Today’s Idea Free-For-All is totally (and appropriately) Halloween’d: Fear and facades, baby!
If you’re new to the whole Idea Free-For-All thang, here’s how it works: I’m leaving this thread open until November 1st. During that time, we hang out and check in and help each other. I’ll help, you’ll help. Vent your problems, questions, confusions — and let us know what you’re trying to accomplish.
If you need help, ask!
If you know the answer, jump in and assist. The more the merrier! (The more the scarier? I kill me.)
You can track these with #IdeaFFA on Twitter, if you’d like to play too. Here are the links for TweetChat and TweetGrid. (If you want, you can find out more about Idea Free-For-Alls here.)
Here are some questions to think about to get you started in the right direction:
- What have you been holding back on, and what are you afraid of?
- What masks do you put on — masks that create problems, and masks that solve problems?
- What can you create in your life and work that’s new and unique… and hopefully just a little scary?
- How many of your fears are traditional? Usual? Conventional? Fears that don’t stand up to critical inspection?
- And for the fears that feel solid and real: What are they? What can we do about them?
Together we’ll find solutions and plan your next steps. Jump on in!
One day we all woke up and saw that it was high time we got moving on something.
What’s your something?
And what help do you need to get it moving?
If you’re new to the whole Idea Free-For-All thang, here’s how it works: I leave this thread open for a particular period of time, and we sit here and help each other. Feel free to bring up anything on your mind: Problems, questions, confusions, ideas you need to generate, plan, build or just make sense of. If you need help, comment and tell me what’s on your mind. If you realize you know the answer to something someone’s asked, by all means feel free to jump in. The more the merrier!
Originally it was a bit like comments thread consulting, but you and I both know it’s more fun when you can come to help other readers, rather than just come for help yourself. (And if you need help, please ask!) This is how we figure out what we need and how we can make a difference for one another.
You can track these with #IdeaFFA on Twitter, if you’d like to play too. Here are the links for TweetChat and TweetGrid.
If you want, you can find out more about Idea Free-For-Alls here.
Sound good? Ready for this one?
Marty and I play a lot of Scrabble lately.
We use this little iPhone app that Tom Guarriello introduced me to, “Words with Friends”. It’s super cute, and you can keep five or six Scrabble games going on forever. (It occurs to me now that I’d better call them Words games, or Scrabble might get mad. Hmm. That’s annoying.)
Anyway, we’ve been playing these awesome Scrabble games using Words with Friends. And it occurred to me that there have got to be a lot of great Scrabble offshoots out there.
So why don’t we have this game somewhere: Phonetic Scrabble. If I have “sirs” on the board and “ease” in my tiles, I should be able to spell “sirsease” (surcease). Aside from the people who will be mad that I am contributing to childhood spelling mistakes, this would be a FUN game. All it would need is software that attributes sounds to letters in a certain order. I’m sure that exists somewhere! It wouldn’t be precise, and that would make it even more fun.
(Aside to Words with Friends people — if you add this game option to your iPhone app, I will enthusiastically beta test it for you!)
What other Scrabble offshoots can you think of? Let’s see if we can get the actual Scrabble company really mad. ;}
PS. I’m kidding. Sort of. I like you, Scrabble company. See: I think your game is good enough to be a household name, a common noun that I can use to apply to any game with similar attributes. That’s good for your brand, as far as I’m concerned.
Update: Haven’t found actual phonetic Scrabble yet, but did find someone speculating about IPA Scrabble. IPA is the International Phonetic Alphabet, and it’s what we used in music school to properly notate the way words needed to be pronounced in all kinds of languages. My IPA is pretty rusty, but I’d still be really interested in giving this a try. Of course, I’d need to be playing against folks with IPA experience. IPA Scrabble, anyone?
