WORKLIFEDESIGN

Brilliant! Dance with someone on skype

This week, another idea jumped out at me from a blog’s comments section.

Over at the Herman Miller Lifework blog, they have a column called The Playlist where they interview people about the music that inspires them as they work.

Recently, they interviewed gallerist/artist/curator/writer,  Annie Wharton, and she provided an eclectic playlist of tunes that work for her – from Duran Duran and Lady Gaga to Peaches and The Normal. However, it was in a parenthesied side-note to Lady Gaga’s Alejandro that she revealed her Brilliant! idea:

“There is a very sweet backstory here involving this music video and dancing to it with someone via Skype”

What’s so Brilliant! about this?

Dancing + Skype = Brilliant!

Pretty simple.

Okay, what makes this truly Brilliant! is someone using a fairly ubiquitous tool/technology (ie skype) in a unique way. Sure, bored teenagers have probably been dancing on skype for years but for those of us who use it as a work tool (or to catch-up with far-off friends) this is a brave new world.

Once you realise that Skype doesn’t equal sitting stationary in front of a webcam, then you can begin wondering what else can you do with it? (Yes, okay, now move on from the obvious…) While videoconferencing has been around for a long time, are we finally at a stage where the technology will allow anything that can be done in person to also be done by skype?

As with many tech advances it is both exciting and frightening. But that’s what Brilliance is: Powerful. Revolutionary. Life changing.

Here’s the kicker (or, my little lesson) on this Brilliant! idea.

I didn’t notice the skype-dancing aside when I read the article. It only came to my attention because there was one comment on the piece which said dancing on skype was a cool idea.

That made me think about how there are Brilliant! ideas all around us but we often don’t see them. While it’s all well and good surrounding ourselves with like-minded people, it’s also very helpful to have people in our lives who sees things from a different perspective (or at least read articles fully!). Or, to give ourselves the opportunity to see things from a different perspective …

So, go on, do something different – dance with someone on Skype tonight… you never know what might emerge.

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