Today was my Morning Meeting. Remember I had been saying that I wanted to do something super crazy and cool? Ok, I had everybody blindfolded and....

Made them try different foods and describe what they tasted and how they experienced it. 
My intention was for them to approach something they already knew well, like a Pomegranate or an Oreo Cookie, as a stranger, like Socrates says in Plato's Apology. 

My MM was divided in three parts: Activity # 1, which consisted in transmitting a feeling using only your eyes, no utterance of any sound whatsoever. Activity # 2 was the one I just described; approaching food as a new experience. And the third part was a debriefing, where everybody shared what they had learned.

I was grateful that Grace joined the Inner Circle (she was late) and shared her understanding of the MM because she said what I had been hoping was the lesson taken from the activity; dare to try new things, and approach "old things", past knowledge, as if you had never experienced it before. 

Today, since it's Friday and most of us didn't come on time, we agreed we would have a TED Morning Meeting. I think it's been established that every Friday will be TED MM, but I may be imagining stuff. Here I share with you the TED Talks we saw today.

Candy Chang - Before I die I want to...

"Thinking about death clarifies your life..."
It's amazing how somebody can change your perspective in seconds. I love how she said that the two most important reasons we have in our life are time and our relationships. 

Adam Garone - Healthier men, one mustach at a time

He urged us to make something significant in our lives, and told us the story of how his Movember Movement started.  I learned that one of the most important things in everything you do is to have fun. 

Alejo shared with us a project of his called FlatBox, which is a business start up he launched over the weekend at an event called Start Up Weekend. His project won second place and he's already got some investors interested in it.

This is quite amazing really, the fact that he's already leaping into the big wide world. I admire that.

For Diego's Morning Meeting on Thursday November 8th, he had us work out our System 2*! We had to do complex (not that complex) math problems!

But then, he gave us cupcakes and taught us how to eat them with style.

Isa showed us a series of optical illusions for her Morning Meeting. Some were super crazy and some I had seen before. I was happy that I could identify every image, but I don't know what it means in terms of brain capacity. I shall ponder and rumiate that idea... but not now...

For now I will merely share with you the Opticall Illusiony Presentation Isa exposed us to during her Morning Meeting: 

Steven Pinker and Ian McEwan - A Conversation Part I

For his Morning Meeting, Bert showed us this audio of an interview between Steven Pinker, the author of Words and Rules, and Ian McEwan, author of Atonement. 

Today we have a guest! He's a Prospect for joining the MPC next year. :)

Steve Johnson declares during his TED Talk at TED GLOBAL 2010 that he set out to discover the recurring patterns that we can apply to our lives to foster an environment that allows us to be more creative. He says an idea is a network, and the question we should be asking ourselves is how to get our brains in such an environment.

As Johnson states, an idea is not an isolated event, an Eureka Moment, a unique epiphany, but the result of an interesting combination: a long process he calls The Slow Hunch and the collective sharing of experiences, mistakes and viewpoints. Ideas are nothing but many parts of other things cobbled together, he says. 

I relate this to The Future and Its Enemies, by Virginia Postrel. She talks that progress, and future itself, is created by an infinite series of combiniations of old ideas, old concepts, old rules that, when combined within themselves, create something completely new. In her words:

There are many dynamic systems in the world, many areas of life that evolve and improve through trial-and-error learning, from "digital organisms" that evolve better computer programs to global financial markets, from adaptable architecture to international science. Looking across these various processes, we can find patterns in their fundamental rules, though we can fully apply those patterns to a specific case only when we understand that particular system...

Chacho showed us two videos about Crossfit, since he's really into it and I loved them. I was going to get into Crossfit before I started MPC but then my resources availability changed and though I still want to do it, I'll wait until December or probably January to begin the program. 

Chacho also had us make 5 Burpees, which is an army training exercise, and most of the MPC'ers couldn't do the 5. I took my time and finished last, but actually managed to do them. 

I will upload the videos later.

I was late :( 
Turns out my watch was about 10 minutes late, which obviously was determinant in my tardiness. I fixed it now and I realize I need to wake up waaaay earlier than I thought.