It’s a year since the iPad came on the market. At first, I admired it vicariously via my partner, who is an early adopter with most things technological, especially computers, cameras, music and bikes.  Once I got my fingers on it,  (I did resist for a week or so), I changed to “I want one.”

Since then, I am increasingly loving my iPad.  It goes where I go: into every room in the house, the car, the plane, the boat, the doctor, the dentist, the hair salon, the beach, the park, the local coffee shop, bars, restaurants, and workplaces, of course.  My iPad is with me, everywhere.

What makes it so valuable to me and why do I love it?  It’s what I am able to experience with the iPad (location agnostic) that makes it so amazingly worthwhile to me.  In one year, the quality, standard and variety of applications that are coming to market beyond games and utilities (that are okay on smart phones) have made the tablet form a superb tool for engaging with content across the world, from boardrooms to schoolrooms, from hospitals to coffee shops, from beaches to office blocks and wherever else it works for you!

If you don’t yet own one, please just read down the following list and imagine how awesome it is to experience all of the following activities with one single, simple, elegant device – and remember, you are not constrained by location!

• You read books, magazines, newspapers, emails, text messages, business documents.
• You watch films, videos, YouTube, TV
• You write poetry and stories
• You doodle
• You draw pictures and shapes
• You listen to music and speech and radio
• You play games.
• You touch, reposition, re-order objects and images
• You annotate copy
  
• You edit text
• You record voices and sounds
• You access information and resources in your world, your immediate environment or across the world
• You take photos and video
• You participate in virtual meetings and web conferences via Skype
• You learn new facts and gain knowledge from global sources
• You develop awareness from new connections
• You laugh
• You gaze in wonder
• You reflect on ideas
• You create and develop your own thoughts
• You connect with people through social media
• You share what you want with others

And, you can do so much more, so easily, so effectively, so efficiently, so enjoyably, so consciously.  You can have all this functionality, utility, fun and enjoyment on a device that is totally unobtrusive and mobile!  That is why it’s extra cool!

I am so convinced that applications on tablet devices, (specifically the iPad over the next couple of years while other operating systems and manufacturers come up to speed) will continue to be the leading and most innovative tool for connecting people with content, ideas and other people,  allowing for increased participation in meaningful, developmental ways. I’ve witnessed the faces of children, professionals, the sick and elderly all light up with interest and curiosity when offered an iPad to interact with. My delight and commitment to sharing good content and experiences through this medium has me now developing apps to help bring about transformational shifts at personal and community levels.  Embracing Change is my first application in partnership with Polymash Digital Arts.

In my next post, I will share some of my favorite apps and some of my learnings along the way, and in my third post on this topic, I will share my excitements about developing applications in the learning and development space.

First time, we were at dinner with a couple when their three year old pulled out the iPad, tapped into one of her favorite apps and was immediately engrossed as she tapped, swiped, dragged and, from time to time, sat up, tilted her head confidently to reflect on the objects she was engaging with.  Her fullest absorption in her iPad totally attracted the attention of older people in the restaurant,  amazed at her competence with the tablet device.

Next day at a friend’s house for dinner,  their 3 year came up to the table with her iPad, opened the Netflix app, picked out a movie she wanted and downloaded it and started to watch it without asking help from any adult.

Earlier that day, I had offered my iPad to a three year old and she immediately took it out of my hands with a big smile, and started tapping and dragging and swiping, immersed in the content, participating in the cute animations and sounds that delighted her.

As described in Huffington Post this week,

“The iPad’s sensitivity to touch preserves the intimacy of the magazine-reading experience. It also puts the reader in control. You are the navigator. Because the content is non-linear, interesting connections become possible and immediate. ……..You can venture as deep into the experience as you like….[this] digital technology has enormous potential. It brings a new dimension to our storytelling, making the experience more immersive than ever. It’s exciting to think about where it will take us.”

I am very caught up in this new way of experiencing content, as a consumer and now as an author and content creator.  My first app is about to be launched.  Called “Embracing Change”, it’s a self development app that takes readers on a personal learning journey following the Appreciative Inquiry framework.  As a learning and development professional, I  advocate using all the tools we can, in all the ways we can, with as many others as we can, to create the best experience learning experiences we can.

