – we had 6 great ideas presented to us, with a lot of the outline work done and shown to the team. They were incredibly varied – and I have to say all of them, without exception, were good and valid concepts.

So what’s the issue? Simply that we now have to find a way to select one or two for further development, and I need to do that without discouraging everyone else! Its one of those occasions where you just don’t want to select any winners – you want to give everyone time – and therefore resources – to keep working on their concept.

Sometimes competition produces an unwelcome side effect – someone has to lose. Like any business we have limited resources  .. any ideas how to encourage everyone but still select just one idea to be carried on, potentially into production?

 

 

Creativity, Photography, Thoughts

Tango Festival

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Just finished a bank holiday weekend dominated by the rare sight of the sun, and more importantly by a 3 day tango festival at Ardingly.

I spent the days in workshops – although not enough as I am too much of a beginner to be allowed into most of them – and the nights at two Milongas. I only took my camera for a couple of hours – too busy dancing – but here’s a few shots.

I thoroughtly enjoyed everything about the festival. The workshops were excellent  and if the music in the main milonga ever got too conservative – which for me it did on Saturday – then there was a small room playing Nuevo, which was great. The Sunday Milonga featured Otros Aires, and that was indeed a party atmosphere playing just the kind of faster Milonga style that I love messing about to.

Because I am too much of a beginner to do the kind of classes I would love of the 6 workshops I attended 3 were actually about the music – how it is structured or how we might respond to the various rhythms and pacing that are in the sounds of Tango.

 

My last workshop this afternoon –  “Using Phrasing, connecting to the music and each other” – at which these two main images were taken, really summed up so much for me. Tango is a dance, it isn’t a mathematical formula or some kind of exam. Learning yet another step in a wooden, recipe style – oblivious of the music –  isn’t why Tango has really caught my imagination. Yes it is challenging and interesting to learn new figures – but it seems to me that Tango is about connection and expression and the complex messages that exist so naturally in powerful, emotional music. Tango gives you a vocabulary for a deep conversation, but in the end it is a dance and it really should be enjoyed as such.

Of the wonderful professionals that were there Dario and Clair – featured in these two photographs – captured that intensity of connection and celebration of each other and the structure of Tango more than anyone I have seen. On the featured image they are taking the first step to the music to show our class such a simple phrase – yet the expression of radiant hapiness and playful celebration is so totally genuine. In the main photo they are demonstrating how to vary the pace of one of the most basic moves any beginner is taught in their first lessons – look at them – such intensity and celebration of each other and of Tango.

They are dancing.

 

 

 

Thoughts, Travel, Writing

My first Beltain – Impressions

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Yesterday I was invited to a celebration of Beltain at Butser Ancient Farm in Hampshire, right on the border with West Sussex. The site is a working ‘ancient farm’ where archaeologists can experiment to test their theories of now people lived in Iron Age Times.

Beltain itself is the Gaeilic May Day festival – held to celebrate the beginning of summer. As I now understand it Beltain – the beginning of summer – and Samhain – the begining of Winter – are the most important of 4 Gaelic festivals. Beltain seems to have the general positive theme of celebrating light and renewal of life – and is celebrated with bonfires.

In the case of the festival yesterday, the culmination was the burning of a giant Wicker Man, into which during the day everyone could place a small wish – there is something quite moving in seeing all of these hopes written on small pieces of paper, tied to twigs in the Wicker Man – and then to watch them burn and the embers flow into the night sky.

There was much that to me seemed so positive about the afternoon and evening. There was such a range of people, and the underlying themes of folk and Irish music, Jigs and dancing – although always layered with symbolism if you chose to be receptive to it – could just be accepted as a simple celebration of the dawning of summer. There were no priests, no nonsense – just wine food and beer, the making of  wreaths to wear for the evening from vines and plants, music and face painting.

Young and old mingled in this ancient farm, watching small displays, belly dancers or just sitting on the grass and talking with friends – and at the end all watched the burning of the Wicker Man in this ancient site, free to have their own thoughts and responses, and to keep them to themselves.

If this simple, unpretentious, yet quietly respectful celebration is something of the spirit of modern paganism then in my view there should be much more of it in the world.

 

 

 

Thoughts, Writing

A light for me to follow

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The crowd, the anticipation, the opening is a growl of  powerful chords. The deep  sound rolls towards and over me, then silence in the backwash and finally a single melodic phrase on an overpowered guitar reaches out to me. Here it comes, it’s that song again carrying me forwards, that timeless time.

