Hey everyone,

I’m still working on the second edition of Organizing Creativity.

It takes longer than expected (it is a spare time project), so, I’m putting the current draft version online.

It contains the content of the wiki I had here, so I have removed it.

Like I said, it’s a rough draft — some parts are (almost) finished, others are missing in part or completely — but to make the best of the longer work process, posting it online gives me the opportunity to ask for feedback. This is your chance to influence the final version. What do you think of the content and/or the layout? Any suggestions for improvement? I’d like to hear them. Drop me a line at danwessel@organizingcreativity.com or write a comment.

All the best

Daniel

I have translated the poster I did for the MinD-Akademie 2011 in English. I love it — it shows on one (very large) page the whole concept that I try to convey with “Organizing Creativity”. If you prefer it in German find the German version here.

I will probably do a similar version for the second version of the Organizing Creativity Book (still working on it) and use it as navigation help for the Organizing Creativity Wiki (likewise still working on it). But until both are ready, have fun with this poster (note: due to the size — DIN A0 — it is about 7 MB).

The poster shows the different steps that are necessary in organizing creativity. While the process goes top down (yellow arrow in the horizontal center), each step is also another occupation with the topic (yellow arrows upwards to occupation with the topic), which leads to further ideas. I have left the footer for the moment — in case you are wondering it translates as “MinD-Academy 2011 — Future and Research”.

To put it differently: You are highly qualified people who should not be wasted in the wrong job. You are ambitious, in the sense that you want to accomplish something, be advanced, move forward. Choose the right environment if you can. PhD positions are qualification positions — it is not sufficient that you do your work well, the work must also allow you to move forward and improve/qualify yourself.
Presenter Note from “The Future of Your Research — How to organize a scientific work?”

I’ve finally translated the presentation I did at the MinD-Akademie 2011 regarding “The Future of Your Research — How to organize a scientific work?”. The slides include the presenter notes, which in turn include the script. It’s not my best translation work, so don’t be surprise to see a lot of “broken English” — but at least it’s readable, I think.

Note that due to copyright constraints, I cannot show the pictures I did show in the presentation. I have replaced these images with grayed out placeholders and an image description in square brackets.

Click on the slides to see the presentation as PDF (about 5 MB).

If you have further points that should be included in a presentation like this, I’d appreciate a comment. The recommended literature is also shown here as a separate posting.

Kurz gesagt: Ihr seid hochqualifizierte Leute, die man nicht auf der falschen Stelle verschwenden sollte. Ihr seid ehrgeizig, im Sinne von ihr wollt etwas erreichen, gefördert werden, weiter kommen. Sucht euch das passende Umfeld genau aus wenn ihr könnt. Promotionsstellen sind Qualifikationsstellen — es reicht nicht, dass ihr die Arbeit für die Stelle gut macht, die Arbeit auf der Stelle muss euch weiterbringen und euch selbst weiter qualifizieren.
Vortragsnotiz aus “Die Zukunft deiner Forschung — Wie organisiert man eine wissenschaftliche Arbeit?”

Note: The following presentation (PDF with Notes, which contains the script) is about ways to organize a scientific work. I did this presentation at the MinD-Akademie 2011 in Hannover and thus it is in German. It was my best presentation ever. Loved the audience . Regarding an English version, I’ll be doing a translation soon. [Update: Translation is online in this posting.]

Auf das Bild klicken um die PDF angezeigt zu bekommen (ca. 5 MB). Ein Teil der Bilder in der Präsentation sind ausgegraut, weil ich leider nicht das Copyright für diese Bilder besitze. Das mindert die Qualität der Präsentation, auch wenn sie nur zur Illustration eingesetzt wurden. Auf der anderen Seite sind alle wichtigen Informationen in den Notizen vorhanden. Das Design der Folien beruht zum einen auf ein Template von Apple’s Keynote (Cover), wobei die Seiten von den Aperture/iPhoto Photobüchern inspiriert sind. Die Angaben zur empfohlenen Literatur ist hier als eigener Eintrag verfügbar.

English Note: This posting is about a poster I did submit to the MinD-Akademie 2011, showing on one (very large) page how one can organize one’s creativity. It was accepted and well received. The poster is in German, but I will do a translation soon. [Update: Translation is finished and available in this posting here.]

