widgetwonder

At the heart of widgetwonder is a deep commitment to group creative process. We like to help people make things together — to design relationship alliances, agree on goals, thrive in collaboration, and respond authentically to change.

Creative collaboration — with teammates, with partners, with customers — is the leading edge of innovation, and drives service excellence in business. In personal relationships, how we create together makes the difference between surviving & thriving.

Our clients are ad agency teams, dancers, focus groups, entrepreneurs, co-operatives, educators, lawyers, life partners, actors — any 2+ relationship that wants to explore a new story about who they are in the world, or to bring a vision to life…

Check the just the facts at the top right of this page for a view into our work - who, where, what story was told, and what happened next. The creative brief, for the blog entries to follow this one, makes a rousing call to “pique curiosity and add-value”. Stay tuned.

Try 415 637 6587, or denzil@widgetwonder.com for spam about upcoming events.

Thanks, Denzil J. Meyers

My coaches training included an exercise called Cosmic Flirts — being open to the notion that the universe may be sending you messages. How do we explain coincidence? You’re thinking about a friend, and suddenly she calls. Is there a connection? Our mind certainly wants to believe there is, and yet, there’s no scientific proof…

Carl Jung said that his idea of synchronicity really came together while dining with Albert Einstein, whose theory of relativity includes the notion that the whole universe exists simultaneously, that seeming separations of events & things are only due to our perspective, our relative location in the field.

For Jung, this was support for his idea of the collective unconscious, a connection that does not have to travel like an email or phone message or envelope does. Events can be connected, without conforming to cause/effect. And we can be connected without our minds acknowledging or understanding the connection.

In coaching, a client might keep a peripheral eye/ear open for flirts — small shouts out from the universe of coincidence — and we ask: What is that trying to tell you? What wisdom is there for you?

Its been said that real change happens in small ways, on ordinary days, at seemingly insignificant moments that perhaps only later we might label as a turning point. Jung believed that flirts (or winks, as he called them) were possible at boundary events — moments of great life transition, where turning randomly left rather than right may make all the difference in the world.

The real question is — What are we paying attention to? The thinking mind is one channel of information, like channel 7 on your TV. And there are others: the emotional channel, the flirt/wink channel, the body channel, the intuition channel, the ‘What your partner is really trying to say’ channel. Yoga and meditation are ways to switch the channel of attention, away from the mind to breath, to sensation. Just focusing on the Now seems to be useful.

So everyday, give your thinking mind some time off, and practice paying attention to something else — the sounds of silence, your breath, ask your body what it wants for lunch today. Really listen to your intuition for 5 minutes straight, without judgement or disagreement about what’s practical. What choices become available when we give attention to the parts of us that we don’t believe we control?

Why even ask these questions? Basic research and exploration, on the road to growth and innovation…

Greetings for the new year! As the year counter clicks, we’re reminded of an opportunity to connect with, and to focus on what nourishes & energizes us in life: values, aspirations, and actions. I’ve been attending to two particular areas this season — Relationships, and a 2008 Theme.

Relationships — Our success and satisfaction in almost every area of life is inter-dependent with the satisfaction of other people with whom we live, work, play, and create. But we receive little if any training or guidance in How to work well with others, how to collaborate. Consider taking some time with your partner(s) to discuss the values and goals that bring you together, and how you can design the relationship you want.

For 2008, think about key relationships in your life, to people of course, and also to your relationship to your work or health. You can ask yourself the questions below, or even better, discuss them with someone close to you:

• What does this relationship want more of?
• What’s working? What should be celebrated?
• What would help create a sense of fun and ease in this relationship?
• What resources (people, time, money, support, info, commitment) do we need to grow?
• What does it mean to conduct this relationship in alignment with our values?
• What have we learned from this last initiative or year of working together?
• How do we want to be together when someone drops the ball?
• What are we tolerating in this relationship?
• What does being supported look like to you & your partner?

Theme for 2008 — Thinking about your goals for 2008, consider creating a theme or tag line or headline or song for yourself that captures the excitement of where you’d like to travel this year. Your theme word, phrase, song, image, dance, etc. should be emotional and dynamic, more of an inspirational reminder than a summary.

My personal theme for this year is A Bigger Game — for me this means preferring to be a smaller fish in a bigger pond, with room to grow. It also means the possibility of rejection and failure. Whatever happens, I’m interested in the feedback that comes with shooting for the moon.