So much connection, I  tense with anticipation –  there’s a space I get taken to that is so full of possibilities – of what I might yet become. The rhythm and the energy are their own vocabulary and they reach into and lift me – effortlessly they carry me forwards.

“There’s hope in your eyes
I wanna love you but I get so blown away.”

The song is so open, leaving so much space for me. The gentle rocking embrace, I am clinging to something that keeps me afloat, cradling it. Chord after chord, and hanging in the air above all the details his so, so individual voice seems always to have been there –  a light for me to follow.

“I am just a dreamer,
But you are just a dream.”

“Once I thought I saw you in
In a crowded hazy bar
Dancing in the light from star to star.”

Where are you? I leave so much space for you. Please come into my life, engulf me.

“I wanna love you but I get so blown away.”

 

Uncategorized, Writing

Full yet empty and cold

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Walking into the garden at night I look up and there you are, waiting for me to become aware of you, full yet empty and cold.

You seem to come and go, to wax and wane but all of this is just an illusion, a coincidence of alignment, of light and shade. In reality your presence is a constant and it is my mind that comes to you for a few precious moments only to recoil again, dragged back into a world full of needless noise and clutter.

How can I accept that this is how it is. Your scales are immense, your silence absolute. You are impossibly near and yet impossibly far, held there by an absurd mathematical coincidence.

Patiently, silently, you show me another reality. Merciless and beautiful.

We have danced around each other for a long while now, I escape for shorter and shorter periods. Slowly I am dragged into orbit around you – myself, my sun, my planet and you collapse gradually into an intricate geometric dance of emotions, nights, months and years. As I age your cold silence tears away at my clutter and distractions and gathers me in.

You will be there for an impossibly long period after I have faded away, but even your power is not enough and you too will be defeated. I gaze at you against the darkness and swirling clouds and it seems to me that you know – that you are self aware and immensely alone in your silent darkness.

 

Notes from the Word Hoard

The way the exercise works is explained here.

Phrases

Show me another reality
Things are other
It waits silently for us
Cold voiceless and waiting
Distance and details
A cold beauty
Full yet empty and cold
Voiceless and cold
Passive and silent
Silently waits
Bring it over

Full yet empty and cold * Selected

 

Creativity, Travel

March 2013 Highlights

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March was a great month.

It included the trip to Seville, continuing to learn Tango ( still just awful but having fun and maybe, maybe getting just a bit better?? ) as well as finishing the second 10 week creative writing course. My first novel got over the 15,000 word count – which has been great fun.

I also attended a Street Photography workshop which although just half a day was great fun.

Currently have the next trip booked for June, destination Lisbon – but this is notoriously flexible – both in terms of timeframe and where I end up going!!

 

Photography

Low Light Effect

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I have almost stopped using any on camera effects but I do occasionally take images with the Low Key selected.

Here are a few examples.

It feels a bit like cheating – but it saves some fiddling about and sometimes the images are surprising and atmospheric.

 

Photography, Thoughts, Travel

The calming impact of landscape

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I spent a couple of hours walking in the Sussex landscape today -with the hope that it would clear my confused mind.

It was a cold afternoon – especially just after arriving from Seville – just the kind of weather where it is so tempting not to go anywhere,  instead to sit at home and plan moving to somewhere with a decent climate.

But landscape is so healing. After an hour and a half of stupid thoughts and frustrations I just stopped, and carefully watched what was in front of me. I took this image, the only photo I took in the whole day.

There’s nothing special about the image, it just reminds me of how calm I felt. It was starting to sleet, I was totally alone but for the first time my mind just stilled.

It’s an amazing process. I took  all of my emotional baggage into the Sussex hills and walked –  I didn’t fight my mind, I just walked – and eventually something within me responded to the beauty and presence of everything around me.

So healing. I should do it more often.

Creativity, Thoughts, Travel

Tango in Seville

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Today is the last day of my vacation in Seville and by far the highlight has been learning Tango with Joao Alves.

I have so enjoyed our time together – Joao was accompannied by Begonia – a talented dancer who has only been learning for 8 months – and the two of them combined to provide the ideal learning experience for me.

I loved the studio – it really is an urban space, somehow that just fits with what attracts me to Tango. I attended a beginners class, a workshop designed for absolutely complete beginners as part of a cultural day at the centre – and private lessons.

I have of course only just started my own journey in learning Tango – but such a positive experience has made certain that I will keep going, and I will certainly be back to continue my learning experience with Joao.

Thank you so much to both of you for making my time so enjoyable and positive! You are not just talented dancers but also great teachers and warm and friendly people – I promise I will both practice hard and learn some Spanish before I see you both again!

 

My new creative life