Day 296: Design X Workshop

This afternoon I have been invited by Michael Helms at Stanford to be a guest presenter at the weekly meeting of the Design X group. Check out the Wiki site information. I spent the morning making laminated bookmarks for those brave souls who show up to play games with me today.  I used the graphic from my post on January 10 of the Improv maxims.  I shall report on how this went anon, as they say.  When the coordinator of the group asked me to give him some idea of what I would be doing with the group I responded with this note:

Greetings, Michael,

I'm afraid I'm not very good at answering the question:  "What are you (we) going to do in your workshop?"  It's a natural and reasonable question, of course, but since the thing I shall be teaching (and hopefully modeling) is how to improvise, to be completely honest, I don't know what I am going to do.  I do know what my purpose is, however.  I hope to spend 90 minutes with your bright and talented colleagues playing a few games that allow us to experience the improv paradigm. While I am hopeless at explaining "what I plan to do" . . . I am likely to be slightly more successful at looking back on what I/we have done and making commentary.  So, at the end of our session we'll look at what we did or attempted to do.  I can tell you this:  improvising is always about waking up, noticing immediate reality and using what is at hand to do something useful or make something good.  It is my hope to do something useful when we are all together.  I look forward to playing with you and your fellows.  The DesignX group need only to know this:  "Don't Prepare, just show up."  

Instead of a bio, if anyone is interested my website has some stuff about me:  http://improvwisdom.com