In the tablet format, content, theory, charts, images, interviews come to life, in fullest color and sound with the consumer interacting physically as well as cognitively and emotionally.  No wonder kids love the aliveness of this new form factor.  It’s playfully engaging.  And as adults, we, too can we re-connect with our inner kid, as we discover what it’s like to  interact with content in this immersive, engaging way.

(Link to the full interview below)

Q: What do you see as the New Paradigm of Work?

Killian: The new paradigm is about Life. One life, and work is part of that life and increasingly these two blend like fluids. Much of this is driven by the exponential rate of technological advances, automation by machines of routine tasks and the unstable and unpredictable business climate (and in part, planetary climate conditions!) The technologies we use for work and for socializing blend; the devices we use at home and at work blend; our networks blend; our hours of work and home-time blend in a ubiquitously connected global economy; our work spaces blend and even the boundaries between our professional personas and our personal reputations blend. Increasingly, our employers blend as many people become self-employed or work on contract terms for multiple organizations, over time our careers will blend from one life stage to another, much like seasonal workers or the way in which actors work.

In this new paradigm of work, where work and life are inseparable, happiness will only be possible if work blends with play, if passion blends with purpose, and if creativity is as vigorously cultivated as profitability.

What about this interview so resonated with me? Annalie offers stories and insights for creating environments where people show up fully so their radiance shines.

And, it takes effort. It is about developmental work – as opposed to problem-solving work. In order to live into the new paradigm, it requires us to:

1. do personal inner work – develop our own inner capacities:
2. identify and invest in the appropriate structures to support and facilitate the development
3. recognize we can only make this shift to a “new paradigm about life” in relationship with others.

To read the full interview, please go to Michelle James’ fabulous blog, The Fertile Unknown and read her full interview with Annalie Killian, in her series of Creativity in Business

It was the “old days”, when life aboard a luxury liner in first class was still akin to what you read about in novels at the beginning of the last century and what we see in movies, such as the Titanic:  opulence, elegance, indulgence, style and sophistication.  I was 7 going on 37 – full of romance and imagination.  I was a princess in my own mind afloat this luxury liner setting out in the Pacific Ocean, crossing the Southern Ocean,  the Indian Ocean, up the Suez Canal into the glistening Mediterranean Sea.  I was 7, which I have since learned is a significant age in human development.  It sets the psychological thermostat for how you internalize beliefs about yourself and your relationship to others and the world.

So that how “change” started for me.  I was princess, aboard a luxury liner, afloat on the widest and deepest oceans, discovering a plethora of amazing realities and an abundant, cornucopia of choices.   I believed I could do anything.  I was Eliza Doolittle of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion aka My Fair Lady. You know the story.  Professor Higgins made a wager that he could transform a young street flower seller from her lowly beginnings to an elegant sophisticated princess, and more importantly have English aristocracy believe it to be true.  We know the outcome of the story – he won his wager.

That’s the magic.

When you believe it, you see it. I believed I could swim across the pool on board that liner, and I did – I almost drowned, but I told myself I would do it and I practiced and practiced by swimming from corner to corner in that pool, lengthening the distance every time until I could swim the distance without having to reach out and grab the side of the pool.  I swallowed a lot of water in the process, but I did not give up.

My love of exotic foods happened in the magnificent dining room of that liner – I learned to love pepper and other spices.  I relished experimenting with food, especially if it were grown up food.  The pepper mill was a new discovery for me as was as Parmesan cheese.  I would ask the waiter to give me copious amounts, as it was so sophisticated. I wasn’t satisfied until my mashed potatoes were totally bespeckled with black pepper.  I learned myself into what I believed myself to be and desired to be.

Fast track to now – decades later. Here I am.  When people ask me my nationality, I say I’m a global citizen. My love of diversity and charting new territory has continued to grow. I consider myself very privileged to be alive today.  In fact, I say, we are the privileged generation.  My start in life was unique, just as all of us have had our own unique beginnings.  I’ve been through lots of change. Just as all of you will have been through lots of change.  Some of the changes I engineered myself, and some I would not have engineered for myself.  The common thread in all these changes: I faced them and embraced them.

