Belfast we also had the opportunity of experiencing a few thoughts on creativity and suffering from the mind of Mars Hill’s touring pastor Rob Bell, at St Anne’s Cathedral, Belfast.
For the few fortunate like myself who could get a ticket, Rob is touring the world with his beautifully designed coffee table book – ‘Drops Like Stars’. This imaginative and beautiful book was brought to life, illustrated through Rob’s art of story telling and the excellent creative visualised videos and presentation.
In his presentation he didn’t tackle the theological reasons why people suffer, but having established the fact that suffering is inevitable, Rob posed the question, “What now?” Suffering does and will happen to us all and by asking what now brings a different dimension to the subject.
When we find ourselves in times of suffering, we judge not only the “What” of something, but the “Where,” the content and also the context. Rob gave us an example from his book, a very amusing university application essay (http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/susan/joke/essay.htm), which is funny because of the unusual context. The concept he puts forward describes how we all have “insulators” that frame events for us, that serve as points of reference. In suffering, however, the insulators are removed, causing us to find everything very different, a world basically turned upside down or as it was put on the night – interrupted.
A few thoughts on Creativity and Suffering
Drops Like Stars
What struck me from the evening, a point that Rob uniquely illustrates that suffering can come not only through what we associate as pain and hardship but also living on the other extreme, having “everything” and being bored. In the west we see the results of this boredom tearing at our society apart, people of all walks of life not sure what the point is to their existence. We know what its like, sometime we do everything to pretend our lives have purpose, when often we are simply bored.
He gave an example of a boy driving around his middle class suburbia in his mom’s mini van listening to rap. What makes this story interesting is that the music is all about growing up in a violent and risky neighbourhood only a few miles away from where the boy actually lives. Rob asked, “Why does the boy listen to this song?” The boy is clear pampered in comparison to lyrics in the track, and Rob suggests this boy longs for adventure, wants risk because he’s bored. People can be bored when they have everything, slowly experiencing a physical death and a numb complacency.
According to Rob suffering is an interruption, it enters our life exactly when we least expect it. One minute we are simply making plans, going about our business and out of the blue suffering brings our life to a complete stop. When people politely ask us how we are feeling, our response is “Do you really want to know how I feel?”. Rob’s thoughts resonated with everyone in attendance on the night, as suffering is rarely talked about, but when it’s actually mentioned, then its like a breath of fresh air.
Another story that personally resonated with me was of Charity: Water and the life changing direction it took Scott Harrison its founder. Perhaps the most wonderful thing about Scott’s story is his almost movie-like, life-changing, party-promoting past turned pious. After 10 years of throwing music and fashion parties for the likes of MTV, VH1, ABC TV, Cosmopolitan, ELLE, Universal Records, Bacardi and Anheuser-Busch, living the lavish NYC life, Scott made a return to his Christian faith and took a volunteer trip to Liberia, Africa. Here is a link to a You Tube video where he tell it in his own words.
There is so much to talk about in both the ‘Drops Like Stars’ book and tour. If the tour passes your way I would recommend you get a ticket, and see one of the greatest communicators of our time. Otherwise get yourself a copy of this breath-talkingly beautiful book and may your interruptions drop like stars.
At The Party
Category Branding, Marketing, Technology, social networking
Ok, I love using Twitter, as my last post Twittersphere and beyond would testify.
In my opinion this is one of the best social media tools you could spend valuable time getting to understand. Sure there is a learning curve compared to other offerings like Bebo or Facebook, but its a completely different beast. With Facebook for example its about communicating with the people you already know, in most cases Twitter is about the people you don’t yet know.
Today I was dipping in and out of Twitter using my current favourite client Tweetie and noticed a tweet by @artbiz2day whom I’ve recently started following.
After reading this very interesting post at ArtBiz2day’s Blog entitled simply ‘Twitter Thoughts’. I was left thinking that perhaps many people are finding twitter a little frustrating, especially if they’re hearing all this buzz about using it as a marketing tool. Perhaps some are getting frustrated with having to put in so much time and not seeing much return financially for their time invested.
Well it does not surprise me that tweeters might feel this way if they opened accounts only with the intention of marketing their product, service or brand. In the world of Twitter the usual marketing methods will not work, people on Twitter don’t want to be a target audience. Normally everywhere we go in life it has been boxed up, packaged and marketed to us. But Twitter is not controlled by the marketing departments of the corporation or at least not yet.
Let me give you an example of how to view Twitter and how it can work for generating business for you.
Visualise Twitter as a party. Like any party you might attend, its about relationships. Some you already might have and others you might need to build. Like any event you attend, commerce or other wise, if your in business you will be keen to network and establish new contacts, but would you go to an event in the real life and walk around telling everyone what you do for a living? I don’t believe anyone in business would consider this a good networking strategy. Sure you would introduce yourself and at some point there will be an opportunity to mention what you do, but no one goes to a party or business event and talks only about what they have to offer.
So like in the real world Twitter is like being at an event and you simply interact with people there. Some share your interests, while many will not. But what you can be certain of is that each person has friends and family who respect their opinion and recommendations. If you make a good impression even on people who do not have a requirement for what you do, they may well have a need to avail of your product or service at some point later, or have no hesitation recommending you and your business to their followers.
What every business or brand must not do on Twitter, is stand in the Twitter room and hand out business cards or give a presentation. Like the real world, nothing will quickly put people off more than selling directly at a social event, and that is no different on Twitter.
The key is found in the word social. That is the clue to making a success of the twitter experience and bringing eyes onto you and your life. More eyes means more opportunities to collaborate, share what you do and eventually lead to more real interaction and possible business in the real world.
If your only looking to only sell on Twitter, then it’s not likely to work the way you might expect. Most success will be found in sharing information, providing assistance and spending time interacting, collaborating with other twitter users and creating good will. Like anything people want a relationship with you before they are going to avail of anything you might be trying to market no matter how good it might be.
I hope this short post will be of use and perhaps help people to realise that good business on twitter is not about making loads of followers, but rather creating a good reputation and connections.
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