You know it’s funny, how sometimes our lives seem to go in circles.

Except sometimes, the circles are really spirals, they bring us to a higher level of whatever it is.

This is something that came out very powerfully for me tonight as I thought about an idea that I’d been fantasizing about for many years, except this time I wasn’t just thinking about it as a dream, but rather as a goal. A gigantic, hairy, audacious goal, but a goal nonetheless. About a week ago in the first session of the Cash and Joy Provocateurs, Catherine Caine asked me to do just that. She asked each of us in the group to share our Big Harry Audacious Goal. It wasn’t something I had thought much about, but after just a moment I realized that there is one thing that kept coming up in different ways almost for as long as I can remember, and I knew that this was my BHAG.

I want to share it with you, but I also need to understand that while this goal is tremendous at the moment it’s very much what Havi calls “a tiny, sweet thing.” So it needs to be handled with care, and that’s what I’m doing here.

So what is this thing?

It’s an event, actually a series of events, each one with over 10,000 people in attendance. A sort of rally of transformation, alchemy, wonder, spirit and outright magic.

I can feel how my whole life is leading to this point, for me to be standing on the stage telling stories, weaving processes of spiritual alchemy, as we gently but powerfully allow the shifts within each of us to take the next steps becoming even more ourselves.

This isn’t just a speech, or a workshop. It’s a fully immersive experience. We use lighting, projections, sound and other tools of the theater to create an environment which envelops everyone who attends, and completely surrounds them. This environment can change and morph from one moment to the next as the stories and dreams unfold.

I could go on and on, I think I have shared what wants to be shared at the moment about this.

Let me answer some questions that you might be thinking before I go:

When will this happen?

I don’t know, it will happen when it’s ready, and I’m ready.

Where will it be? How much will it cost? Where do I sign up?

I’m thrilled that you’re interested, but I don’t really know that either.

Don’t you realize that this will never work? That events like this are too expensive, too hard, crazy, or whatever?

I truly appreciate your concern, and I’m not trying to do this next week. I know that there’s a lot to it, and that there are probably lots of places where things can go wrong (there are in every endeavor, large or small.) But please understand that the biggest mistake I could make is to not do this, it is the calling of my heart.

Can I help?

Maybe? Probably? I’m not in a place yet to look for partners, or people to help, or even know what kind of help I would be looking for. However, that will change, when the time comes, so watch this space. If you like, leave a note in the comments about your interest, and I’ll keep you in mind.

Today I want to be very specific about what kind of comments I’m looking for. As I said, this is a tiny, sweet thing, which needs to be protected and cared for as it grows and solidifies. I would love your support, and if reading this sparks something super exciting in you, I’d love to hear about that too. If you think I’m nuts, you’re probably right, but please, keep it to yourself for the moment. I’m not looking for advice, criticism, or even really suggestions, I most love to hear how this resonates with you, in your heart, if there’s something you truly feel moved to share.

Thank you for letting me share my Big Hairy Audacious Goal with you. Don’t be surprised if I don’t talk about this much for a while, then again don’t be surprised if I do. I’m just excited to see how my tiny, sweet thing grows.

I’m not sure how I was first introduced to Barbara Cook’s music.  Actually, that’s not quite true – I first heard her a a kid growing up listening to the broadway cast album of The Music Man she was the original Marian the Librarian. I clearly remember not liking her all that much – her voice was to “legit” sounding, too “operatic” for my 8 or 9 year old taste.

Barbara has had an amazing carier in musicals, but that’s not where I was reintroduced to her – somewhere I got one of her more recent concert performances – she’s been doing her own cabaret shows for at least the last 30 years or so – and at age 82 she’s still brilliant – maybe better then ever.  Just listen to this – recorded a few years ago in Melbourne:

Listening to Barbara I feel like I’m not hearing words or notes, but more like pure story and emotion.  She doesn’t tell you a story, she weave’s it around you.

Here’s some more

And the grand finale (at least for the moment)

On Friday one of her songs came up in shuffle on my iTunes – and it just stopped me – I stopped working and just listened. She does it to me every time.
Now that’s brilliant!

I sat down at my compute tonight, and something promoted insisted that I look at Twitter.  I knew somehow I had to listen.  Almost immediately, my eyes fell on a retweet by Natalie Christie (The Tiny Soprano) which had a link to the video below.  I don’t want to say anything about it, other then to ask you to take the time to watch it.  It’s 9 minutes long, and so worth it.  Don’t miss the surprise at the end.