Das Poster zeigt die verschiedenen Punkte die wichtig sind, um Kreativität zu organisieren. Während der Prozess von oben nach unten läuft, ist jeder Punkt auch eine Beschäftigung mit dem Thema (gelbe Pfeile nach oben) und führt entsprechend zu weiteren Ideen (mittige Pfeile nach unten). Auf das Poster oder hier klicken, um das Poster als PDF in DIN-A0 zu sehen (die Bilder selbst sind runterskaliert, so dass die Datei “nur” ca. 7 MB groß ist). Die Datei ist in der Dateigröße reduziert, die Bilder sollten aber trotzdem in druckbarer Qualität sein. Das Poster, das ich ausgestellt hatte, habe ich in Hannover gelassen (vielleicht hat es ja ein nettes Heim gefunden, sonst wurde es halt entsorgt). Ich musste los, habe mein Poster nicht gesehen (oder ich war grad blind) und ich habe mich auch von einigen Leuten nicht (bzw. nicht richtig) verabschieden können (war auch was k.o., auch wenn’s/weil’s riesigen Spaß gemacht hat). Ich hoffe, ich sehe ein paar Personen bald wieder, auch gerne mal zu Besuch in Tübingen, auch wenn ich die Namen grad nicht verfügbar habe (ich denke, ich habe den Networking-Workshop wirklich gebraucht — war gut und eine gute Erinnerung).  Ich wünschte halt, ich hätte mir die Namen notiert, von den Personen, mit denen ich interessante Unterhaltungen geführt hatte (hmm, in der Badewanne eben gab’s eine nette Idee für eine App bzw. die Fortführung einer älteren Idee dazu  … ).

“I took a speed reading course and 
read ‘War and Peace’ in twenty minutes.
It involves Russia.”
Woody Allen

Last weekend, I did a presentation for the MinD-Akademie in Germany with the topic: “The Future of Your Research — How to organize a scientific work?”. It was a lot of fun creating the presentation and even more fun holding it (great audience ). Over the next few days I’m going to put the material online here. As this takes a while, here the cited literature:

Science in General and Advisers/Colleagues

• Cham’s “PhD Comics”: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php
  I could have done the whole presentation with PhD Comics, but no one would have believed that they actually describe “real” situations (“real” because it’s a little over the top, but always with a nugget of gold). Great to get a humorous view on academia.
• Sternberg’s “Psychology 101½”: Sternberg, R. J. (2003). Psychology 101 1/2 The Unspoken Rules for Success in Academia. Washington, DC: APA.
  A very good book by a distinguished professor about life in academia. While written with psychology in mind (he is psychologist), some aspects can probably be applied to other domains.
• Pausch’s “Last Lecture”
(Video & Book): Pausch, R. (2008). Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams. New York: Hyperion. [Video here on YouTube]
  A brilliant presentation about a person’s life in academia (and in general) — it shows what you can accomplish and what is needed. For all who think that a job in academia is more than just making money to life by (badly in many cases).
• Schwartz’s “The importance of stupidity in scientific research”: Schwartz, M. A. (2008). The importance of stupidity in scientific research. Journal of Cell Science, 121, 1771. Available at http://jcs.biologists.org/cgi/content/full/121/11/1771
  A one page article about the necessity of feeling stupid while doing research. Should be required reading by every PhD student just to get the “but I did study it, why don’t I know the answer in advance” out of one’s mind.
• Patterson’s “Your Students Are Your Legacy”: Patterson, D. A. (2009). Your Students Are Your Legacy. Communications of the ACM, 32(3), 30-33. doi:10.1145/1467247.1467259
  A brilliant argument for good advisory — and what makes good advisory. Should be required reading for everyone who advises students.
• Schmidt & Richter’s Artikel von 2008 und 2009: Schmidt, B., & Richter, A. (2008). Unterstützender Mentor oder abwesender Aufgabenverteiler? – Eine qualitative Interviewstudie zum Führungshandeln von Professorinnen und Professoren aus der Sicht von Promovierenden. Beiträge zur Hochschulforschung, 30(4), 34-58. und Schmidt, B., & Richter, A. (2009). Zwischen Laissez-Faire, Autokratie und Kooperation: Führungsstile von Professorinnen und Professoren. Beiträge zur Hochschulforschung, 31(4), 8-35.
  Both articles are in German but they are very interesting — more information on them in a posting about them.

