Monday, August 10, 2009

What's the big idea?


Today is Day 4 of my Summer School course and the topic covered was idea generation.

How does one develop a good product? First of all, we start with a good idea. Or rather a whole lot of good ideas and pick the best one, or two, among them.

The class went through some drawing and idea generation exercises. I found the two workshops particularly intense because each team had to generate as many novel ideas as it can within short periods of time.

I enjoyed today's class very much since we spent less time listening and more time working out our cognitive faculties. I'm also happy that I can power up and get into the flow very quickly.

Thus, I am happy to announce that my team came up tops with the most number of ideas. Not bad for an official stay-at-home mom! Sshh... nobody in my class knows.

Yesterday, I went on a dragon boat safari on the seas around Helsinki. Enough participants from the Summer School came to fill up 3 dragon boats. We took about an hour to go from the Canoeing Centre around Seurasaari and back again. I've had guy friends (one of them is my dear husband) complain that their female friends tend to sit back to enjoy the "wonderful sea view and breeze" while they paddle like crazy during canoeing trips. Well, I really enjoyed rowing!

Nearly a week after I've started school, I realised that the competitive streak in me never went away - it was just latent. It's been a while since I've felt so challenged, so motivation levels are running at all time high.

Still, I have to remind myself that my classmates come from different backgrounds and live in various circumstances. Being over-zealous will, quite definitely, backfire on me. Besides gaining some hard-core knowledge, this course is also about learning to get along and work with others.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow!



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