Adding Value

PROMPT:

Look through your texts, social media, or email. Pick out an idea to respond in a unique way such as a poem, song, or video and return the idea to the sender. If possible, invite others.

That’s the same prompt as yesterday, I know.  But what do I mean about responding in a unique way?

The important thing about a response is that the intent is to add value, something that takes the idea, honors it, and extends or enhances it in some way.

Once you’ve found an idea, it means you’ve accepted the idea to consider. That’s one of the beginnings of collaboration and connection. Randy Nelson of Pixar explains how their success is helped by improv– by following two rules:

  1. Accept any offer.
  2. Make your partner look good.

Listen to him explain:

Watch the full video here: Pixar’s Randy Nelson on the Collaborative Age

That’s accepting the information and adding value to it — make the original offer look good. It’s what I tried to do with my art and poem.

Responding to ideas and adding value to them makes the world a better place — we are part of the change. We need that now more than ever, don’t you think?

So what are some ways to respond?  Here’s some ideas:

Lifted Line Poems

The poem above is a “lifted line poem” from a song that is itself a response by a teacher who understands the disconnect of today’s world and reaches out in lyric form to and with his students– to stay connected.  Read Kevin’s post “Music-from-the-Pandemic-Connect-with-You“. The poem and the lyrics are hugs of the universe, reaching out to stay connected to find a way through this dangerous new world we will learn to navigate.

Song Lyrics

Read to see how he shared his process with his students in video form, and also shared his final song: [ post “Music-from-the-Pandemic-Connect-with-You” ]

Blog

Yes, Kevin shares with the world, his students, their parents, and his learning network through blogging. Continuing with yesterday’s tweets starting with Kevin’s tweet of #smallpoem #FlowerMoon poetry responses, Wendy curated the Flower Moon responses in a blog post to bring all  the ideas and poems and songs together:

How to Share the Moon”  Take a look at all the responses as of yesterday [more followed].

That post provides two more ways to respond to others about ideas: audio recording and interactive posters.

Audio Recording

An idea read in one’s own voice helps deepen the connection — our voices reaching out to share and hold the time still, to connect with another.

Click to Wendy’s post, “How to Share the Moon“, and click the red/white arrow and then click the blue “Read Poem.”

 

 

Listen to my lifted line poem:

Audio lets the reader imagine through the voice of the reader. It gives choice to the viewer while adding in the connection to a human voice.

Interactive Posters

Wendy’s post includes a ThingLink, which adds links to images to carry readers on a journey to articles, videos, music, etc.– anything with a URL. Here’s Wendy’s curation of her poetry journey:

If you have a Google Account, you can make a thinglink with Google Drawings, which Eric Curts calls a GoogLink and explains how here:

Googlink: Creating Interactive Posters with Google Drawings

And Richard Byrne shares how to create a thinglink with Google Drawings as well:

 

You can also use just one slide in Google Slides — if you export it as a pdf, the links will stay active as well.

Tony Vincent shares how to Get Creative with Google Drawings and Google Slides. About now your mind might be filled with fun ideas to look through your email or streams, find an idea that strikes you as important, funny, sad, interesting — something in which you could add some value  to the idea and share with the original person or the world.

Classic Book Cover

My friend Terry introduced me to another fun idea — creating a classic book cover:

My friends and I have cats — we share stories.  I created this one:

 

How did we do this? Our book friends at github coded the platform; check it out here.

 

And, the Usual

Write a thank you or comment. Write a text, tweet, or poem in response. Today, I wrote a thank you email to someone with ideas opposite mine, but his email asked for input from everyone; he truly wanted to hear ideas. That’s a fresh thing in the hyper-political world of today. So I wrote a thank you, as well as another email response to his questions.

So– now you know and are ready for the prompt:

PROMPT:

Look through your texts, social media, or email. Pick out an idea to respond in a unique way such as a poem, song, or video and return the idea to the sender. If possible, invite others.

Note: Sometimes, people do not like their work to be “remixed” like this. If you receive a negative response, just remove the work and skip that person the next time you search for an idea on which to reflect and respond.


About this post:

Thank you to Wendy Taleo, Terry Elliott, and Kevin Hodgson, among others, for their collaborative spirit, for “accepting any offer,” and for “making partners look good.”

2 Comments

on “Adding Value
2 Comments on “Adding Value
  1. All this is, all of it, is rich with writing, connection, collaboration, and more. Thank you, Sheri, for remixing the song into poem, and then walking through the fields of others, too. Always. Always.
    Kevin

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