Finding a Topic and Planning the Research

• Perry’s Criteria for a good dissertation topic: Perry, C. (1998). A structured approach to presenting theses. Available online at http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/gcm/ar/art/cperry.html
  An excellent text about doing a thesis with some very good points on selecting the right topic.
• Booth, Colomb, & Williams’ “The Craft of Research”: Booth, W. C., Colomb, G. G., & Williams, J. M. (2003). The Craft of Research. (Second Edition). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
  More on the basics of what research is and how to do it — applicable for many domains.
• Ullman’s “Advising Students for Success”: Ullman, J. D. (2009). Advising Students for Success. Communications of the ACM, 52(3), 34-37.
  Another great text about advisory — with more focus on choosing a relevant topic.

Managing Literature

• Reference Manger Overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_reference_management_software
• citavi: http://www.citavi.com
  A very interesting reference manager, because it offers more than a database for storing reference information. It offers a way to organize knowledge taken from the articles, which is something few reference manager do. Very interesting!
• Sente: http://www.thirdstreetsoftware.com
  A reference manger that offers intelligent note taking capabilities. More in this posting.
• Zotero: http://www.zotero.org
  An interesting reference manager because it works in the browser. But there is still the problem of storing more than just the articles.
• Mendely: http://www.mendeley.com
  Interesting because it is also a social network. You can get information what people who read similar articles have read. Very interesting and the way of the future.

Capturing and Managing Ideas and Data

• Organizing Creativity: http://www.organizingcreativity.com
  I hesitate to recommend my own book (still working on the second version and it is just — wrong). But it was written to cover this topic. Get the PDF here.
• Circus Ponies Notebook: http://www.circusponies.com
  Beautiful digital notebook with a great outliner. Get more information on working with it in these postings: 
  • Circus Ponies Notebook: The Best Tool for Structuring Creative Writing Projects (esp. Research Projects)
  • Circus Ponies Notebook for Academic Writing (e.g., Thesis Writing)
  • Circus Ponies Notebook and Scrivener for Writing
• Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_wiki_software
  Wikipedia has a very good overview of the different Wiki (engines) available.
• DokuWiki: http://dokuwiki.org
  A very good and easy to manage wiki engine.
• DEVONthink: http://www.devon-technologies.com/products/devonthink/
  A very interesting note management system. Read more in this posting.
• Scrivener: http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php
  Personally the best writing application I know of — way, way better than word and well worth a look. Read more in this posting.

Preparing Studies and Analyzing the Data

• Field’s “Discovering Statistics Using SPSS”: Field, A. (2005). Discovering Statistics Using SPSS (2nd Edition). London: Sage.
  My statistics book was the Bortz (German book) — which was … not that suited to learn what statistics is about and why it is interesting and useful. Field manages to do both en passant — a very well written book and highly recommended.
• Pallant’s “SPSS Survival Manual”: Pallant, J. (2007). SPSS Survival Manual. McGraw-Hill, Open University Press.
  Everything you need to know to do the standard tests in statistics for psychologists. Looks cheap but is the best practical handbook I know. Very, very useful.
• Goodwin’s “Research in Psychology”: Goodwin, C. J. (2009). Research in Psychology. Methods and Design. New York: Wiley.
  Good basic text about research.
• Wright’s “Making friends with your data”: Wright, D. B. (2003). Making friends with your data: Improving how statistics are conducted and reported. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 73, 123-136.
  Something every researcher should know — very interesting text.
• example for a “strange” but very valuable source: Froman, R. D. (2001). Elements to Consider in Planning the Use of Factor Analysis. Southern Online Journal of Nursing Research, 2(5). Retrieved January 9, 2009, from http://www.snrs.org/ publications/SOJNR_articles/iss05vol02.pdf.

