Steve Portigal presents: "Yes, My Iguana Loves to Cha-Cha: Improv, Creativity and Collaboration"
Improv is not "stand-up comedy." It's a series of games with rules that offer huge degrees of freedom within a set of constraints. In these games we bring out a lot of basic, quickly understood and communicated rules of culture that are implicit, not explicit. The activities of design (collaboration, creativity, and design research, for starters) have interesting similarities with improv: All have in-the-moment aspects; we learn upon reflection; there's enormous unspoken interaction and there is often an "aha" moment. Design and improv also have important similarities: the need to collaborate and brainstorm, the importance of breakthrough thinking, the balance between process, structure, and unfettered creativity.
Playing with improv can make us more mindful of the power of listening, and can be harnessed to create a more collaborative work culture, as a way to develop one's own creativity, or to help warm up teammates and clients in workshops and design sessions. In this interactive presentation you will learn more about improv, listening, creativity, and how they all connect together to support one another. No iguanas will be harmed.
Come early (6:30-7) to grab a bite to eat and visit with your colleagues.
Here are the details:
6:30 - 7 pm Social and light refreshments
7 - 7:15 pm Announcements and updates
7:15 - 8:15 pm Presentation
8:15 - 8:30 Q&A
Bio:
Steve Portigal is the founder of
Portigal Consulting, a bite-sized SF Bay Area firm that helps clients to discover and act on new insights about themselves and their customers. In the past 15 years, Steve has interviewed hundreds of people, including families eating breakfast, hotel maintenance staff, architects, rock musicians, home-automation enthusiasts, credit-default swap traders, and radiologists. His work has informed the development of mobile devices, medical information systems, music gear, wine packaging, financial services, corporate intranets, videoconferencing systems, and iPod accessories.
Steve writes regularly on topics from interaction design to pop culture for interactions, Core77, Ambidextrous, Johnny Holland and the Portigal Consulting blog,
All This ChittahChattah. He is an avid photographer who has a
Museum of Foreign Groceries in his home.