Practical Genius (20 page)
Authors: Gina Amaro Rudan,Kevin Carroll
I had a clear vision of TEDxMIA as an exposition of the invisible genius I knew existed in Miami. And I knew that the trick was in assembling precisely the right people to facilitate, make presentations, and attend this event. It was my dream to surround myself, in this single gathering, with just the kinds of geniuses who excite and inspire me. But how, exactly, to pull that off? Then, on a flight to D.C., I met the amazing Evelyn Greer, a community leader and major influencer in Miami, and discovered that the stranger in seat 1B was also a TED devotee. Within two weeks of our meeting on that two-hour flight, Evelyn helped to assemble the core group for our event, an eclectic and brilliant bunch that included a green developer, a fund-raiser, a multilingual communications expert, a journalist, and a technologist who worked with me to put together the complex pieces of a simply extraordinary event, one that profoundly affected every individual who attended.
Now, just as you can’t eat ice cream every day, you can’t expect mind-blowing TED-like experiences every day. Or can you? Here’s what I have learned about curating the group experience from participating in TEDGlobal at Oxford and curating TEDxMIA: Every time you put people together, it’s an opportunity to invent a new thread of the conversation. And the way to guarantee that that happens is to choose participants carefully, facilitate with intelligence, grace, and precision, and demand nothing less than genius from everyone involved. This can be an exhausting undertaking, but it is as rewarding as anything else I have ever experienced. Today, when I plan a dinner for five or a seminar for fifty, I approach it with just the same respect for the investment each of us is making in the outcome of the gathering. I expect revelation and transformation and the highest-level contributions from myself and everyone else involved. And if there’s a chance to squeeze in a little dancing with my group, I do that, too. Living as if every day is TED is one way to up the ante, let me tell you!
PLAYBOOK
You’re the Curator
Plan a gathering of five people around a single subject. Select them from inside your tribe and outside your tribe, from different disciplines and different demographics. The one thing they need to have in common is some kind of connection over the subject you propose. For example, you’ve been bugged lately over the discussion in the news about kids and obesity and want to find a way to make a difference on this subject in your community. What kind of group might you assemble that would gather around this subject for an hour or two, bringing disparate insights, ideas, and experiences to generate a practical local approach to this issue? Don’t just call up the usual suspects to participate in a group event like this; be creative and resourceful, think eclectic versus expected. The right chemistry cooking around a provocative subject can expand horizons and innovative solutions before your eyes.
PORTRAIT OF A PRACTICAL GENIUS
One of my all-time favorite examples of what happens when we surround ourselves with genius is the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, which is based in New York City. What’s remarkable about this group is not its superior talent or its exceptional traditional and contemporary repertoire or even the fact that it’s been honored with a Grammy Award. What’s crazy genius about this orchestra is that it performs without a conductor.
Orpheus was founded in 1972 by the cellist Julian Fifer and a group of musicians who yearned to perform an orchestral repertoire with the self-governing techniques of a chamber music ensemble. By definition, the performance of chamber music calls for a synergy among the musicians that is quite distinct. A traditional chamber music ensemble features a small number of musicians, each playing a different instrument, and generally performs music written specifically for this intimate configuration. One of the few such conductor-less ensembles performing today anywhere in the world, Orpheus promotes an artist-focused approach to making music, rotating musical leadership roles for each work.
“Nobody comes up and stands at a podium doing the traditional ‘tap tap tap,’ let’s begin,” an Orpheus administrator, Da Ping Luo explains it. “Instead, facial expressions are shared amongst the musicians and an intense collective energy is created by the whole of the orchestra at the start of a piece as they all self-lead the music together.” Each musician
is granted the opportunity to influence the interpretation of any given movement without the need or dependency on one person telling him or her what and how to play a piece. The individual genius of each musician, and the trust each invests in the genius of the others, comes together in a singular and original moment of excellence, like a snowflake.
How exciting to imagine creating a brilliant, intimate orchestra of geniuses around you, those who elevate one another’s individual genius and create a distinct collective genius together.
This
is the image of surrounding yourself with genius that I would like to inspire your journey.
Practical genius takes a village. Living a life of genius is a social, not solitary, endeavor. We are creatures who crave the inspiration, intelligence, motivation, comfort, and good humor of others who are living life at the intersection of what they love and what they do best. To surround ourselves with geniuses, we must:
Identify the Yodas, the ambassadors, and the online and real-time members of a tribe, including fat brains, who can help amplify your genius.
will
find each other.