Day one of Idea Festival recap
Day one of Idea Festival has been a whirlwind of incredible speakers talking passionately on an array of topics. Among those topics:
-How to think like Sherlock Holmes
-How magic is more than just illusions
-How innocent people can be wrongfully convicted
-How comedy is a form of communication
-How we can learn from nature to adapt and solve problems
-How to solve big problems with radical solutions
Here are the important takeaways from the speakers:
________
Maria Konnikova had four things that someone can do to think more like Sherlock Holmes-
1. Mindfulness meditation can help you focus and be more productive. Ten minutes a day of focused breathing with change your brain.
2. Keep an organized and stocked mind attic. This means to learn how to organize your brain and memories to keep only the things you deem important in storage.
3. Know when to smoke your pipe: imagination. This doesn't literally mean to smoke a pipe; it is more along the lines of needing to have time to let your imagination work. You have to take space for creativity to start working.
4. Dogs that don't bark. Think what else can be there. Learn how to ask the
right questions and don't take things for face value.
To learn more about Maria visit her website.
________
The next speaker was Alex Stone, a magician and writer for The Wall Street Journal among other things. Some of his major takeaways included cognitive blindness, which is the inability to see something that is happening in your vision because you are so focused on something else.
Another takeaway is that people remember an event by the most emotional experiences and the ending of that said event while forgetting most of the in-between things.
To learn more on Alex and his book Fooling Houdini just click here.
________
The next set of speakers were Calvin Johnson and Stephen Saloom. Calvin was wrongfully convicted of a crime he didn't commit and served 16 years in prison for it before DNA testing was able to prove his innocence. Stephen Saloom works for the Innocence Project.
The major takeaways were the Innocence Project has helped overturn more than 300 wrongful convictions with DNA testing and that if you are found innocent after serving jail time you are not automatically compensated for your lost time.
To learn more about the Innocence Project and how you can get involved visit their website at innocenceproject.org/.
________
The next speaker had everyone laughing from the beginning until the end of his talk. Chris Bliss, a stand-up comedian is no stranger to laughter and the spotlight, but during his time touring and working he learned that the audience of a comedy club brings both willingness and judgment with them much like anyone who comes to a performance.
Some takeaways include reinventions are not always the path forward. Sometimes you have to learn how to just go with what you know. And comedy, like magic, is keen on misdirection. Being able to lead an audience from one subject and ending up at another seamlessly is key in communication and comedy. Then right before he left he treated everyone to an amazing juggling routine.
To view a sample of his juggling or more of his stand-up visit http://chrisbliss.com/.
________
Next up was Rafe Sagarin with a talk about how nature learns to adapt to problems and how we as humans can learn from that strategy.
One of his examples was that you don't see a fish trying to turn a shark into a vegetarian. In other words we have to be able to not try and change the others around us but learn how to adapt ourselves to find a solution.
Another major point, nature uses redundancy. They focus on what is successful for them as opposed to learning from mistakes, because in nature one mistake could be your last.
To learn more about adaptable solutions just click here.
________
And lastly to round off an incredible day of learning we heard from Jason Pontin, editor in chief and publisher of MIT Technology Review. The major takeaways from this lecture were Jason's top four ways to solve a major problem:
1. Political leaders must care to solve a problem
2. Institutions must support its solutions.
3. The problem we're seeking to solve must be a technological problem.
4. We must understand it. Really big problems are often overlooked as simple.
To learn more about Jason Pontin visit his LinkedIn profile.
1. Mindfulness meditation can help you focus and be more productive. Ten minutes a day of focused breathing with change your brain.
2. Keep an organized and stocked mind attic. This means to learn how to organize your brain and memories to keep only the things you deem important in storage.
3. Know when to smoke your pipe: imagination. This doesn't literally mean to smoke a pipe; it is more along the lines of needing to have time to let your imagination work. You have to take space for creativity to start working.
4. Dogs that don't bark. Think what else can be there. Learn how to ask the
right questions and don't take things for face value.
To learn more about Maria visit her website.
________
The next speaker was Alex Stone, a magician and writer for The Wall Street Journal among other things. Some of his major takeaways included cognitive blindness, which is the inability to see something that is happening in your vision because you are so focused on something else.
Another takeaway is that people remember an event by the most emotional experiences and the ending of that said event while forgetting most of the in-between things.
To learn more on Alex and his book Fooling Houdini just click here.
________
The next set of speakers were Calvin Johnson and Stephen Saloom. Calvin was wrongfully convicted of a crime he didn't commit and served 16 years in prison for it before DNA testing was able to prove his innocence. Stephen Saloom works for the Innocence Project.
The major takeaways were the Innocence Project has helped overturn more than 300 wrongful convictions with DNA testing and that if you are found innocent after serving jail time you are not automatically compensated for your lost time.
To learn more about the Innocence Project and how you can get involved visit their website at innocenceproject.org/.
________
The next speaker had everyone laughing from the beginning until the end of his talk. Chris Bliss, a stand-up comedian is no stranger to laughter and the spotlight, but during his time touring and working he learned that the audience of a comedy club brings both willingness and judgment with them much like anyone who comes to a performance.
Some takeaways include reinventions are not always the path forward. Sometimes you have to learn how to just go with what you know. And comedy, like magic, is keen on misdirection. Being able to lead an audience from one subject and ending up at another seamlessly is key in communication and comedy. Then right before he left he treated everyone to an amazing juggling routine.
To view a sample of his juggling or more of his stand-up visit http://chrisbliss.com/.
________
Next up was Rafe Sagarin with a talk about how nature learns to adapt to problems and how we as humans can learn from that strategy.
One of his examples was that you don't see a fish trying to turn a shark into a vegetarian. In other words we have to be able to not try and change the others around us but learn how to adapt ourselves to find a solution.
Another major point, nature uses redundancy. They focus on what is successful for them as opposed to learning from mistakes, because in nature one mistake could be your last.
To learn more about adaptable solutions just click here.
________
And lastly to round off an incredible day of learning we heard from Jason Pontin, editor in chief and publisher of MIT Technology Review. The major takeaways from this lecture were Jason's top four ways to solve a major problem:
1. Political leaders must care to solve a problem
2. Institutions must support its solutions.
3. The problem we're seeking to solve must be a technological problem.
4. We must understand it. Really big problems are often overlooked as simple.
To learn more about Jason Pontin visit his LinkedIn profile.
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