Allow me to introduce you to Alison Dowdy. Alison is the digerati team (x). We have not come up with her new title yet. So if you have any ideas let us know. (She has digerati team welder on the list right now) Alison is the one on the team who make is all happen. Alison administers all 12 campus sites, interacts with most of the campuses and pulls everything together for the LifeChurch.tv sites. Alison is is amazing to work with and very introverted. I think I often overwhelm her with my “extrovertedness”. Check out the signs she made for us. Guess which one is in my office.

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Cool or Crappy?

Terry just had us read a great book by Tom Peters – part of his “Essentials” series – on Design. One of the excercises that Tom recommends to others is to start their own “design notebook” – on the front cover write “Cool” and on the back write “Crappy”. The idea isn’t neccessarily to learn more about yourself or the world you live in but simply to become more sensitive or aware. I have two things to add to this idea.

The first is the list of cool and crappy things I’ve become aware of in the last two days:

Cool – summer cherries, crappy – cherry pits (what do you do? Spit, pit or neatly “place” inside a napkin?)

cool – dogs and cats, crappy – their, umm, stuff (again – what do you do? Put inside a plastic bag in the trash? Does that makes sense to anyone else?)

cool – computers, crappy – computers that don’t work properly

cool – brainstorming, crappy – working outside your “comfort zone” of skills or talents – also cool

cool – the information age, crappy – information overload

The second is simply the observation that shouldn’t we all make an effort to be more sensitive and aware anyway (outside of the scope of our notebooks)? I just have a hard time imagining that we live in a world where people tend to be insensitive and unaware. Of course, my recent experience during an auto collision has reinforced that opinion of others; People who were neither aware of my sitting at a stoplight, nor sensitive to the fact that I’d prefer the whole insurance/repair/inconveneince of the process to be, well, less inconvenient.

I am not claiming to be the most sensitive or aware person I know. That would probably be a terribly insensitive assumption. I am merely taking Tom’s direction about making note of the things, time, and people I consume or interact with. I will ask myself was that cool or crappy? Why? I’d like to think this enlightenment will then spur the change I need to make in myself. Am I cool or crappy? See where I am going…?

Let me know what you’d list under Cool and Crappy.