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On Monday 11th January 2010 Beneficiaries of the UST were honoured to welcome eminent British designer Kenneth Grange (RDI since 1969, don’t you know) to run a Think Up session about his career which spans some 50 fabulous years… Add comment January 15th, 2010
On Monday 14 December many Expeditionites spent the day exploring the theme of creativity… I don’t think many of us were sure what to expect. I know I was sceptical about being taught creativity, but I think I have probably learnt a few useful things I can apply to my everyday thought processes. Exercises we did with Betina included were many and random-named! They included: category cruncher, shark island, naming things, red/metal/organic, wish woosh, sound ball, one-word (circle), one-word (pairs), Yes..and, Reframing (good news bad news), ‘red’ ball, simultaneous clap, gift boxes, quick draw (drawing a face), and even dolphin training (FYI: both Andrew and Sarah were great dolphins…such intelligent creatures) Continue Reading Add comment December 17th, 2009
Raphael Petit, a Facades Architect from RFR with whom Expedition worked with on the San Paolo Tower, Turin, joined us for the day to give us an introduction to the world of facades. Raphael presented an interesting history of facades in the 20th Century - from The Great Exhibition to the Bauhaus. We discussed how facades are used and what they are for – the skin of the building, used to control light, temperature, appearance. We learnt a little about the manufacturing process and considered why some designs are restricted by the manufacturing process and what currently constrains façade design. We asked the question ‘Who takes the lead in façade design and why?’ Environmental responsibilities require designers to push for innovative facades and expert knowledge. Heated discussion ensued about responsibility in design and how the lead consultant should look to façade designers for guidance and the responsibility of designers to push for the right thing environmentally. Add comment December 10th, 2009 After yesterdays amazingly warm and sunny day I was really looking forward to spending the day with Oli and Caius (our director/producers) and Michael (camera man extraordinaire) filming the UST launch film. Waking up this morning to a grey and cloudy sky put an end to my hopes of a day spent in the sun around Regents Park and Primrose Hill. I cycled into the office to pick up our props (mostly all booze related) before peddling myself over to Primrose Hill where it took me a while to locate the rest of the crew who were hiding in a café around the corner. Add comment October 28th, 2009 Stealth Economist article uploader strikes again. Following the session on Google, Microsoft and Apple at last week’s thinkup I thought it might be appropriate to post this. The author(s) are trying to second-guess the next move of the industry’s key players. Quite interesting if you are into that sort of thing. Add comment October 26th, 2009
Add comment October 5th, 2009
Today’s session was a follow-up to last week’s when we decided on topics for future ThinkUp Mondays. The intention was to give people the time to start planning their sessions and get some dates in the diary; however, in response to the ongoing discussion in the office following last week’s session, that majority of the time was dedicated to talking about how we feel we can improve on the format of the Monday sessions and what we hope to get out of them. At the end of the discussion I summarised the main points as follows:-  Group size  Talking in a large group is not always productive. People seem to learn better working small groups. Nevertheless, most people agreed that being able to hold a discussion as a group is a useful and necessary skill, especially for decision making on Useful Simple Trust matters.  Add comment September 28th, 2009
I ran today’s Expedition ThinkUp session in an effort to jump-start the programme, which, despite two beneficiary-run sessions over August, seemed to be stalling. In the past I have felt that people have been shy in coming forward with ideas for future sessions because they are unsure of the aims of the sessions, or they are afraid of being shot down when they make their suggestions. I therefore intended this session to be a positive environment for suggestions to come forward; one in which individuals are encouraged to take the time to develop their ideas.   The intended outcome from the session was a series of ideas for future sessions, together with a list of volunteers to explore each of these ideas. The list is as follows:   2 comments September 21st, 2009 In this quarter’s technology report the Economist did a feature on 3D printing techniques. Not long ago we talked about using this kind of prototyping technique more and more to provide our clients with a better vision of what they are buying into. We even talked about getting our own 3D printer. Add comment September 10th, 2009
This has been an ongoing gripe of mine. Email has been with us for over twenty years in some form or another. But with time, we have started using email for tasks that email was not intended: file sharing, photo sharing, surveys, announcements…the list goes on. For each of these add-ons, there are better tools and ways of working: FTP sites for file transfer, image databases and sharing sites, blog and message boards for comments, even bespoke survey tools. It was timely receiving Tim’s email (ironic isn’t it?) about how not to use email (he also posted a wiki). He is encouraging exactly these alternatives, and this blog post is in itself an attempt comment elsewhere. Just as we are moving over to a wiki system for sharing our knowledge, we should actively encourage these alternatives to emailing. 3 comments September 8th, 2009 |
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