Leonardo on Staying Alive

“Iron rusts from disuse;
stagnant water loses its purity
and in cold weather becomes
frozen; even so does inaction
sap the vigor of the mind.”

–Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519)

Italian painter, buy sculptor, troche and inventor

How are you kicking off your salesday?

Are you preparing your mind with solid thought, cheap information, and support? Are you allowing the right radio or TV personalities to get you ready (are any of them good… share one)? The right news or material? The right people at the office?

Be careful to what you give your attention. It all has an influence on you. (And kicking it is much more fun than mediocrity… or worse.)

Nansen on Fear Itself

“Never stop because you are
afraid – you are never so likely to
be wrong.”

–Fridtjof Nansen (1861–1930)

Norwegian explorer

Nobel Peace Prize winner

What you expect to happen – what you believe in your mind – can have a tremendous impact on what actually does happen.

If you’re going to try to accomplish something – if you make the decision to make the attempt – the best thing you can do for yourself is to expect a positive outcome. Anything else can only inhibit your efforts.

Worst-case: If you fail, you get an education for your future efforts.

Minimize your doubts, be positively expectant, and Cross The Line.

Remember…

We earn more challenges by dealing with and overcoming more challenges.

Embrace your experience. Enjoy the weather.

weathered: (adjective) seasoned by exposure to the weather

seasoned: (adjective) made fit by experience

__________

Where I Lose My Mind Thinking About GeoDesign

There is no such thing as a GeoDesigner

To understand what GeoDesign is you have to drop any ideas of it being a profession. Yes that means you don’t have to worry about little Timmy growing up to be a GeoDesigner. I sat for almost a day listening to people argue about an ontology for us to argue about a definition about GeoDesign. Yea, you read that right, ontology has been added to the list of drinking words at any GeoDesign summit.

After that first day I was a little shaken by what I saw but a night’s sleep clears the mind. People arguing about ontologies are only concerned about either writing about GeoDesign or teaching it. The 99.999% of the rest of us can move on and not worry about such minutia as the term “dashboard”  being offensive.

That all said, we all agreed that there is nothing called a GeoDesigner and we all took a blood oath to never let such a job be created.

Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here. This is the GeoDesign Room!

What’s The Point Then?

OK, so “we” reject the idea of creating an ontology and the idea that we can all go back to school and get our MA in GeoDesign. Why did I bother going to the GeoDesign summit anyway? Clearly I’ve got better things to do the first week of the year than spend it in Redlands, right?

Clearly no. I’ve said again and again that the Geography needs to be a deeper part of all planning. Sure we’ve all been “doing GeoDesign” since man could first pick up a stick and drew up where the dinosaurs lived so they wouldn’t be eaten. Place is critical to any planning and thus whether you are a GeoDesign believer or GeoDesign agnostic, you have to give me the point, “place matters”.  Thus, the concepts of GeoDesign matter even if calling it that makes your skin crawl.

Let Us Stop Making Things Complicated

What concerns me about GeoDesign though is that many of the people defining what it is or isn’t seem to live by the theory, complex problems require complex solutions. I don’t know about any of you, but my life and job are complex enough without “design strategies” defined on high. I want simple solutions to my problems because those are the ones that are implemented. Complex ones get stuffed in binders and put on a bookshelf . Time to make that stop!

A Way Forward?

Part of why I didn’t rush out and write about what I saw and heard at the 2011 GeoDesign Summit is that I’m not sure the details of what happened matter. GeoDesign 2011 is in the past and it probably was a good outcome as a second summit. There was some interesting talks, but nothing that I really wanted to jump up and say “Yes!”. What was sorely needed was someone showing how they are going to use “geo” and “design” together in the future. I think we’ve grown beyond proving we all have been doing GeoDesign for years and show how we are going to design  in the coming months, years, decades. There is all this big talk about GeoDesign being able to save humanity from ourselves but we continue to show work we did years ago. Aren’t we better than that?