Denise Jacobs - The Creativity (R)Evolution
The creativity evangelist Denise Jacobs coaches people in the tech field through creativity. In her Øredev 2013 keynote, she talked about creativity, betterness and habits.
Denise is a professional speaker, meaning that her presentation is more or less what you could expect from an “American motivational speaker”. Professional, but leaving me with a “what did she say…really?” feeling.
One thing I had a hard time with, was her habit of having the crowd act on command. She had people doing the wave, scream “I’m awesome”, then turn around and talk to each other. To each other?? Come on, you should know that we Swedes are introvert and cold.
No, but seriously. If you’re all about talking about how awesome we are, and how we are in charge of our own lives and situation etc. I think asking us to follow your every order really disproves your point. Yikes!
You’re awesome! I’m awesome! We’re awesome! Let’s go out and change the world! (She was actually presented as a woman who wants to change the world). My GOD, this is so worn out. TED and all professional speakers really need a new thing. It’s so cringe.
She had a nice take on “self-terrorism”, though, and how focusing on preventing bad things from happening can instead prevent good things, or anything at all, from happening.
My biggest takeaway was a nice passage about how you should replace the word “no” with “yes, and…”, to avoid suffocating creativity.
All in all, I found this to be an ok keynote, though still just another inspirational talk, stuffed with things you have heard a hundred times before, once more verbalized by yet another rhetorically skilled American who wants to change the world. It’s too tired.
I would like to see more Europeans take up this space. Denise’s talk is one of hundreds of similar talks. I think Øredev should be more than an American miniature conference.
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