I’ve been working on some AI projects lately and I’m feeling 2009 vibes.
In 2009 I attended the One Club for Creativity’s inaugural Digital for Creative Leaders Workshop in partnership with the premier digital school, Sweden’s Hyper Island.
The goal of the program was to get dinosaur creatives like me proficient or at least open to the ever-widening and dominating digital landscape.
Then, like the AI adoption happening now, there were three types of people: One, the “into it” types. Two, the skeptical but persuadable types. And three, the arms-folded, never-gonna-accept-it rejector types.
I was Type 2.
The curriculum was robust. It was a blend of theory, practice, and collaborative learning, drawing heavily on Hyper Island’s methodology of experiential learning.
Some of the main elements of the program included:
Creative Leadership. Which was all about understanding the role of a creative leader in fostering innovation and motivating teams. And learning techniques for leading creative projects and managing diverse teams.
Digital Transformation. This was the big lightning bolt which emphasized how the digital landscape was changing the creative industry. And there were strategies taught for integrating digital technology into creative work.
Practical Applications. Here we took to hands-on tasks and our real-world projects to apply what we were learning.
It was truly a transforming moment in my career.
I was reflecting on all of this over the last few weeks as I was learning more, experimenting more and inspiring folks about AI.
It got me thinking about one of the most powerful ideas I heard at this OneClub/Hyper Island program about how to approach the digital world. (And now you can apply it to this AI moment).
I call it the “Canoe Theory.”
It goes like this.
Think of technology like a river. Right now, we are seeing an AI river. Upstream things are happening. Downstream things are happening. Right in front of us things are happening. It’s all endlessly flowing.
Now, you can stand at the edge of this river and admire it. Or even fear it.
Or…you can grab an oar and push yourself and your canoe into the water. Once there, you can feel the flow. You can paddle fast or slow. The point is, you’re in.
The AI age is here.
It’s time to get your boat in the water.
Image: Andre Furtado
Rob - wasn’t through the One Club, but I took the Hyper Island Master Class circa then, so likely we got much the same curriculum. At the time I was somewhere between your type 1 and 2 - couldn’t have had an agency in SF at the time and not seen the power and potential of tech.
Was struck by three things: first, their genius definition of effective network-centric creative — “remarkable,” as in people will literally remark on it (aka share or comment) — sticks to this day. Second, their “inner censor-lowering” speed drills, were exactly as taught by Tom Monaghan (took his, as well), a lovely example of new school not so different from old.
Last, got into a VERY spirited debated with, think it was Lars, about his contention that digital would lead to inevitable democratization of creative and would be the rising tide lifting all. My point was that more likely we’d see a flattening of the curve — that while opening the door wider was a good thing, we’d more likely see a downward trend in creative quality, and a degrading of the economics with the upper end being dragged down, not the lower being elevated.
Folks can decide which view was more accurate for themselves.
But your post reminds me that history is again a-rhyming and the “everyone, their own creative,” promise is again being shouted from rooftops.
While you can’t argue that standing on the bank, just observing the whitewater leaves you right where you are— maybe we also realize there’s likely a falls somewhere ahead.
Yeah, those Hyper Islanders...wonderful. Of course, so much of digital creative has been dreck. But it's a reality. The audience/consumer behaviors have changed, so the industry has changed. Now A.I. gives us new tools to get us all smarter, faster. So what can we improve?