I have so much I want to say about this, and at the same time, I don’t want to say anything quite yet.

So I’ll do something different, and ask you to begin the conversation in the comments, then I’ll chime in there as well. There is so much here to talk about!

Before the release of his new book Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion, I had heard of Garry Vaynerchuk as the host of Wine Library TV, but I really didn’t know anything about him. Understand, I don’t drink wine, not for any moral reason, I just never got into it.

With a title like "Crush It" I couldn't resist

In any case, I started to hear lots of positive thoughts about this new book, so I went audible.com and downloaded the audio book. Audio books are my preferred way of reading almost everything, but in this case I strongly recommend you get the audio book even if that’s not normally your preference. I will get to why I say that in a minute.

This book is about passion. Of course the subtitle tells us that it’s about making money from our passion, but more importantly, it’s about how living from your passion is the way to be happy. Gary himself as the ultimate example of this. I found his passion both enjoyable and contagious, now some will say that he’s over the top, and he is over the top. The thing is, this is the real Gary. I have no doubt about it in my mind, it’s who he is. He talks about this in the book, and how important it is to be genuine to you are and your own style.

The book is really about how to create a brand around yourself, who you really are and your passion, mostly using social media. This is illustrated very well by Gary’s own story, and examples from other people who have been successful. As I read this last sentence, I realize that “creating a brand around yourself” can sound like something a used car salesman would do. This couldn’t be further from the truth. What Gary teaches is all about real honesty with yourself, and with everyone you relate with. It’s about being genuine at the deepest level.

So, why do I recommend the audio book rather than the print version?

When Gary went to record this book, he was so passionate and so into what he’s talking  about that he couldn’t stay on the script. For me, many places where he riffs off of what is in the printed text are some of the best parts of the audio book, it gives you everything that’s in the printed book plus bonus insights.

For me though, the single best part of this book, particularly the audio book, is the power with which Gary’s passion comes through. I found this really inspirational, it was really helpful to me at a time that I was a little bit down about what I was doing online. Now as I say, Gary style is over-the-top and this will bother some people. But, it’s who he is and though it took me a little while to get into it, I ended up really loving it and loving him.

So, if this sounds appealing, check out Garry Vaynerchuk’s Crush It, either in audio or print.

What do you think about Garry, and Crush It?  I’d love to hear in the comments.

Note that the Amazon links in this post are affiliate links, and I get a tiny commission from Amazon if you decide to buy through one of them.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, my sister and I saw Harry Potter the Exhibition at the Boston Museum of Science earlier this week. I am going to start this review with my overall impressions which will be spoiler free. After that, I’ll go into more detail about some aspects of the exhibit which you may prefer to be surprised by if you plan to see it. To my mind, it would not be a problem to know what’s coming from my descriptions, but you may feel differently so I will give you a warning before beginning that part.

Overall, I loved this experience. We had what I would consider an optimal viewing experience since the museum was almost deserted during our weekday visit, I can imagine that during busy times, such as school vacation weeks, it could be much more difficult to see everything. It is important going into this exhibit to understand what it is: it’s an exhibit of many costumes and some props used in making the films, they are displayed in small stage sets which do a great job of giving them context and creating an environment. It’s important to understand though, this exhibit is not about the making of the films. There is no look behind the scenes or education about the filmmaking process. The optional audio guide is primarily the voices of the artists who created the various costumes and props telling stories and talking about aspects of the process, while these clips were mostly very interesting, they were too short for my taste, I wanted more.

The creators of the exhibit done a terrific job of creating environments for the objects to live in that help you to feel the context, and I found this extremely effective. The objects and costumes themselves ranged from interesting to magnificent and extraordinary. We spent close to an hour and a half touring the exhibit at a very leisurely pace, looking at objects in detail and listening to each audio guide recording. Both of us enjoyed the experience very much. My basic recommendation is, if you have a chance to see this exhibit and it’s appealing to you, do it.

Spoilers begin here

in my post yesterday I talked about how important I think the opening of an exhibit is, at least to me. The opening of this Harry Potter exhibit was terrific. After our tickets were taken and we got our audio guides, we were instructed to wait in a queue line. (We were the only ones in the line.) Shortly, a British sounding gentleman in costume led us into a sort of courtyard area. At the front of it was a small stage, on the stage was a stool, and on the stool was an object which could only be the sorting hat. We were each called up to sit on the stool, the sorting hat was placed on our heads, and we were each sorted (both Gryffindors.)

