Project Renaissance home page | The Stream Index
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T H E S T R E A M
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Newsletter of Project Renaissance and Win Wenger
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November 2004 (Best viewed with
fixed-width font)
IN THIS ISSUE:
* Quote of the
Month
* Announcements
* Events/News
Items
* FEATURE ARTICLE:
"How to
Get Image Conscious - An interview with Win Wenger"
- by Louise
Druce
* Comments,
Feedback
Remotivation
- John Spencer
Reflections
on 13th Annual Double Festival, 2004 - Harman Benda
* Organizational
Notes
* Links
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QUOTE OF THE MONTH
"We must become the change we want to see."
-
Gandhi
........................................................................
ANNOUNCEMENTS
~~~
WELCOME to all new members who have joined us this month.
We hope to
hear from you and to give you much food for thought. Back
issues are
available upon request. Just add the month to the subject
line:
mailto:thestream@winwenger.com?subject=BackIssues
Or see the online archives: http://www.winwenger.com/strmlist.htm
~~~
** LATEST NEWS **
~~~
For some great GIFT IDEAS for the Festive Season, visit
the book section,
http://www.winwenger.com/books.htm
~~~
IN SPANISH! A Review
of "The Einstein Factor"
For our Spanish readers, here's a treat:
http://www.correoclick.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=45
Written by Project Renaissance member Claudia Ruiz, who
has trained with
Win Wenger.
~~~
Win Wenger's greatest dream - founding Renaissance
University - now has a
draft Prospectus ( http://www.winwenger.com/prospect.htm
), outlining in
ideal form how and what it could be. Win invites your
feedback, input,
comments and ideas. Amendments will be posted online as
matters evolve.
~~~
The PROJECT RENAISSANCE DOUBLE FESTIVAL was held November
12-14, 2004 -
the 13th Annual Conference on Creativity and Accelerated
Learning - and a
great success. A very special thanks to Harman Benda,
Kate Jones and Tijl
Koenderink for all their hard work in organising the
Festival. See the
Comments and Feedback section for a summary of the
events.
........................................................................
EVENTS
~~~
IAL CONFERENCE CALL SERIES
The International Alliance for Learning will host a
series of conference
calls with leaders in the field of Accelerated Learning,
Accelerative
Learning and other areas of human development - leading
up to the 2005
IAL International Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, January
13-16, 2005.
Further information is available from Chuck Bubar:
mailto:CBubar@aol.com
~~~
Win Wenger is delivering a further UNIQUE TRAINER
TRAINING in London, UK
Due to the incredible success of the first-ever Project
Renaissance
Trainer Training in London, UK, we are offering a further
opportunity for
trainers to attend Module 1 and 2 of Win's unique
programme.
Module 1: February 24-26, 2005
Module 2: February 28-March 1, 2005
Venue - The October Gallery, Hoborn, London, UK
Places are very limited and special discounted rates are
available until
December 31, 2004. Contact Cora Robinson for further
information and
testimonials: mailto:cora@createexpress.com
........................................................................
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Feature Article:
HOW TO GET IMAGE CONSCIOUS
An Interview with Dr. Win Wenger
by Louise Druce
How many times have you started daydreaming during an
important group
meeting? Did you know you could have been having some of
your best ideas
for the organisation but just didn't realise it?
According to Win Wenger. the first jerking away of
attention is actually
your rapid sensory image-associative process showing you
the best answer
to the questions being posed - otherwise known as the
flash answer
process. By fine-tuning this process, or
'image-streaming', he believes
people could be arming themselves with a strong
problem-solving tool.
"We have a little two percent left temporal lobe
function going on for
consciously associating word concepts and that's where we
do our
conscious thinking, but we've got 40-45 times as much of
our brain
invested in associating our experiences at a sensory
level," explains
Wenger.
"The insights form first at a level beyond
consciousness and then have
to trickle across in some sort of intelligible form to
where we're
conscious - that's always been a hit-and-miss process.
Now we're able to
do this systematically, but there's a translation problem
because, when
you've associated in sensory images, the insights and
understanding are
there in sensory language terms but they still have to be
translated
into word concepts.
"To appreciate just what's at stake, look down at
your foot and then
look at the little bit of ground that is under the foot.
That little bit
of floor represents the part of the brain that's
conscious. Now look at
the rest of the floor around you; that's the rest of the
brain in mental
resources."
One of the easiest ways to access this information is to
describe the
images out loud in as much detail as possible to a tape
recorder or
willing friend. No matter how trivial you think they are,
the idea is to
keep exploring images for about 10-30 minutes, including
any new details
that appear. With practice these will become very vivid,
giving way to
their symbolic or metaphoric meaning.
Another brainstorming technique Wenger recommends is the
Windtunnel
method. Its roots can actually be traced back over 2000
years ago to
ancient Greece and the Socratic Method. Groups are asked
to split into
pairs and each make a list of three questions based on
the overall topic
being discussed.
One person picks a number and then again describes
everything that comes
into their mind when the question is read out, remaining
uninterrupted
for up to eleven minutes. The other person writes down
the most
interesting ideas and the process is repeated until all
the questions
are answered and the roles reversed so the other person
can have their
say.