Below are a few questions for completing the old & creating the new. And perhaps along the way you’ll find a theme song for 2008 …

1. Reflection for ‘07 — Think about & write some key issues/events from the past year: A) what were your Successes & Breakthroughs? B) your Failures & Breakdowns? C) what are some Lessons Learned from all of those experiences?

2. Completion for ‘07 — From your list of Breakthroughs & Breakdowns, on which issues do you feel “complete”? Completion can mean “finished”, and can also be about making things whole. When we feel incomplete in an area, it drains our energy. Think about losses you haven’t let go of yet. Or perhaps a win that hasn’t been fully leveraged or celebrated. Or just something where you need to let it be what it is & stop trying to change it. About what would you like to feel more complete in the coming year?

3. Visioning for ‘08 — Sit back, close your eyes, and dream about a year from now — writing your Reflections of Wins & Breakthroughs for 2008. What’s on your list? Write it in the present tense, e.g. I started a new business. Or, I improved my relationship with my kid. How or what would you like to look & feel different a year from now? Be idealistic, be bold. And in the end, remember that a plan is only the place to begin; life is full of surprises.

4. Actions for ‘08 — “Just Do It” is a popular slogan, but not particularly helpful advice. Most change initiatives require some planning, and lots of support. Thinking about your Visioning goals, answer 2 questions: What would be a first step towards making that happen? What kind of support (people, materials, information, etc.) do I need to get started? Starting a big project at the beginning offers small wins, which build momentum & confidence. And thinking about support needs helps to develop the plan, and can connect you to your community instead of thinking that its all up to you & you alone.

I plan to be working this year: helping partners design alliances, building trust and productivity with teams, and designing spaces for creative process. Give a call or email if I can help in any way. Wishing for all your dreams to come true…

I love this ad because it so perfectly captures the crazy endearing chaos that is India…

In case I haven’t mentioned it to you personally, I’ve been working more over the past few years as a life & performance coach. These skills are a great addition to my toolbox for facilitating better group creative process & workplace relationships.

Based on my training in Organizational & Relationship Systems, I’d like to extend an offer for a sample hour of coaching with you and any kind of partner (business, family, romantic, athletic, creative) to help you Design Your Alliance — literally, talking together about HOW you want to make things together, WHO you’d like to be while you’re building a life or business or team, and WHAT values are most important in your shared goals or vision.

The offer is for a sample hour. Click here for info about the one-day TDA workshop for ad agencies and their clients (or other business teams). TDA is also great work to do with agency creative teams, romantic couples, in families, etc.

Please give a call or email if you’re interested in exploring how TDA can improve your relationship & the process of making together…

Sometime this month, April 2006, will be 20 years for me in advertising. I’m happy to say I still enjoy this business, the people, the ideas, and yes I even still enjoy moderating focus groups & training moderators.

When people ask, Where Do You Want to Be in Five Years?, I’ve never had any idea or answer. Mostly, I’ve been confused enough with where I was. My 2006 answer: “Somewhere I can’t possibly imagine today”.

My first 6 years in the business I was a sponge at DMB&B NY as a P&G media planner & then Chiat/Day NY as a young account planner. The pay was crap, and the work was fascinating. I liked the strategy of media, and literacy in MRI books proved an asset at C/D. The people I worked for at both shops are still rock stars in their world. There’s no way I could have planned this kind of education & opportunity.

When I moved to FCB San Francisco, then started my own business a year later in ‘92, I wasn’t sure what would happen next. Pitching IBM with Ogilvy in 1994 was a good break, and started a 12+ year relationship. And clients in SF, NY, Seattle, and elsewhere have kept me busy & learning & paying my mortgage. Thank you.

One day, I sat down & asked myself about widgetwonder‘s value proposition: How do I best serve my clients? Why should someone hire me?

Perhaps contrary to my British-infused education, I was tired of the planner’s role as “most clever person in the room”. So I said Yes to Collaboration — work to bring the group together, into alignment around language and ideas. The power of brands are expressed as shared values, not proprietary. Help the team move forward, and experience themselves in new ways. My job is to help create an environment where the group can do its best work. Building & holding a group is a skill, and I’ve been focusing here for the past 10 years.

