Post CPSI 2010

Back from Buffalo, New York after attending the 56th CPSI, also known as the world's oldest creativity conference, as in the longest running annual event.

Folks at CPSI pride themselves on the "How To" of the innovation. If you missed it, it was a very different kind of conference. Below is my brief recap of the opening session in which I was one of the speakers.

The General Opening Session started with different twist. The Master of Creative Ceremony, Bill Olsen, CPF, did not say a word for the first 5 minutes. Yet it took him 2 seconds to engage everyone in the audience. A master of interactive facilitator, he paced and led the audience from zero to a 100% participation. His Z2P workshop teaches you how to do that.

Tony Baxter, the Imagineer from Disney, who designed many of the famous rides, took us down the memory lane and inspired the future imagineers with great slides and stories. Here is a giant who spent a few days with the CPSI-lians and the youth program. Amazing. When chatting with him, I felt the spirits of my heroes talking: Walt Disney and Joseph Campbell.

Then, yours truly facilitated 350+ CPSI-lians to paint on water. People from 13 countries, all sorts of background, age group, knowledge banks and skill sets were able to come together on the same water level. The room was buzzing.

The participants became the artists who created. The participants became the innovators who collaborated as a team: strategized the action plan, brainstormed for the painting title, and journaled what they learned.

They actively engaged, played and learned. Many seasoned leaders commented positively on this proven learning model which I designed and developed. For more details, go the the blog on Painting On Water™.

Afterwards, the largest CPSI Suminagashi Exhibition was installed in the Hub. Truly a historical moment.

Reading this blog is free. Making plan to attend CPSI 2011 is smart. Learning the CPSI way and learning from the fellow CPSI-lians are priceless.
See you at CPSI 2011.

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P.S.
On the down side, the SD card of my Canon mysteriously lost half of the photo from the conference. Spent 3 days on data recovery. Still hoping that some magic will take place to recover some of the historic moment.

If any reader of this blog has any photo from CPSI, I would be very grateful to receive the copies, Amy@PaintingOnWater.com. Thanks.