Make a change, experiment something new. Ophir Kutiel (also known as Kutiman), a musician, composer, producer and animator from Israel creates his music using samples of YouTube videos. Here’s how he started:
“At first I took some drummers from YouTube and I played on top of them - just for fun, you know. And then one day, just before I plugged my guitar to play on top of the drummer from YouTube, I thought to myself, you know - maybe I can find a bass and guitar and other players on YouTube to play with this drummer.”
I had the opportunity to give a little talk about my passions at an Ignite event organized by the Bucharest Hubb team.
There are very few things in my life that I don’t do with passion (I can’t even actually think about one right now) so I decided to just pick the themes that immediately came to my mind at the time when I created the presentation. So, I spoke about:
The Extreme
Design Thinking
The Unconventional
Music
While I went through the four themes, I exemplified the things that I like to do, the things the inspire me and the things that I would like to do. You can find the slides below.
“Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought.” - Albert Szent Gyorgyi (Hungarian Biochemist, 1937 Nobel Prize for Medicine)
Last night, before falling asleep, Julia asked me what are my wishes for the next year of my life. I answered: I wish to be healthy, to give and to receive love. She asked this question because today at 8.45PM I’m going to be one year older.
Image credits: Twenty six. Octav Druta
This afternoon, she gave me a big jar filled with sticky notes and she said: “Last night I asked about your wishes and you gave me such a short answer. In this jar you’ll find everything that I wish for you - I wrote a wish on each sticky note.”
I opened the jar and read the wishes written on the sticky notes. Here they are:
courage!
playfulness
be healthy
personal and professional growth
pleasure
travel around the world together
improve your meditation
self control
enthusiasm
continue to be generous
love and be loved
devotion
open mindedness
positive attitude
continuous discovery of extraordinary things
humour!
be curious
confidence
continuous improvement of your values
be surounded by honest people
happiness from within
be yourself
be an excellent leader
determination
perseverance
affection
achieve all your goals!
continuous improvement
kindness
optimism
strength
Julia, you made my day - I feel inspired, thank you!
I started developing a passion for movies around seven years ago. One of the most memorable movies that I saw back then (in 2003) is “The butterfly effect”. This movie made me very curious - I actually went to my physics professor at that time and tried to learn more about the phenomenon.
I liked idea of learning while watching movies. That’s why, in the past seven years, I’ve developed a basic set of heuristics that enable me to discover and filter interesting movies:
Before deciding whether I want to watch a movie or not, I check its imdb.com rating.
If a good friend recommends me a movie, I watch it no matter what kind of rating it has - it’s a good opportunity to learn more about the interests of my friend.
After watching a great movie, I seek to understand why I liked it and learn about the people (director, actors, etc) that worked on it.
Whenever I notice that I like a specific characteristic (mood, structure, plot elements, etc) of a movie, I seek to discover other movies that have the same characteristic using jinni.com
I rate the movies that I watch using criticker.com in order to receive better recommendations.
I try to watch movies as often as possible. No matter how good I get at discovering and filtering, I still get to watch movies that I don’t like. Watching movies frequently increases the probability that I am going to watch a great movie.
Last week I traveled to Timisoara and Cluj together with a bunch of friends. Each of us had the opportunity to give talks related to entrepreneurship in the context of the upcoming “How to Web” event. I gave a talk titled: “Learn to Learn”. There are many fundamental aspects to creating and running a great business. I believe that learning is one of them. In my presentation I made a parallel between how I learned to watch better movies and learning in entrepreneurship. You can check the slides below.
A few weeks ago I met a new person that has a big passion for music. We had an interesting conversation and we connected our profiles on last.fm (if you don’t know already, last.fm is a social network which revolves around its music recommendation engine).
When you visit a user’s profile on last.fm, the interface displays an indicator that shows your musical compatibility with that user. If the musical compatibility is high, the indicator turns green and if it is low, it turns gray. When I visited this person’s profile, the indicator told me that our musical compatibility was very low.
Even though the indicator promises to show your compatibility with the other user, what you really see is the degree of similarity between your profile and his. It “confuses” the things that two users have in common (i.e: their similarity) with their compatibility.
The funny thing is that it’s not only the indicator that does that, we also do it. We often (unconsciously) think that being compatible with a person means to have things in common with that person.