Mostly, I just follow what I’m most curious about. And I like to solve problems, tell stories, and make a connection. That’s my idea of a plan. Oh, and its ok to freak out all along the way because you don’t know where you’re going. Doesn’t everyone do that anyway?

The best thing about entrepreneurship is that I’ve had the opportunity to invest in my business & myself. With each 5 year period of the past 20 years, my growth & learning have accelerated & have become more interesting.

This diversity of experience drives innovation for my business, and adds value to my clients. Personally, I couldn’t ask for anything better. Check back for an update again in 2026…

Humble appreciation for a lovely success: 12 of us on Thanksgiving morning making sandwiches, adding an apple, water, fresh veg, vitamin C, pumpkin bread, and chocolate-covered espresso beans to the lunch bags. After cooking two 20 lb turkeys the day before, I limited myself to making coffee & waffles, while the crew took over. When we had 50 meals, we scattered in our separate cars, hitting the streets to feed the hungry. Lots to be thankful for — the folks who showed up to make this happen, especially my students. Clearly, we all got more than we gave…

Since the Gold Rush, San Francisco has been a famous "end-of-the-line" destination to those looking for a chance to re-invent themselves. 

The next play I’ll be acting in is Emperor Norton I — a new musical. Norton, by proclaiming himself Emperor of the US in the 1850’s, became perhaps the first of a long, colorful, proud line of "eccentric" San Franciscans.

Conventional wisdom was that he was crazy — suggesting a bridge over the East Bay, trying to prevent the Civil War, proposing to the Queen of England. Yet with every new "royal proclamation" he became more loved, more celebrated, more in demand. This is the San Francisco way.

Come enjoy this charming & funny story from the Barbary Coast — from rags to riches to rags to pomp & fleas — weekends in Dec ‘05 and Jan ‘06. At the Darkroom Theatre, of course, 2263 Mission St @ 19th St. 415 401 7987. Reservations recommended…

When it comes to photography, my approach is pretty much the same as elsewhere — chuck the rules, embrace the random, and dump quickly what isn’t working. Here’s a link to a series of images I call ColorFields — explorations into the intersection of light, color, motion, and slow shutter speeds. Using the technique for portraits can also yield suprising & beautiful results. Links are to Flickr.com pages.

My almost-daughter Cara started working this past school year at the Oberlin College Bicycle Co-op, and has discovered she loves getting greasy & fixing bikes. This summer, she was talking to her friend Gabe, who recently started a bike co-op in San Francisco called Box Dog Bikes. As Gabe was telling of some frustrations of being 5 recent college grads opening a business, Cara mentioned that my work is in helping teams & organizations collaborate better. Gabe was interested. So I visited the shop, we talked, and agreed that I’d join their board as their first outside director.

Earlier the next day, before my first Box Dog board meeting, I was teaching a Brands & Branding class at the Miami Ad School (SF campus) and my class needed a new client for the last 4 weeks’ assignment. So I gave them the co-op. The brief? Box Dog Bikes believes cycling can change the world.

The co-operative entrepreneurs at BDB combine bikes & sustainable business practices "to have a net-positive impact on the world" They promote cycling because bikes are better than cars for the air, for traffic congestion, for building local community, because oil = war. BDB’s radical political agenda is to convince students & office folk to commute by cycle. They are happy to be experimenting with an alternative to capitalism.

Its exciting that my class had a real client to present to, and great for BDB to have 6 creative teams working for them. We’re all kind of blown away by how its come together.

Personally, I share BDB’s politics, and I love bikes more than any other way my body can be in motion. So we made a deal about compensation…

There’s a great book called "Twist of the Wrist 2: The Basics of High-Performance Motorcycle Racing", in which racer Keith Code very simply explains the physics of a gyro in motion combined with braking forces and traction dynamics, and suggests that all our gut reactions are wrong — fear based — when we think we’re going to die in a firery speeding crash. Keith says doing the opposite of the fear reaction is the best policy, all physics concerned. His suggestions? See if they seem useful improvisational tools for life..

1. When in doubt, accelerate. The bike is most stable when the throttle is cracked open a bit, accelerating, especially useful in scary turns and unstable conditions. Bike is least stable while braking.Brake + turn = disaster.

