For our intensive little workshop, Wednesday was brainstorming, yesterday consisted of mutual demos (followed by several hours of trying to digest and understand each others’ demos), and today was all about synthesis.
Tomorrow we will present, in a symposium, the results of our three day effort. Until this morning it wasn’t at all clear what we would end up with. There was so much to work through, so many intersecting concepts to absorb.
But over the course of the day today it all began to take shape. Knowing that we will need to go in front of a largish group of people tomorrow and present our collective ideas was a very effective motivator.
As Samuel Johnson once said of his soon-to-be-executed acquaintance William Dodd: “Depend upon it Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”