Then the doors were opened to a building façade, and we were led into a dark room with about eight beautifully backlit posters for the films. We quickly discovered that these were not really posters, but rather large high-definition video screens mounted sideways. Shown on the screens is an excellent montage of moments from the films, clips interplay between screens driven by sound effects and the familiar and powerful musical score. I really enjoyed it. As the montage built to its climax, the whole right wall of the space rolled up like a giant window shade leaving us looking into a bright light, as were called forward into this newly revealed space we discovered that the bright light is the headlight of the Hogwarts Express locomotive. Another British gentleman quickly ushered us through that space and into the exhibit itself. Quite an opening.

The next thing we saw was a short hallway filled with portraits some of which were video screens containing animated ghosts — I thought that this was mildly interesting but because the video screens looked so different from the stationary portraits I did not experience any suspension of disbelief, or sensation that I was looking at anything other than a video screen.

From the air began the incredible array of tableaux of costumes and props in appropriate settings which I described above. About two thirds of the way through was a full size, walk-through set of Hagrid’s cottage. This served as a transition into the darker characters and the Forbidden Forest. Here in addition to costumes were full-size models of some of the creatures which were created primarily in computer graphics. All very cool.

Then we came around a corner into a small sort of anti-room with walls covered in notices in individual frames just like in the film, this was the entrance to the Great Hall. The Great Paul was not a full set, but rather a set of tableaux arranged to suggest the space (of course creating a full great Hall would’ve required more space than the entire exhibition probably used.) In this space were displayed the most lavish costumes, primarily from the Yule Ball scene.

At the exit of the Great Hall was another short hallway of the portraits some of which were video screens, the ghosts in the video screens were all applauding. I was somewhat disappointed to discover that this was the end of the exhibit. After the incredible themed opening experiences, I was expecting some sort of grand finale which never came. I’m sure the intention was that the Great Hall would fill that purpose, but it just didn’t work for me. I had actually been wondering in the back of my mind as I walked through the exhibit what the finale would be. I thought I had figured it out, nowhere in the exhibit was there a reference to Dumbledore’s office, and I thought that somehow we would find ourselves they are with something cool happening as a finale. Instead we got a gift shop. Now don’t get me wrong, it was a very nice gift shop, with lots of cool things, but it wasn’t the finale I was looking for.

Overall I would still give the exhibit a rating of eight on a scale of 1 to 10, which from someone who is as picky as I am is actually quite a complement, and better than I expected it to be.

Have you seen the exhibit? Would you like to? I’d love to hear it in the comments.

I love museums. In fact, going to museums is one of my favorite things to do. I have to say though, I’m rather picky about exhibits. Very rarely do I find it interesting to look at objects out of context. I want to see a series of objects, descriptions and media that tell a story. I want to be led on a journey to a place, or a time, where I’ve never been and possibly could never go. Of course, considering the title of this blog, I imagine that this doesn’t come as a big surprise. It’s amazing how effectively an exhibit can tell a story.

(photo by duluoz cats)

Archaeology as theater

One of the most effective and enjoyable examples of museum exhibition as storytelling that I have ever experienced is the main exhibit at POINTE-À-CALLIÈRE  the Montréal Museum of Archaeology and History. The museum is built on the site, the actual spot, where the city of Montréal was founded. An amazing archaeological excavation revealed generations of construction and life in the city as physical layers of foundations and artifacts. The museum was built over the top of this excavation.

You enter the very modern museum building, and after purchasing your tickets enter a theater. As the multimedia presentation begins, you discover that you’re looking down into the excavation. The show is projected onto screens above the excavation, and on the rock surfaces and foundations themselves. It is an extremely effective orientation to the history of Montréal and brings you back to the founding of the city. When you leave the theater, you go down into the excavation itself, and the rest of the exhibition consists of winding your way through the physical foundations of the city of Montréal. As you take this journey, lighting and projections are used very effectively to bring to life what was happening in the various locations you see. It really is an amazing journey.

Storytelling in a tomb

In my mind, one of the most important aspects of that experience is that the story is laid out by a clear opening which draws you in, and also provides the background context you need to understand what you’re seeing. I think that all of my favorite museum exhibits do this. About a month ago I went with friends to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and we saw the special exhibit The Secrets Of Tomb 10A. This is an exhibit drawn from the museum’s immense collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts, but this exhibit is special because all of the objects came from one place — the Tomb 10 A. of the title. Here, the storytelling was a little bit more subtle, but very present and very effective.