2. When the road gets rough, let go. Bumpy road means bumpy bike means use your body as a shock absorber - squat rather than sit, and loosen on the bars. Relax your hands arms and shoulders.

3. Pick a line in a turn and hold it. Correcting course mid-intitaitive curve creates a moment of extreme instability in a gyro. Momentum is lost as accelaration drops.

4. Look where you want the bike to go. If there’s a haybale or truck in the way suddenly, look at the space between obstacles while hurtling forwards, not at the truck. The bike will follow your balance & focus.

5. Counter-steering: push where you want to go, don’t pull. To turn a bicycle or motorcycle to the right at speed, you push right and pull left. Its just true. The gyro again, somehow. But push seems building, while pull to get what you want feels limiting.

Doing this stuff makes it possible to go really fast on a motorcycle, and to find the edge where your speed exceeds your skills. Keith suggests racing at 85% to your edge. Try applying his skills to your life & decision-making. Experiment, and send me post cards….

This weekend will be the last performances of a play I have been directing — Lovesick: The Cat Allergy Musical. Its the story of a woman, looking for love in all the wrong places — specifically, trolling the internet. As each new goofy & inappropriate guy comes over, she falls quicky in love. And her cat, Lucky, finds new ways to dismiss each of the dates with brutal comedic torture.

Her version of the story is that her cat is ruining her life. His version is that he’s protecting her from doing something stupid. The tension between Serenity & Lucky is so good, it reminds me of home. I keep finding dark meanings in the songs (written by Darkroom producer Jim Fourniadis), and in the text, which my soon-to-be-ex-wife, the author, swears are not there. But I know what happens in our kitchen…

In fact, when I first read the play, I wanted to direct it very dark. The humor would be wrung from the audience, thirsting for solace and release. But the author wanted it light and fluffy. Its definitely not that, and I do believe she put her feelings about our dissolving marriage into the script. But its also brutally funny and smart and fast-paced and chock full of 10 original pop-rock-punk songs (click for mp3s) by Jim Fourniadis that I simply can’t stop singing. And I don’t even like to sing.

If you ususally don’t like theatre, come to the Darkroom sometime anyway. If you’re not happy, I’ll consider a refund. They’ve done so many great shows — Clue, Princess Bride, 2 seasons of Twilight Zone episodes, Zippy the Pinhead (written & co-directed by me). Its an old punk rock bar & record store turned into a punk rock theatre. If you subscribe to my RSS feed, news of my next show will arrive automatically. Er, maybe…

This article is primarily a feed of links for my students at the Miami Ad School in SF, but feel free to browse, whoever you are…

Check out the latest from WOMMA — the Word of Mouth Marketing Association conference. This is about corporate marketers first experiments with blogs. How about the Pocket Guide to Consumer Generated Media? How about replacing knowledge trees with leaves? What are some interesting creative units for the evolving media world? :30 TV is out. What new moments can we find to connect with the right people, at the right place, and the right time?

Over the past 5 or 6 years, we’ve been pitching clients on using storytelling and improvisation to innovate, to improve internal communication, and to build more effective teams. But it hasn’t often been easy. Say "improvisation" to most business people, and they think you are some kind of flake, that you don’t understand the needs of their business.

Now, two of the season’s hottest business books — Seth Godin’s "All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in Low Trust World" and Malcolm Gladwell’s "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking" — are focused directly on the benefits of story and improv.

Gladwell’s "Blink" discusses the value of the rational thinking that happens in the moment — he calls it rapid cognition — and makes a point not to use the word "intuition", which he feels is written off as emotional and antithetical to business. Instead, he points out that the complexity of business and life today — the sheer amount of data — frequently confuses deliberate, careful decision-making processes. In our information-saturated world, what wins is responsiveness to the market, flexibility, and speed. Improvisation is a best-practices lab for employing rapid cognition across departments, functions, and geographies. Perhaps "Blink" will help encourage the development of our practice.

Godin’s "All Marketers Are Liars" is about the value of Story — the difference between a marketing message that is full of facts and salesmanship, and marketing that engages. What’s cool about this book is that it emphasizes the Quality of Connection, as more valuable than a commoditized marketing "impression". Given the overwhelming complexity and choice of data and products (competition), Godin argues that consumers are demanding more authentic stories from marketers. Along the way, Godin chides companies that write mission or brand statements that have nothing to do with the way real people speak and live. Stories are how humans make meaning of events. For organizational development, for group creative process, for any kind of community.

