Tag Archives: multiple selves

Culture Camp London 2014

Ember

I am doing a Culture Camp in London June 13.  Here’s the description.  Please join us!

Course Description

This culture camp is designed to do two things:

1) expand your knowledge of the big changes transforming culture.

2) develop your ability to put this knowledge into action.

Culture is at the core of the creative’s professional competence.  It is the well from which inspirations and innovations spring.  It’s one reason startups and corporations need the cultural creative.  This culture camp is designed to enhance your personal creativity and professional practice.

1. Knowledge of culture

We will look at 10 events shaping culture.

Half are structural changes.

1.1 The end of status as the great motive of mainstream culture.

1.2 The end of cool as the great driver of alternative culture.

1.3 The movement between dispersive cultures and convergent cultures.

1.4 The movement between fast cultures and slow cultures.

1.5 The shift from a “no knowledge” culture to a “new knowledge” culture.

Half are trends:

1.6 transformations in the domestic world (aka homeyness to great rooms)

1.7 transformations in the scale and logic of consumer expectation (from the industrial to the artisanal)

1.8 shifts from old networks to new networks (especially for Millennials)

1.9 shifts from single selves to multiple selves (especially for Millennials)

1.10 [this one is ‘top secret’ and will be revealed on the day]

2.  Using our knowledge of culture 

2.1  how to discover culture (using ethnography)

2.2  how to track and analyze culture (using anthropology)

2.3  how to hack culture (making memes)

2.4  how to build a brand

2.5 how to make ourselves indispensable to the corporation

Culture Camp is being sponsored by Design Management Institute and coincides with their London meetings.  It is also being sponsored by Truth.  (Special thanks to Leanne Tomasevic.)

The image is from Yanko Tsvetkov’s Atlas of Prejudice 2.   I am keen to stage the culture camp in Tomato Europe, Wine and Vodka Europe, Olive Oil Europe, and of course Coffee Europe.  Please let me know if you are interested in participating or sponsoring.

Culture Camp will be held 9:00 to 5:00 on June 13 at the Royal Institute of British Architects, 66 Portland Place, as below.  (Register for the Culture Camp here.  You don’t have to be a DMI or RIBA member to do so.

Ember

Multiple selves and alternate realities: from Goldman Sachs to Earth 2

The new film, Another Earth, is about the sudden appearance of a new planet, floating in the heavens, not very far away (as pictured).

It is, apparently, a second earth that duplicates our own. They call it Earth 2.

“Who is your other you?” the film asks.

Once more popular culture, drawing from string theory, among other things, contemplates transformational options and multiple selves.

But it is not just popular culture that cares about the theme. It turns out the writer, star, and producer, Brit Marling, began her professional life as an analyst at Goldman Sachs.

So she knows a thing or two about multiple selves and alternate realities.

Of course, Marling’s earth 1 (investment banking) and her earth 2 (Hollywood) are not duplicates. Being a citizen in good standing in both of them takes an unusual person, real transformational range, and a daunting act of reinvention.

It’s kind of wonderful that after Marling made the transition she wrote this filmic Valentine to alternate realities and the process of moving between them.

References

For more on the theme have a look at my book Transformations 

Please come join my circles at Google +.