Change the World!

Or at least your neighborhood!

Architect (and Andrews graduate) Jeff Sommers will be our guest speaker on November 22, discussing his dream for a reformation in urban residential design.

Here is a link to an article in Green Bean Chicago about Jeff's current project: a prefabricated, urban home meeting the criteria for LEED Platinum certification.  Meaning: really green and quite cool.

Please review these links:

• Square Root Architecture + Design on Facebook.  Check out the videos of the modules being built in a factory near South Bend.
• Square Root Architecture's blog.
• Project photos from Curbed Chicago.
• Article describing the project's long journey from the Chicago Tribune.
• A link to the Urban-C3 micro-site.

Please read this for Monday:  "4 Ways Advertising Gets Tricky and Wacky."

How YOU Doin'?

Please send me an e-mail this week (steve@t1resources.com) telling me what grade you would assign yourself so far for our in-class discussions.  Remember, class participation counts toward your grade and can be a key factor in bumping you up (or down) to the next grade level.

Tell me what YOU think you deserve, were the semester to end this week.  If you're not happy with the result, tell me how you'll improve. Thanks!

Blog Post for Friday, Nov 12th

In the midterm, you outlined your ideal community based on the concepts you found important in our readings thus far.

Now spell out how you would galvanize others around YOUR community. Why should I want to live there? Why and how would it better than where I am now? Using Seth Godin's notion, how would you create a 'tribe' of fellow believers? Sell it!

What difficulties might you encounter in convincing others of your utopian vision? Can you think of other visionaries who struggled in this way?

More About The Project

Several of you have asked for clarification on the major project which I've titled the "Influencing and Persuading" project.  In previous iterations of this class, students were asked to visit a local mall and analyze the shopping experience.  You are free to do that, but in this day and age so much of our shopping and exposure to brands occurs in settings other than malls and thus the analysis should follow where the brands lead.

I see the assignment rolling out as follows:

• Pick a company, brand, political campaign or issue.
• Analyze the basic underlying message.  A good way to structure your thinking is through a so-called audience analysis:
• Analyze: Who is the audience?
• Understand: What is the audience's knowledge of the subject?
• Demographics: What is their age, gender, income level, etc.?
• Interest- Why might they pay attention to the message?
• Environment- Where will this message be sent/viewed?
• Needs- What are the audience's needs associated with the message topic?
• Expectations- What action does the sender wish the audience to take?  Buying, obviously, but anything else?
•  

I hope this is helpful. We'll go through an analysis in class so you have an opportunity to work through an example.

Blog Post #3

What are the consequences for our everyday definitions of success of the following quote from Veblen: "Purposeful effort comes to mean, primarily, effort directed to or resulting in a more creditable showing of accumulated wealth"

Due Friday, October 29th.

First Midterm Exam

Three very simple-yet-complicated, multi-layered questions:

1. What idea in Sachs do you find the most important and relevant?  Why? (1 page)
2. What idea in McKibben do you find the most important and relevant?  Why? (1 page)
3. Using your answers to #1 and #2, and whatever process suits you, invent YOUR ideal community. (2-3 pages) Compare that ideal to the reality you see every day. 
1. Need help with the thought and design processes?  See Wikipedia's entry on Design Thinking, for example.

How are brands related to religion?  Read the article from Fast Company.

Please read for Monday Oct. 4

A Better Choosing Experience, from the consultants at Booz & Co.

September 13 Lecture Presentation

September122010

View more presentations from Steve Davis.

This Week's Blog Post Assignment

If I've learned anything over the last several months, it's that many of you prefer (need? crave? depend on?) more assignment detail, as opposed to less. It's a good learning for me, as I tend to be a more 'free-spirited, big picture' kinda guy, making it up as I go.

Anyway, for Friday, after familiarizing yourself with Jacqueline Novogratz's & Acumen Fund's work, develop some personal thoughts about (a) what you learned from Novogratz's experience as one person having an impact - trying, failing, trying again, finding fellow believers, supporters, etc., and/or (b) the impact of creative problem-solving in your life's endeavours and how one can constantly find the new perspectives from which positive solutions flow, and/or (c) reaction to Seth Godin's video.

So address any OR all topics as you choose and are inspired. Sometimes learning is about what I want you to learn. Sometimes it's about what you CHOOSE to learn. Your grade is based on the former. Your life's long-term success is more about the latter. Enjoy!

By the way, here's Wikipedia's entry for Eric Hoffer. Yesterday's lecture was wrong in one respect: Hoffer worked as a longshoreman in San Francisco, not Brooklyn. Otherwise, a pretty fascinating and atypical life story. And, as we contemplate materialism, it's worth a moment to consider Hoffer's belief that "...a passionate obsession with the outside world or with the private lives of other people is merely a craven attempt to compensate for a lack of meaning in one's own life."

I dunno. I'll have to think about that for a while. Maybe an obsession with the outside world is born from a sense of empathy with those around us, or is that too idealistic?

(listening to "Drake" by Afro Celt Sound System, from "Anatomic.")

Seth Godin's Acumen Fund Talk

Mid-Term Status Report

OK all of you blog and bookmarking slackers, I'm preparing mid-term evaluations (a.k.a "grades") so get all your work up-to-date...unless you've talked to me about other arrangements....which most of you have not.

Sleep well. Get your H1N1 vaccination. And wash your hands.

Reading Schedule

Here's a proposed reading schedule:

• Week of: 9/9 - Sachs, 1-2
• Week of: 9/14 - Sachs 3-6, McKibben 1
• Week of: 9/21 - Sachs 7-11, McKibben 2
• Week of: 9/28 - Sachs 12-14, McKibben 3
• Week of: 10/5 - McKibben 4,5
• Week of: 10/12 (no class on 10/14) - Begin Veblen, readings from Friedman.
• Week of: 10/19 - Veblen, readings from Novogratz
• Week of: 10/26 - Veblen, readings from Jarvis
  
• Week of: 11/2 - Lindstrom
• Week of: 11/9 - Lindstrom
• Week of: 11/16 - Lindstrom
• Week of: 11/23 (no class on 11/25) Discuss projects
• Week of: 11/30 - Discuss projects
• Week of: 12/7 - Final exam due
  

Randy's Pausch's "Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams." Available on YouTube.