Last weekend, we started a new season of subscribing to fresh produce from the Live Power Farm. Farmers Steve and Gloria Decater came down from Mendicino County to kickoff their 18th year growing for what is now a community of 37 families. Each week, we get a basket from the farm - this week was chard, lettuces, carrots, scallions, and the best strawberries I’ve tasted in a long time. In the 1980’s I stopped eating fresh strawberries (and tomatoes) because they were usually tasteless and mealy. Many apples too. But the produce Steve and Gloria grow is fantastic - the lettuces, carrots, beets, even the potatoes have a quality that I haven’t tasted anywhere else. Yes, even better than organic, they’re biodynamic.

Biodynamics is a non-chemical method of farming, based on a series of lectures in 1924 by Rudolph Steiner, the Austrian philosopher, educator, theologian, dramatist, and architect. Steve and Gloria talked to us about how they farm — completely by hand, and without chemicals. Its amazing that in 2005, they’ve made a decision — for the land, for the quality of produce, and for the community — to farm using horses rather than tractors. They’re not luddites though; they’ve invested in 22 solar panels for their barn roof so they can use as little fossil fuels as possible.

Steve and Gloria also talked about the benefits of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). We subscribe to the farm, which means we give them all the money upfront, so they know how many people they’ll be feeding for the season. This lets them plant a dozen different types of vegetables, rather than just one, which benefits the land, yields higher quality produce, and helps create a sustainable ecosystem. Since Live Power doesn’t just plant one veg, it isn’t victim to market fluctuations or weather or diseases which can ruin a single crop. They look at our way of dealing as a relationship — they know us, and we know them. We know where our produce is coming from and how its grown, and they appreciate being out of the market system, knowing who is eating the literal fruits of their labors, and having our kids play together in the yard while the meeting is happening.

Steve and Gloria are special folks. Their committment to the philosophy and process of biodynamic farming is impressive, and their farmer discomfort with public speaking just adds to their charm. I look at their wild hair and scruffy boots and wish I had the guts to live the way they do. As they talk, they show us slides from the many elementary school groups who visit the farm to learn about biodynamic methods, and re-connect modern kids to the land and its plants and animals. Its a part of their mission they especially enjoy, and it connects us together even more tightly as a community since most of us in the room have kids who’ve visited the Live Power at least a couple of times.

The vegetable is political? Absolutely. Non-corporate, non-chemical, reduced fossil fuel usage, de-commoditized, incredibly delicious, and bursting with food value. Eating food from Live Power Farm is probably the best thing I do to support a strong and sustainable America. We need more heroes like Steve and Gloria.

This may sound prosaic, but my blog is motivating me to write more. I ‘m enjoying it. And I’m not the only one. Some claim as many as 50 million blogs worldwide (a guess plus a few assumptions), a number that’s been doubling in size every 5 months. A more reliable estimate is for 10 million in the US. We’ll see about the growth rate. But as a share of 285 million Americans, that’s just 2.8%. Of Adults 18-49, the age cohort judged most likely to post, just 6%. Is this a revolution?

Now, its fair to assume that not all blogs are individual endeavors. The Applied Improvisation Network blog has a a dozen active writers. On the other hand, by some estimates, as few as 1 in 5 blogspaces are updated in a given 30 day cycle. And amidst it all, its impossible to know how much of this growth is business blogs.

Interesting to me is the activity of creation that steals share directly from passive consumption of any medium. Active media means making something, possibly with others, and the trend is growing — driven by education, access to tools, and a desire to connect.

What does "consumer" or "target" mean in this creative state of mind? The activity of creation creates/requires a radically different psychological space than the psychology of passive television consumption. Perhaps "marketing" needs some new ideas about how audiences/users "learn about a brand" while active and creating?

Passive media will always exist. But active media seem to growing. Do we count online/multi-player games as active, but single-player videogames only "interactive"? Where’s the line here? There isn’t one, and maybe won’t be. But there are opportunitites out there for media companies, content providers, and marketers to provide more user-directed or user-created media.

In a media world where "relevance" is the currency, targeting is good, permissions (including interactive) are better, and active will be a home run. 

