Before I can get to arranging the images this morning, I have a lot of re-immersion homework. I print out the previous four days of images along with Christine’s additions. I also print out the stories so that I can look at them side by side. I stare at the previous collages and re-read and reflect on the stories. What is common? What is missing? All good “left brained” stuff.

As the week went on, I was finding it harder and harder to truly incorporate the rainbow image and the fossilized nautilus shells, so I deleted them from the set leaving me with six images. I really like both deleted images, but they didn’t seem to be working to help me express what I am searching for.

Remembering the question “what is the future I want to create for myself for this new venture and product?” it is time to shift to right brain stuff.

The story just erupts out of me:

“What has to be at the center are the berries.  The core product of the new entity are the living fruits of the talent that contributes to ‘content with context.’ The breakthrough is to think small and have millions of little living things (digital media content pieces) connected together. Each piece is complete in itself like a berry, and yet can be appropriated to make something larger – either a handful of berries to eat, mixed berries for a dessert, or fermented berries which are aggregated and blended to form a fine biodynamic wine – biodynamic information and connected/blended knowledge.

“The berries also are meant to be recursive in that they can be combined and remixed to create a document or a book or a curriculum or a degree or a product or an app. The smaller berries can be created relatively quickly and are what they are.  The desserts and remixed wine (longer documents et al) require patience and many blending (curating) activities.  Like all living things the content berries have a shelf life, they decay over time if not tended to.  These berries can also be small companies that are nurtured and fermented to become larger entities.  There is a vibration in the vision between starting small with content and starting small with early stage companies.

“The clay pot is a reminder that we can build/design/create a ‘product’ each day, whether a 3D object, a piece of software, or a piece of content, or a company. The vision of the pot is started in the head and then the clay and the potter interact with each other until there is a doneness.  But the doneness is the start of the journey.  The potter may be done but then there is the firing and baking and painting and putting up for sale and distributing.  Once distributed the clay pot becomes a container for the new owner to be used in innumerable ways.

“Surrounding the fruits of nature and the interaction of man with nature’s raw materials, are the artful purer makings of man’s mind represented by the three paintings. The products represented in the photographs are real products.  The three images represent the creative inspiration for the products and companies (right hand painting), the nexus of production (the left hand painting), and the journey to market (bottom painting) with multiple stages of value adding and partners (the ‘gates’).

“As I was working through these images and story and reflecting, I realized that there was something important missing.  The left most painting gets to it a little bit, but doesn’t show the brilliant innovation of connections and open innovation. The 3D printed Nexus Sculpture captures the unique thing that happens when through the combination of artistic innovation and mechanization (3D printing) we can create things by computer and CAD that we cannot do in ‘nature’ or through craft.  That is my fondest hope for what will happen with the platform of content with context’ in both the material world through the revolutionary innovation of distributed 3D printing and through a content with context platform for other forms of content and applications.

“Ultimately what the company is about is the development of ‘just in time’ collaboration by difference tool suite.”

“Each person builds a ‘product’ for sale each day.  The company builds a new company each day.  Growth occurs by splitting, not be getting bigger.”

Slowly but surely the fog is lifting. Just remembering the work that I did in designing our ‘nexus’ personal patterns prototype is huge. I am not feeling unstuck yet, but I am a lot farther than five days ago.

CHRISTINE:

OMG – you can do spirals after all.

From your wise cracking vizbot.

SKIP:

Well, this is embarrassing. I didn’t even realize that I’d created a spiral.

I am reminded of Robert Fritz’s story of learning to play the clarinet. His teacher gave him a new, harder piece to play each week. For the first six weeks, Fritz was very frustrated because he could never “master” any of the pieces. Then the teacher asked him to play the piece from two weeks previously. Fritz played it flawlessly. It is the constant stretching that is important.

Maybe there is some hope for me after all.

Now it is on to the do an iPad painting a day. Maybe I can kick that off when I get the new iPad 3, I just ordered.