The idea is to let the torrent flow to form the best
solutions (which
often come at the end of a brainstorming session) rather
than being cut
off by other people in the group contradicting the
speaker or instantly
dismissing their ideas.
"Our usual reaction in a meeting is we work up our
sound bites to
squeeze in while somebody else is yapping and we don't
really listen to
each other. Instead, the reflex runs in the opposite
direction where
you're literally having to pour forth more than you have
to say so that
you have to start searching your perceptions," said
Wenger.
The easiest way for people to get started, he recommends,
is to
experiment for a week with a house rule of whenever
someone suggests an
idea, the first thing said in response has to be
supportive. If the rule
is broken, then a highly visible but humorous coded
signal should be
used, such as hands clasped above the head or eyes cast
'wistfully'
upward.
"We've mostly been uncreative because we criticise
before we fully look
at the idea. We make that such a reflex that most of us
are unaware of
even having an idea by the time we've dismissed it
already," Wenger
adds.
"For anybody who suggests an idea there is a certain
amount of risk. A
good part of the hard work of creativity training is
getting people past
those points where they're afraid to stick their necks
out to get
results."
Even Win admits that developing creative techniques is a
learning curve
for him as well as for those trying them out, which is
also one of its
advantages - companies can keep trying out new processes
until they find
the one that's right for them. "If you have any good
method for solving
problems, one of the best problems to work it on is the
problem of how to
create better methods of solving problems. One of the
best uses of those
better methods is on how to create further and still
better methods for
solving problems, and so on. Once you get that tiger by
the tail, it can
drag you a long way across the landscape!"
Reprinted with kind permission from Business Management
Asia:
www.gdsinternational.com
------------------------------------
To send feedback privately to Win Wenger, email him at:
mailto:wwenger101@aol.com
To send your comments about this interview to The Stream,
write to:
mailto:thestream@winwenger.com?subject=ImageConscious
To post your feedback or promote a discussion of this
topic:
http://bbs.cartserver.com/bbs/b/7733/#PostMessage
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COMMENTS and FEEDBACK
~~~
John Spencer ( spencerfinancial2002@yahoo.com ) writes:
For me you can just never stop doing what you are doing!
If I am depressed
all I need to do to remotivate is go to your web site and
read! And poof! I
am alive again. For some reason if nothing else you have
provided me with
things that are important to me that for most around they
find boring or
"crazy". I just can't understand why brain and
personal decelopment is not
important to everyone?
- John
~~~
Reflections on 13th Annual Double Festival, 2004
by Harman Benda, Festival Chairman (
harman.m.benda@sbcglobal.net )
The first Double Festival I attended changed my life. As
a result, I created
two companies and am pursuing a different path than I
anticipated before the
Double Festival. For me, Double Festivals are an oasis
for learning and for
rejuvenating one's mind.
Nowhere else have I found the fun and excitement
of being with intelligent people living and pursuing
their passions and
being willing to invite me to come into their worlds,
learn and participate.
There are several themes that are a part of any Double
Festival:
1. "You get
more of what you reinforce."
2. The Socratic
Method: Delving into your firsthand
experiences
and
awarenesses.
3. The 100s if not
1000s of techniques that Win has developed.
4. Your personal
observations have value and are listened to.
5. There is not
one answer or a right answer to the questions asked in the
sessions.
6. There is always
more to discover.
The 2004 Double Festival had 15 presentations. It
attracted attendees from
all parts of the globe, including Singapore, China, The
Netherlands,
Austria, Malta and Ireland. It opened with a keynote from
Dr Win Wenger -
"A Prescription for Miracles in Learning"
- where we learned that:
* If we note 30
observations a day for 3 days, we will be operating on a
different plane.
* We need
approximately 1/3 didactic teaching to 2/3 Socratic for optimal
learning. (Didactic = the teacher tells you information
and Socratic =
student and
teacher dialogue about the material.)
The next two days included fourteen excellent
presentations from a range
of international speakers:
* "There's a
Word for It"
* "Optimal
Growth and Productivity in Organizations"
* "Using
Storytelling to Design Your Personal Creativity Model"
* "Babbleback
Machine Demo"
* "Focus on
Learning, Not on Teaching"
* "Teaching
Thinking, a Paradigm Shift in Education"
* "The Art of
Mentoring and Coyote Teaching"
*
"Metaphorical Mind Mapping"
* "Sidebands,
A Great New Frontier of Further Inquiry into High Human
Potential and
Performance"
* "Staring
Into the Abyss: Socratic Method in Conflict Resolution and
Accelerated
Learning"
*
"Improvisation as a Tool for Accelerated Learning &
Retention"
* "Visions of
"The Ideal School
* "A
Framework for Effective Learning"
* "Golf
Project Management"
Thanks to all the presenters for their invaluable input.
For a more detailed
description of each of the sessions, please email:
harman.m.benda@sbcglobal.net
------------------------------------------------------------------~~~~~~
To send your comments to The Stream for possible
publication here, write
to: mailto:thestream@winwenger.com?subject=Comments
........................................................................
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ORGANIZATIONAL NOTES
~~~
TOPICAL INTEREST GROUPS:
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~~~
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~~~
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~~~
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~~~
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........................................................................
LINKS
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