For advertising folks, the ad movie is a special genre - hopefully biting, sarcastic, insulting, and funny as hell. Well, here’s one perhaps you haven’t seen - Putney Swope.

The film, from 1969, was directed by Robert Downey Sr (Yes, the father of Jr.), and begins with a corrupt and slovenly ad agency board kveching about their business. When the chairman & head of the agency enters, he starts berating the group , stuttering, and as the others begin a game of charades to figure out what he’s trying to say, he has a heart attack and dies, face down on the board table. After rifling through his pockets for his wallet and watch, the board holds an election for the new chair (with the chairman still laying face down, dead, across the table). The majority vote for Putney Swope - the music director and only black guy on the board. The rest of the movie follows the outrageous consequences of changing the name of the agency to Truth and Soul Inc. and replacing all the execs with brothers and sisters from the ‘hood. The film is in B&W but the ads are in COLOR. Outrageous - Black Power account execs, a pot-smoking German midget as President of the US, and they pitch a car account - the Boreman Six. One AE walks around repeating: "Putney says the Boreman Six girl is got to have soul!"

One special aspect of the film is the actor Antonio Fargas, later famous as Starsky & Hutch’s Huggy Bear. Something else that I personally love is that in the movie Cotton Comes to Harlem (itself a classic early blaxploitation story, written by the under-known and under-appreciated noir-writer Chester Himes), as characters Gravedigger Jones and Coffin Ed (two Harlem police detectives) run across 125th Street, the movie theatre marquis in the back ground is advertising Putney Swope.

But what really blows me away is this: My father came to the US from India in the mid 1950’s, when he was 16. In 1969, his parents and sister came to live in Philadelphia - a big trip for them to bring the whole family and leave India. Having not much money, they lived in a crappy section of South Philadelphia (where my mother grew up) - the part that was going downhill fast from old Rocky-movie Italian, sliding into the crumbling poverty and ruin that most people associate with Philadelphia today. Over the years, we’ve made fun of my aunt and uncle for never wanting to go out - they won’t go to restaurants, or parties, or the movies, or to Atlantic City casinos. They had jobs for years, but would only go to and from work, and then to church and the neighborhood shopping. What is wrong with these people, I wondered?

Recently, though, I was telling my mother about Putney Swope, and she remembered — when my aunt and uncle first came to Philadelphia, my parents took them to see this movie. What? THIS was the first movie they saw in the US? Militant afro advertising agency? Loud soul guitar and psychedelic colors? Pot smoking Nazi US president? Jesus, no wonder they refused to go out for the next 30 years…

This weekend, I am acting in a stage adaptation of a Twilight Zone episode from 1961 entitled "Steel". Check out The Darkroom Theatre for more info & tickets. "Steel" originally starred Lee Marvin as a washed-up boxer, now manager of a washed-up robot boxer, sometime in the future. Next week are two different episodes, and I play Rod Serling.

What I love most about acting is the rehearsal - the explorations with other actors, finding how we’re related, what we care about. Its always surprising. This is how the real world works — we figure out things together, are dependent on each other much more than we acknowledge. On stage, being right isn’t enough. As improv-guru Keith Johnstone advises: How do you know the work is good? Other people want to play with you.

 When the play is over, I usually get depressed, am tired, and so I crash - physically and emotionally. We call it Post Dramatic Stress Disorder…

This will show my age, but I have to admit - last night I went to see the early ’80’s funk/punk band Gang Of Four at the historic Filmore in San Francisco. The show last night was enjoyable, but lacked the thrashing violence of the night I last saw them - in a ill-fitting suburban hotel meeting room outside Wilmington Delaware in 1982. If you happend to be there, it was a brilliant moment - raw, ripping guitar from Andy Gill, set against a thumping rythym and dismal & bitter Leeds-soaked lyrics. I tried pogo-ing last night, but just couldn’t get the crowd into bashing around like the old days. And jumping wildly for a single song about did my 42 year old knees in for the evening. Any other Gang of Four fans out there, perhaps 40-something Brit planners? One thing I noticed at the show - back in the ’80s we had all shaved our heads, or had buzz cuts - partly for fashion, partly to prevent stupid punks from grabbing one’s hair in the mele. Last night though, most of the audience had the same kind of hair style - but now balding, not bald. We tried to ignore the difference…