Calmly Excited

Today’s the day Stop Doing Dumb Things rolls into town. Well it is if you live in London, and if you have a ticket 😉

I’ve lost count of the number of live events I’ve run and helped to run over the years. They’re great fun, and energising, powerful and experimental, so I suppose that makes them a little dangerous too?

Everyone involved in our event today is an experimenter. I congratulate you all for your willingness to try something different. And quite apart from lots of format tweaks and new ideas, there will be a couple of things I personally will choose to do differently. It’s no secret, because I choose it not to be, that these events, these gatherings, make me nervous. Will I give of my best? Will you be happy? And if you’re not happy will you be comfortable enough to tell me? And if you do, can I help put that right?

I choose  not to bring a musical instrument with me this time. I need a break, and so do you. And as it happens, I’m playing a 1970’s disco set in the New Forest this weekend. I’m happy to give you a sneak peak, and I figure one scary music day in a week is enough 😛

I choose to take a more participatory role this time. I’m lucky to be working with Jonathan Wilson and Peter Massey again and we’ve taken the time to make sure we all get time and space to play today, as well as facilitate.

If you can’t join us in real life through today, follow our experiment on Twitter using the hashtag #sddt. That way you’ll get a sense of the useful fun we’re having. Sorry though – unless you’re in the room, you won’t get any home made cake. We haven’t figured out how to get that through cyberspace, and to be honest, I hope we never do.

Thanks in advance to Neil, Neil, Peter, Ben, Martin, Tim and his team, and all our guests 😉

Whatever you’re doing, have a great day folks.

photo credit

Author: Doug Shaw

Artist and Consultant. Embracing uncertainty, sketching myself into existence. Helping people do things differently, through an artistic lens. View all posts by Doug Shaw