There are many other facets to embracing change generatively, and I’d like to name one: the anticipatory principle -  cultivating the ability to hold a vision of the future that we want for ourselves, others and the world at large puts us in the starting gate.  To embrace change we want to be part of is to see it first in our imaginations.  I did as a 7 year old, Henry Higgins did it for Eliza Doolittle and you can do it for you.

Let me conclude here with a favorite quote about what change means to me:  ”I embrace emerging experience.  I participate in discovery.  I am a butterfly.  I am not a butterfly collector, I want the experience of the butterfly.” William Stafford. 1914- 1993.

How important?

To be doing something you are good at and having fun and involving others in co-creating fun.  That’s participation, collaboration and engagement and playing to one’s strengths!   The New York Times is talking about Matt Harding who seems to have fun doing what he’s really good at.  The article brings attention to a number of the positive attributes that living in 2010 is all about: having the internet to share one’s own creativity; involving our global village life-centric ways that unite us through music, laughter, activity, play.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY

“However you interpret it, you can’t watch “Dancing” for very long without feeling a little happier. The music (by Gary Schyman, a friend of Mr. Harding’s, and set to a poem by Rabindranath Tagore, sung in Bengali by Palbasha Siddique, a 17-year-old native of Bangladesh now living in Minneapolis) is both catchy and haunting. The backgrounds are often quite beautiful. And there is something sweetly touching and uplifting about the spectacle of all these different nationalities, people of almost every age and color, dancing along with an uninhibited doofus.

Children, not surprisingly, turn out to be the best at picking up on Mr. Harding’s infectious vibe. There’s frequently a grown-up, on the other hand — especially one in the front row of a crowd — who tends to ham it up and make a fool of himself.

The other remarkable thing about the “Dancing” phenomenon is that it is, to a very considerable extent, a creation of the Internet. It doesn’t just live, so to speak, on the Web; it was the Web that, more or less accidentally, brought it into being.”

All of the AI Principles are evident in her story.  She opens with examples of the Constructionist Principle: how words create worlds and the role we all play in co-creating our realities and defining each other.

She advocates the need to honor the wholeness, possibility and potency of ourselves and each other.  She asks us to open ourselves up to and embrace our adversities, rather than sweep them under the carpet.

She reminds us from her own story that we live up OR down to others’ image of us, and how positive imagery leads to positive outcomes.  She is such an example of nurturing the human spirit, keeping hope, seeing the beauty, valuing curiosity … and so much more.

I highly recommend this video.

Punters at the racetrack don’t place their hard-earned money on the weakest horse in the race.  They bet on the best and the strongest.  Owners and trainers of racehorses invest in nurturing and developing the strengths of each individual horse.  It’s not to say, they discount or ignore their weak areas.  They work on the principle, that the return on investment will come from developing what is already a natural strength in each horse.

When training for a triathlon, cycling was my strength, running was in the middle and swimming was my weakest stage.  To perform at my best, it was the cycling I needed to excel at.  I could get into the zone when I cycled.  I was at one with the bike, torso parallel to the road, legs dancing on the pedals, feeling the exhilaration of my rhythmic cadence, the wind flowing over me as I challenging myself to go faster and faster.  It was hard work and it was pure joy.  I trained in running, but it took much more effort to feel pleasure above pain.  No matter how much I trained, I would never bring my running up to a standard that would exceed my performance on the bike.  When it came to swimming, I trained just to be able to compete, damage control as it’s known as.   Had I invested all my time in my weakest stage, I would have jeopardized my overall performance and would have certainly dampened the pleasure and reward I got out of participating in a triathlon.

Similarly, if you were the coach of a successful swimming team, you’d know the strengths and weaknesses of all you team members.  In order to get the best out of the team, you’d invest greater effort on developing the strengths of each team member to optimize their performance.  You would also work with them to overcome their weaknesses for necessary damage control.  The biggest investment of your time, effort and money, however, would be in building the strengths of each team member.   You would not do it the other way round – focus on individuals’ weaknesses, at the cost of their natural talents and strengths.