When you enter the exhibit, you come into an opening gallery where objects, maps and descriptive text along with a projected montage of photographs set the scene of where in Egypt these objects were discovered and begin to tell the story of the excavation. Each succeeding gallery continues the story, weaving together the ancient Egyptian religious and funerary practices, and what we can learn about that particular people for whom this tomb was built as well as the story of the excavation and in some cases the conservation of the objects. It is a wonderful journey, the context provided by the way the objects are organized and displayed makes it incredibly powerful. While I have toured the Museum’s permanent ancient Egyptian exhibits many times, and enjoy them, they lack the flow and context of The Secrets of Tomb 10A. That’s something that I really miss when I visit them.

By the way, The Secrets of Tomb 10A will be open through May 10, 2010 at the MFA. If you have any interest in ancient Egypt and anyway of getting to Boston, this exhibit is not to be missed. I love ancient Egypt, and have seen many exhibits on it — this is one of the very best.

As I think about exhibits that I’ve enjoyed, I keep coming back to how they open, your first experiences you visit. I think this is so critical to setting the context for what you’re about to see, and I think it’s something that’s often minimized or left out altogether. I’ll leave you with one of the most indelible examples of a wonderful opening in my mind.

The grand vista of space

Many years ago (it must be close to 20) the Boston Museum of Science had a special exhibit called Soviet Space, an amazing array of spacecraft and satellites built in the Soviet Union, and I believe exhibited in the US for the first time. I still remember the opening of this exhibit. You waited in a small foyer after your ticket had been taken, and at the appointed time a curtain was pulled aside and you entered a small theater. There was a panoramic screen at the front of the theater up fairly high, and on that screen a multi-image slideshow (the state-of-the-art technology at the time) introduced the story, and at the climax of the presentation, the front wall of the theater opened (much to my surprise,) revealing a giant fiber-optic star field with a sputnik spacecraft floating in front of it. That moment was pure magic for me. I still remember it so clearly all these years later.

Off to Hogwarts

There’s a reason I’m talking about this today, yesterday my sister and I visited the Harry Potter exhibition at the Boston Museum of Science. This post is really a preamble to my response to visiting that exhibit which I will post tomorrow.

In the meantime, I’d love to hear how important, or not, these aspects of exhibits are to you when you visit. I look forward to your comments!

Yesterday I talked about Daniel Pink’s book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. I think it is so important that I wanted to devote a 2nd post to it.

This video is a talk that Dan gave at TED in May of 2009 on some of the concepts at are in the book. The material is priceless and will give you a taste of what he does in the book. The presentation is also done amazingly well – notice how as he makes a big deal about how he’s not telling a story that he weaves amazing stories. Watch this right now! you’ll be glad you did. (I know I’m jumping up and down about this, but I really am that excited by it!)

Tonight, I saw Avatar.

I have heard quite a bit of buzz about this film, I think it’s pretty hard to avoid. From what my sister occurred (and she’s my super plugged in secret movie expert,) people were saying that the film is visually stunning, and had no plot. Some other friends who I saw it with had heard similar things. I have to say, I disagree totally and completely.

The film is gorgeous — more on that in a minute, but the reason that I enjoyed it so much was because I was drawn into the story and the characters. It is not a revolutionary story, in fact, the basic story is a mythic journey of a type that’s been told for thousands of years. There is nothing wrong with that, and it’s told in a new and interesting way. So, probably the single most important thing I can say is that as a whole film worked beautifully for me, and I loved it.

As a projection designer I’ve done quite a bit of graphics work of various sorts over the years, including some 3-D modeling and rendering — so I was very interested to see what the “breakthrough 3-D technology” in this film did. Well I have to say it is an absolute breakthrough — for the first time in a heavily computer-generated film, I didn’t spend most of the film analyzing what was computer generated and what was photographed. I just believed. It was magic.

It’s also hard for me to overstate how beautiful the film is, there is so many moments which are just absolutely gorgeous. There’s so much art, care and beauty in this film — it’s wonderful.

