The Fishbowl

9/11:
Learning through osmosis
This course is about design thinking
It's not rocket science
Important to be able to apply it later in life
Designing an innovative organization
Interactively w group
Reconstructing the sentences make it your own text
Taking ownership of your own words
We are learning from each other through fishbowl
We change our lives by redesigning it
Re means change
Redesigning the way you think & make decisions
Creating a “living text”
If not this, it's considered dead space bc nothing is going on there
Fishbowl is “our” space
Everything is resolved w language
Immerse yourself in text
Means you’re thinking about words all the time
Selecting out of the words- where the reflection takes place
Concepts important
Have to be able to talk about them in the technological time

9/18:
- We select nuance because we want to determine our differences in selection of words
- This is how we are creating value in a digital space
- Google: first person actual research
- Start to look at words as ideas and symbols
- Define: abstract
- Textual term important
- Cultural stock & value
- Fishbowl is important to show people how you communicate, think and understand things
- We want to talk about bountiful
- In the digital environment
- Friendship in the workplace is very important
- Purpose of social meeting in place of class session
- Your experience is dependent among your social relations
- If you don't know what to write- write about your feelings
- 3 words that you associate w the machine
- Creating a mental space

MovieStrictly Ballroom
- The judges of the competition are sitting above the ballroom floor
- Shows an organizational structure
- Pay attention to the racial interplay
- Dugal relates to Scott
- Scott & his partner were boxed in / blocked on the dance floor
- Emotions are so real in the film
- Relate to the machine metaphor
- Similar to third floor of Ballentine where the professors look more worried than the students as they run the machine
- Complaints about education system
- “Experts” come in and say they are the expect on everything
- Hierarchy to everything in life
- Freshman vs seniors concept
- Meltdowns have to do w the machine metaphor
- Can’t handle your emotions
- Give your whole life to an organization and eventually meltdown
- We all become “meatheads”
- There’s always a history to each character
- History is important
- In the fishbowl you are creating your history
-We are developing creativity
- One step at a time. one word at a time
- Scott’s creativity is cancelled out by sexism
- He feels he is superior and is talking down to the woman
- Key is to learn to slow down when it comes to communicating words
- We all live under our parents expectations
- Creativity means breaking structure
- Argument: life is always hard for the man because they have to compete
- Societal things we should consider
- This film represents what America is about: democracy at work

10/2:
- Impact
Impact of the fishbowls

-Engagement
Experience of engaging with each other

- Innovativeness
New processes / methods of doing things

- “Changing the way you think”
First identify how you think
Second show evidence of when & where you changed your thinking process

Learning takes place upon reflection

Continually creating & recreating how you understand things
Critical thinking means that you are realizing there are other points of view to everything you are seeing

- Instrumental communication
Communication which adds value (in the fishbowl)

- We are “word’s craftsman” in this class
Playing word games and therefore creating constructive meaning

- “The slower you move the further you go”
You have to slow down the mind when you enter the fishbowl

- Your mind has to go in different places
To make this happen you have to “watch your mind”

- Note taking and making is at the heart of action learning

10/9:
-We are creating knowledge together but by ourselves
We are knowledge workers
Our knowledge is original to each of us

-We are sharing our thought processes
Selections, sorting out, what we deleted, what we kept, etc

-Learning how to watch our own minds working- consciously

- Fishbowl 10 + 1 Steps
1. Entering the unknown
Enter with a structure
2. Gathering words & creating a word pool
Drawing the boundary of your context
Writing more words
3. Creating a new sentence from the wordpool
Simple but captures the meaning of the structure
4. Words & how they relate to each other
Personal experience
Description has to fit the abstraction
5. Perceptual categories
Look at the whole thing & reduce it to 1 word
Get in touch with how you are feeling
Taking ownership of your text
6. These 9 words are unique to your group
Have a good dichotemy
7. Taking them & making a word pool (working together 5-8)
Push the boundaries of your mind
Widen the context
9. Individual
11. Realization & insight

-Creating knowledge is very tentative
Knowing & knowledge

-Creating a vignette & episode

-Improving your vocab w the exercises

-Always in a state of becoming

-We are sculptors always in formation
The process never ends

-This course is non linear

Group Exercise: do this 4 or 5 times with sentences
- 3 words per group member
Everyone reduces others words
- Do yours first before looking at others
Final: Apply to real world sentences

10/23:
-You have to learn how to empower your text
-Reification: define this
The structures in our head for which we perceive the world, we start taking them as reality
-Knowing and knowledge creation
-Start with the feeling

MOVIE NOTES:
-Imagery of the opening scene is important
-9/11 just happened and this firefighter has to write eulogies for his friends that passed
8 friends killed
-Take it a step at a time
-Look at the emotions & interactions
-Going to be hard to write them all
Problems are going to get worse as the movie goes on
Only solve it one way- like we do in the fishbowl
-She’s encouraging him so that he gets what he has to get done
-Looking at
Social construction of reality
Symbolic interaction between the 2 characters
Self reflection
Imagination, text, images, metaphors
-Impact is extraordinary when you work the text
-When she says it, the other guy feels it
You can only empathize this way
-Message becomes very clear
-Have to take the word further
You have to get immersed in words and texts
-Good to read titles- metaphorical
-Words and images bring the community together