Writing

• Silvia’s “How to Write a Lot”: Silvia, P. J. (2007). How to Write a Lot. Washington D.C.: APA.
  Read this to avoid delaying your writing. A brilliant text that smashes the typical excuses of why not to write and gives very useful hints to write.
• Alley’s “The Craft of Scientific Writing”: Alley, M. (1996). The Craft of Scientific Writing (3rd Edition). New York: Springer.
  The best text I know of regarding the criteria for scientific writing and a very convincing text that technical writing (e.g., all research papers) is craft, not art, i.e., you need to get your facts straight, not divine inspiration.
• Bem’s “Writing the Empirical Journal Article”: Bem, D. J. (1987). Writing the empirical journal article. In M. P. Zanna & J. M. Darley (Eds.), The compleat academic: A practical guide for the beginning social scientist (pp. 171-201). New York: Random House.
  Can be found online in a different version (which I did read). The standard text for psychologists working in research.
• Yaffe’s “How to Generate Reader Interest in What You Write”: Yaffe, P. (2009). How to Generate Reader Interest in What You Write. ACM Ubiquity, 10(7).
  An interesting text to capture the reader.
• Lamott’s “bird by bird”: Lamott, A. (1994). bird by bird. New York: Anchor Books.
  A very good book about (fictional) writing, but with helpful hints for academic/technical writing as well — esp. to write a “shitty first draft”, you can always improve it later.
• Academic Phrasebank: http://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk
  If reading articles does not give you the necessary vocabulary or you struggle with the right phrases, this site will help.

Reviews

• Trafimow & Rice: Trafimow, D., & Rice, S. (2009). What If Social Scientists Had Reviewed Great Scientific Works of the Past? Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4(1), 65-78. DOI: 10.1111/j.1745-6924.2009.01107.x
  A brilliant article about how tough and irrational the peer review process is in the social sciences. More in this posting or look directly in the article — very humorous and highly recommended.

Presentations

• Reynolds’ “Presentation Zen” & “The naked presenter”: Reynolds, G. (2008). Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery. Berkeley, CA: New Riders. and Reynolds, G. (2011). The naked presenter. Delivering Powerful Presentations With or Without Slides. Berkeley, CA: New Riders.
  Brilliant books to avoid death by Powerpoint.
• TED talks: http://www.ted.com
  Great for inspiration — many of the speakers can convey not only their message/the facts but also why they love this topic.

“I wrote them down in my diary so that I wouldn’t have to remember.”
Professor Henry Jones, about why he and his son need to go into the lion’s den to save his diary, in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” (1989)

I’m currently preparing a presentation for a student group about organizing an academic work (focus is on a dissertation thesis, but it can be applied to any major written work). Interestingly, there are currently a few questions about establishing academic work flow, esp. regarding storing citations. The discussion is going on in the posting about Circus Ponies Notebook for Academic Writing (e.g., Thesis Writing).

If you have ideas I’d like to hear them — how do you manage your sources?

#Neural Grafting, #TECH52
I think, and my thoughts cross the barrier into the synapses of the machine, just as the good doctor intended. But what I cannot shake, and what hints at things to come, is that thoughts cross back. In my dreams, the sensibility of the machine invades the periphery of my consciousness: dark, rigid, cold, alien. Evolution is at work here, but just what is evolving remains to be seen.
Commissioner Pravin Lal, “Man and Machine”, in “Alpha Centauri”

I’m very critical of just trying to remember ideas. Once a project has a certain size it becomes almost impossible to keep all ideas in mind. It’s also very difficult to quickly restructure ideas or get an overview of the strength of different parts of the project. It’s essentially the point I’m trying to make here — creativity needs organization and this usually means creativity needs tools.

Some tools use advertisement like “it stores information like the human brain does”. Why should this be a plus? It usually doesn’t mean that it forget information by itself, but that it uses a mind map/concept map like structure similar to a semantic network (few tools actually try to store information in neural networks). Apparently, this should help working with the information because it is familiar and “how the mind works”.

I’m also very critical of these tools. Why should it be like the human memory? It should support it. A digger doesn’t look like a hand, nevertheless it’s much better for digging.

Usually these tools are very graphic oriented and need a lot of screen size (to display the maps), become slow and buggy with increasing input, and often degrade into a superficial mind/concept map like structure with attached text files. And there’s another issue — they are often inconvenient to use. Give me a database/wiki or (for smaller projects) an outliner any time, but unless it seamlessly integrates with the human mind (like the quotation above), it shouldn’t be similar. It should have the necessary functions of an idea collection and allow me to remember, generate, find, add, and restructure ideas. Anything that deviates from that and reduces usability is disadvantageous, no matter the similarity to the human brain.

After all, we want to support the human brain, not copy it.

When the age of the Vikings came to a close, they must have sensed it. Probably, they gathered together one evening, slapped each other on the back and said, “Hey, good job.”
Unknown

I have already written one posting about a life-newspaper, but given that during the Silvester party I talked to a few people about it and they liked the idea, I think I post a similar posting again.