We saw the film in a new IMAX digital 3-D theater. The digital IMAX is a new kind of theater, typically found in multiplex cinemas. The screen is not as big as in the traditional film-based IMAX theaters, however the digital picture is absolutely stunning — extremely bright with beautiful color, and none of the flickering or instability which can happen with traditional film projectors. Due to the show being sold out, we were forced to sit extremely close to the screen — maybe four or five rows back from the front. I would not have chosen to sit this close if there had been a better choice, however I have to say the experience was excellent. By being so close to the screen, it really filled my field of vision creating a very immersive experience. The seats were comfortable and structured in a way that it was natural to look up at the screen. The whole thing worked out very well. I should also note that the theater had an excellent sound system, and as somebody who spends a lot of time working with audio, it’s something am rather sensitive to. I really appreciated a sound system that was good enough that even I didn’t notice it — I have to say that that’s both rare and surprising.

For the most part the 3-D was done beautifully, it’s as if the screen disappears and you’re looking through a portal into a real three-dimensional world — just beautiful and amazing. The only real negative I had about the film involved the 3-D however. In photography and filmmaking it’s very common to use depth of field effects to lead the attention of the audience; that is to say having the foreground and background slightly out of focus so that only the subject is sharp. In traditional photography and filmmaking this works very well, I found it a little bit distracting in the 3-D however, when there was something floating in the air between me and the main subject, and it was out of focus, it felt unnatural because everything else was so real. It may be that as more and more filmmaking is done in extremely realistic 3-D that this sort of technique needs to be rethought.

Overall though, even I have to admit that that’s a pretty nitpicky detail. If you haven’t seen Avatar, and has even the slightest sense that you might enjoy it go see it in a good 3-D theater. This is a film that should be seen on the big screen and in 3-D.

Have you seen Avatar? I’d love to hear your opinion of it!

As I write these words, 2009 about to become 2010. And I’m looking back on one particular aspect of my life which I enjoyed very much, which I had to put on hiatus during this last year.

A Classic Zeiss Planetarium Star Projector

For quite a few years I’ve been a part-time educator/presenter at the Christa McAuliffe Planetarium, in Concord, New Hampshire. The planetarium is the state of New Hampshire’s official memorial to the first teacher in space, Christa McAuliffe. Of course, Christa was one of the astronauts killed in the Challenger disaster. After much discussion about how to officially remember her, it was decided that a planetarium was the best possible thing — a living institution of teaching and learning.

I have to say, I love doing planetarium shows — it’s something that I have a great time doing. One of the really cool things about the Christa McAuliffe Planetarium is a commitment to doing live shows. While some of the shows on each day’s schedule are pre-recorded (which allows for something much more spectacular,) many shows are at least partially live, and there’s at least one show which is entirely live — Tonight’s Sky. For most presenters, me included, Tonight’s Sky was the most fun show to do. We had pretty much free reign of topics so long as it was something that generally fit under the title of Tonight’s Sky. When I did the show, before we started I would always ask the audience if there was anything that they were hoping to see, or learn about in the show. Often I would get a list of very interesting questions, and would build the show around them — completely customizing it to a particular audience in the theater. To me, this was great fun to do.

Not surprisingly, as someone who loves stories, I would often balance technically heavy content with mythology and stories from all over the world. I would try to reference mythology from at least three continents in every show, and I almost always was able to do that. Sometimes, particularly with younger audiences, I would devote five or more minutes to telling a full story based around a constellation or another object in the sky. I even carried a bamboo flute with me in the theater, I would pick up the flute and played for a few phrases to set the story apart from the scientific content and the rest of the show.

While working at the Planetarium, I saw a lot of planetarium shows, each one many times. This allowed me to study them in depth. Often, when we think about seeing a planetarium show, we think about it in visual terms — the spectacle of the projected sky, amazing and unexplainable special-effects, and feeling like we’re looking into or even traveling through the depths of space. To me though, the thing that made the most successful shows so successful was not a matter of visual production quality, it was a matter of storytelling. The best shows took their topic and wove it into a story — occasionally a literal story where we’re following characters, but more often presenting information in the form of a story — a powerful opening that gets our attention, and inciting event that draws us forward, a course of action that builds to a climax, and a resolution with reflection on the journey.

Unfortunately, the Planetarium is over an hour away from just about everything else I do, and it just became too difficult for me to schedule with any regularity. So I finally had to admit that at least for the time being I had to let it go. I’m sad about that, and I’m sure I’ll be back in one form or another to working under the dome. In fact, I’m about to embark on a different kind of astronomical journey shortly. I’m going to be designing massive, full stage projections for the Portsmouth Symphony Orchestras presentation of The Planets in June. I’ll be talking more about that project here, as I get more involved in doing it.

Well, it’s now 2010. Time for bed.