10/30

As human beings we are being altered
- Psychology and physically different than 30 years ago
We are born w certain DNA structures
-Everyone is different
You are designing text as an organization
-Looking at it as reading & writing
-The trust of this class: learning to get careers at HR management
Second 10 steps next week
-Doing this multiple times in order to create an innovative organization
-Emphasis on the word creative
Under the surface “I see myself as a rebel and as a radical”
-“You guys have your own narratives”
Learning expression
-Who you are is what you express
Always projecting your felt experiences
-That are abstract
Learning and mechanistic way of thinking are enemies
-They don’t go together
-We can’t run a business like a machine
-A machine doesn’t allow innovation bc it will stop & come to a stand still
Start calling ourselves designers / designers of words
-We are becoming our own theorist
-Not copying from another text book
-Words / metaphors have images attached to it
-The moment you select a word you are making a choice of an image
Constructing & Deconstructing meaning
-Everytime you substitute the word
Engaged with our everyday felt experience
Using the metaphor of reading & writing
-Organizational life

11/6:

General/universal (theory) vs particular
-Particular = individual, self (both in sync)
-Internal self: conversation in your head
-External self: conversation w others
-Also: abstract & real, theory & practice, mind & matter
Everytime you create something- there is a connection between them
Assignment 3 tips:
-Make a simpler abstract
-Don’t go for big words
If you want to be simple you have to work hard at it
-Paradox
Last stage of assignments
-List out all constructed sentences & dichotomies as a group (print hard copy)
-16 total
-Circle 15 words from the list
-Third word: outside the box

NEW SENTENCE:
*Knowledge as projective or literal truth places too much emphasis on the object of knowledge and not enough on the paradigm’s, perspectives, assumptions, language games, and frames of reference of the observer.

Put on your resume
-Deep learning / deep thinking
-Reflexive leadership

Assignment 3:
-Go deeper in felt experience
-Empower abstract statement
-Pick up on little things
-“How so” when you return to the paragraph
-Throw out the theory
-Dichotomies: do it with care
-Determines the trajectory of the rest of the paper
-Developing trajectory of your thought process of how your mind works
Two lessons
-Crying not bc im vulnerable or weak
-Crying because im frustrated and I don't know how to change the situation
-Its okay that im crying- it will be better after
-Stay connected/close to text
-You won’t get that feeling of loneliness
-In touch with humanity always
Nail down what is your creative process
-Everyone is creative without realizing it
-Identify which phrases apply to you
-Short paragraph about how you work creatively (in fishbowl)

SHORT CLIP: using this film as a catalyst
-Providence pod: 1 minute interviews of anyone who comes in about their creative process
-Self reflective process for each participant
-Looking at yourself, talking about yourself
-Diverse group, age, gender
-Plan to do it annually
1. Started with the universe
- Reading Depok Chopra everyday
-Perceptions give rise to a world that mirrors it
-Keep responding to the universe
2. fertile underground aka the bubble
- Impetus
-Best: someone has to show others how to do it right
-Worst: makes people aspire to bigger things
3.Deals with the body to restore mechanics
- Removing organs
-Mental is about probem solving
-Thinking outside the box
4. Think about what's around me & the endless possibilities
-All about imagination
5. Starts with materials
-Have to listen to “it” and how “it” fits into the idea
-Humans don’t create matter- we rearrange elements
6.Artist
-Comes from those around her & their energy / resources
7.Spontaneity sparks his creativity
8. Talking with people
-Listening to others
-Questioning
9. Seeing what works
-Trial & error
- Re-establish a new form
10. Starts w resources
- Make what you need out of what you have
11.Drawing is important
12. Becoming completely present & pure
-By meditating
13.Entering into a place of darkness & mystery
-State of being unafraid to draw out energy and strength deep from her center of gravity
14. Collaborative- respond to environment & people
- Also letting intuition flow
15. Inspired by an event or moment or relationship in life
16.Glass blowing, painting, photographer, metal sculptor
17.Writing
18. Always creative- comes as a vision & think further into it
19.Finding things or ideas that are inspiring
- Spontaneous: on hand materials (with others)
- Methodic: all necessary tools prepared ahead of time (alone)
20.Just does it based on environment, inspiration or inner feelings
21. Long thought process
22. Staying true to yourself
23. Starts with a question that leads to more possibilities
24. Hard work
25. Laser vision to focus
26. Experience his ideas as a whole

11/20:

Everything you do must be posted in the fish bowl
- Hard copies aren’t important
By Wednesday December 4
- Sentences from 10 + 1 (list from 4 projects)
-Minimum of 16
- 12 solo restructures & 4 joint
- Few paragraphs of felt experiences from all
FINAL:
-Circle 15 words from own sentences
-5 boxes
-2 words in a box = dichotomy
-3rd word outside
-1 sentence for each box
-Total of 5 pages
-1 = individual boxes (1 per person)
-2 = joint boxes (3 total- grab the best from each)
-3 = 16 sentences
-4 = felt experience
-Linking 2 things together & creating a meaning (the sentence)
-Keep doing it until it speaks to you
-How your mind works & artistry
-Simpler = more effective
-We’re trying to communicate with one another & understand each other
-Felt experience = deep thinking
-Means “how so”