It seems we know this in the sports arena.  Yet, when it comes to organizational contexts, don’t we do it the other way round?  A vast majority of leaders still think we need to eliminate weaknesses in order to get optimal performance.  Peter Drucker, (1919-2005), one of the most influential thinkers on leadership and management, stressed that the role of leadership is to build on organizational strengths so that weaknesses seem irrelevant.  Weaknesses cannot be ignored.  But to develop and improve performance, it is more resourceful to focus on what already works well.  Recently, I was contracted to coach a number of highly talented women in a professional services firm.  All six came to their first coaching session with their 360 performance review reports.  The first gesture of each person was to go the end of the document and point to the feedback of their manager with the comments, “these are my weaknesses.  These are the areas my manager wants me to work on.”

How does this resonate with you?  What do you and your organizations invest in?  It would be terrific to have your comments.

I declare my biases up front:   I’m one of those who look for meaning in everything.  I’m curious and I will look for the best in a situation.

How is Twitter making our world better?  Well, it is not only Twitter – it is the entire social media phenomenon.   And it’s not the tools that are making our world beter – they are tools, enablers.  It’s humankind’s choices about how these tools are used is what makes the world better.

Somewhere else, I described Twitter as an emergent self-organizing system.  In the Twitterverse, it seems very quickly and without much effort we self-select into interest groups, drop into others for a visit, contribute, stay or move on.  It is the true Open Space Technology.  We begin to chose our networks and have our voice.  If we are neither contributing nor learning in one relationship, we use the law of the delete key.  What’s the point hanging out where there isn’t a mutuality of purpose or reciprocity?

Twitter has awakened me to knowing there is no void between us – the morphic energy fields – our collective consciousness is palpable.  I feel extraordinarily connected with so many more people through social media in an important way.  I honor their ideas and knowledge and experiences.  I feel a sense of responsbility of supporting them in their endeavors.  I am filled with hope and possibility.  How we can use these tools wisely to improve the conditions of  the sick, the hungry and those in despair in countries without such access is one big thinking exercise right now.

What’s your highest vision for social media tools?

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The National Insitute for Play defines play “as a state of being that is intensely pleasurable. It energizes and enlivens us. It eases our burdens, renews a natural sense of optimism and opens us up to new possibilities. These wonderful, valuable qualities are just the beginning of what play is.

Scientists – neuroscientists, developmental biologists, psychologists, scientists from every point on the scientific compass – have recently begun viewing play as a profound biological process.

They are learning that play sculpts our brain; it makes us smarter and more adaptable.  For many animal species it has evolved over eons with result that the most advanced animals play the most i.e., play is more central to their development. Humans are the biggest players of all, specially designed by nature to play throughout our long lives.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHwXlcHcTHc

Take a look at Dr Stuart Brown from the National Institute for Play talking about “Play” on Ted.

Go and find that old frisbee, the hoola hoop or the roller blades.

Play and enjoy!

Highlight #1 is the creativity that flowed from play, a joyful, fun state.

After a series of playful warm-ups, including introducing the word
EUNOIA, the shortest word in the English language containing all five
vowels and which means BEAUTIFUL THINKING, we asked each table group to:

Describe the ocean without using the letter “e”.

It is a cool body of liquid that flows and is soothing, and has a fabulous sound. Many humans want to play in this amazing big bath. Surf and sun, rolling foam and coastal swimming and sailing, kids laughing and running across sands, sunburnt arms and happy dogs barking. I swam through a vista of warm, wavy liquid and it was salty without stinging. I was happy to swim fast and playfully again and again amongst fish plants and rocks. I saw sand and coral with tiny barbs. I saw swimming schools of fish and dolphins and octopus and a squid jump in, and join us now. I can float on H2O, got sand on my body, wind in my hair, salt on my lips, gulls calling, soars my soul. I can swim on constant highs and lows all day if I wish. Foamy swim in foamy light cozy bouncing liquid. Dolphins jump high towards sky. Whales roll and sing. Shrimp slink across a murky bottom. Today I saw a big soft salty fluid opportunity for joy with sand, sun and fun, and fish, wind, surf and play turns into a good day for all, Too much sun, not much fun though! Bill was surfing on a balmy day, slipping through glassy liquid, sun on his back, wind driving him on. Shark says ‘tasty!”