The life-newspaper for 2010 is too personal to display it here, but it covers issues like:

• Editorial (short summary)
• Science & Work (given that I am a scientist)
• Education and Courses (skills/knowledge I have learned, partly in courses, partly on my own)
• Finances (financial overview)
• Personal Stuff (clothes, identity, photos, etc.)
• Culture (Literature, i.e., books I have read; Cinema/DVDs)
• Technology (MacBook, Photography equipment, iPhone 4)
• Health (issues 2010, overview)
• Quotations (good ones I stumbled over in the last year)
• Sports (the kinds I did last year)
• Inspirational people 2011 (two people I want to remember who do now know me but have influenced me)
• People 2010: Family (some things that happened in my family)
• People 2010: Private (persons I know outside of work)
• People 2010: Dating (always good for a laugh — and cry)
• People 2010: IWM:KMRC (i.e., work)
• Travels (visits home,  to conferences, and vacations)
• Own Art (things I created 2010)
• Lessons of 2010 (some things I have learned the past year and do not want to forget)
• Goals for 2011 (looking back at the past year, what do I want to achieve the next year?)

Creating it was fairly easy — you have to sort a lot of material, text and images, and order it. How you do it depends on your computer skills, time and tools. Personally I used Circus Ponies Notebook to create an outline and copied the text into the outline and used simple folders for the images. For getting the content right I did the following steps:

1. I went through my Aperture photo archive and searched for images taken in 2010
2. Opened the history/archive page of my private wiki where I keep a list-overview of the projects I did the past year
3. Opened the archive/history page of my work wiki where I keep a list-overview of the work projects I did the past year
4. Created a smart list that contained all eMails written after 31.12.2009, I sorted them by sender to get a quick impression of the important topics 2010 (one advantage if your communication with your friends is mostly by eMail)
5. I looked at my order history in Amazon and iTunes
6. I asked myself the question what I did not do 2010 but wanted to do — there will be not records of these events so I have to remember them by myself

Then I created the Life-Newspaper with an Newsletter Template from Pages (Modern Newsletter).

I think such a life-newspaper is very useful, not only to remember a year in a condensed form, but also to reflect on a year. I think this is one of the reasons why people do New Years resolutions — between Yule and New Year is the time where they have time to reflect on their life, the end of the year gives them some kind of “let’s take stock” feeling. But not everyone can do this and, frankly, I reflect about my life on a lot of different occasions. But even then most of the results are written down and end up in the newspaper at the end of the year. Not logical, but very useful — and, at times even fun.

“I’m old, Gandalf. I know I don’t look it but I’m beginning to feel it in my heart. I feel thin … sort of stretched, like butter spread over too much bread. I need a holiday. A very long holiday. And I don’t expect I shall return. In fact I mean not to.”
Bilbo in “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring”

I started this blog as an add-on to the digital version of my book on organizing creativity on 31st of May 2009. Since then I have written about 125 blog postings. I even manged to write a posting a day for over a month recently.

But at the moment, I’m burned out and I need some time off.

However, even if there are no new postings here for the next few days/weeks/months/years, I strongly suggest to have a look at the book itself, which can be read (completely) on these pages (use the book navigation at the bottom of the linked page) or browse through the blog entries I have written so far. I especially like the book pages that creativity is more than one idea, how to organize creativity, the creative process (and that creativity needs hard work and time), and the different sections on capturing and collecting ideas (for the later especially using Wikis to organize personal creativity). Of the blog entries, the ones dealing with DokuWiki and Scrivener are very popular and I agree, they are helpful and very interesting:

Wikis

• Ferret Frame
• DokuWiki Adjustments
• Some major DokuWiki Adjustments
• Some nice structuring helps for Wikis
• Literature Reference Management with DokuWiki

Scrivener

• Scrivener — A perfect program for dissertation writing
• Circus Ponies Notebook and Scrivener for Writing
• Circus Ponies Notebook for Academic Writing (e.g., Thesis Writing)
• Circus Ponies Notebook: The Best Tool for Structuring Creative Writing Projects (esp. Research Projects)
• How to Write a Dissertation Thesis in a Month: Outlines, Outlines, Outlines

Well, I hope you have fun reading here …

Best regards

Daniel