By definition, to be compatible means to be able to exist and perform in harmony. Having things in common may increase the likeliness of compatibility but it does not guarantee it. That’s why, the efforts of those trying to achieve compatibility by strictly seeking to match the things that they have in common are usually useless.
While similarities allow us to fire up quick conversations with other people, a strong focus on compatibility can strenghten our courage and desire to learn from them. It doesn’t really matter that we only have a few things in common: a few artists, a few books, a few interests. What matters is that there is an opportunity for us to learn from each other.
PS: I wonder how this applies to movie/music/etc recommendation systems. If most of them are only based on a mechanism that identifies similar features between movies that I saw and the past and movies that I didn’t see yet, they’re missing a lot. I’d be curious to play with a great recommendation system combined with a great discovery system.
People with a passion for “Making it Happen” are addicted to doing. There are books, manifestos, tools and wise words that enable and inspire us to do more and better.
For entrepreneurs, the huge enthusiasm that surrounds the goal of “Making it Happen” is helpful and deadly in the same time. One the one hand, it is helpful because it allows them to be determined and focused on gettings things done. On the other hand, the enthusiasm of doing may reduce awareness towards progress. It’s just like swimming against the current of a river: you’re focused on swimming but you don’t really know whether you’re making progress or not.
We all seek to strike a balance between executing and checking progress. In many cases, this is hard to achieve because it is often:
hard to define what progress means
hard to define the most relevant metrics to track and visualize progress
hard to do the actual measurement (takes time, effort, maybe even a considerable financial investment)
Being aware, in other words: knowing your numbers when and where it matters, is critical to make it happen. Together with a bunch of friends, I’ve enrolled on a journey to enable people and businesses to know their numbers when and where it matters elegantly and effortlessly. We’re just starting, so if you’re a practioner of “Making it Happen”, let’s keep in touch: I’d love to meet you, work with you and answer your questions. Just write me a line over here.
A Spanish artist by the name of Cesar Diaz used only a photo camera, a light table and sand to illustrate “Take it easy (No Corras Tanto)” - a song created by his band: El Combolinga. No added effects, no post production, just imagination, simplicity and 3 months hard work.
Since childhood, we’re taught that certain activities should be done using certain tools: “Draw using a pencil”, “Write using a pen”, etc. Wouldn’t it be a great idea to allow yourself to do regular activities in a new way, even for a short while? You’d have one more alternative to break routine and create new opportunities to innovate.
Even though society has evolved a lot, most of its institutions follow a culture that confines the freedom of self-expression. That is sad, because not being self-expressed means not being happy.
The rise of agriculture and industry, shaped work and education as contexts that required individuals to be punctual, follow directions and tolerate long hours of tedius work. Your own sense of progress, higher purpose and autonomy were concepts that didn’t resonate quite well with the thinking of the leaders of that time: “Why is it every time I ask for a pair of hands, they come with a brain attached?” - Henry Ford. In many places around the world, educational and professional environments stil follow the same philosophy.
My belief is that self-expression is fundamentally connected to happiness. Unfortunately, even if the educational and professional environment allowed for more self-expression, it would still be challenging to trully be yourself. We live in a complex environment and there are many contexts that influence natural self-expression - most of the times in some of the most ugliest ways.
Discovery is an approach that fosters self-expression. Being in a discovery mindset allows you to expose yourself and the surrounding context to the light of awareness. Even though awareness is a huge shift that most of the time allows you to carefully craft a response rather than mindlessly react to a certain situation, it is not enough. Sometimes the response that you have to give requires courage, authenticity and integrity. Being a discoverer is about finding the path but also about walking the path.
You can quickly recognize people that express themselves naturally by simply asking “What do you do?”. They’ll answer your question enthusiastically, pasionately and authentically. They’ll tell you a story about their work or about their life and they’ll even share the lessons that they’ve learned along the way. They’re good “friends” with the status quo but they always take one step further, discovering, inventing - not for the purpose of fame and fortune but rather for offering better, more effective alternatives to what already is available. Healthy profits (or benefits - call them however you want) come along as a natural consequence of helping people to solve a problem more effectively.
I love these people. To me, their dynamism, their strong integrity and their authentic curiosity, is empowering and inspiring in the same time. They are people that are truly self-expressed.
