Report from Minneapolis

This week I flew to Minneapolis to give the Lichtenbergianism presentation to a bunch of financial tech people.  The Deluxe Corporation's Financial Services Segment was having its annual Kick-Off, and because their focus this year is on "growth mindset," they hired me to talk about the creative process.

I was a little trepidatious about it. After all, although it's clear to me — and I say so in the book — that everyone who Makes A Thing That Is Not uses the same creative process, whether it's a painting or an app, I wasn't sure a room full of code monkeys would think so as well.

Then Wednesday morning I popped in to the general session to hear their VP, John Filby, give his keynote address on his vision for them. All my worries melted away: everything I was going to tell them dovetailed perfectly with his message of flexibility, agility, and inventiveness.

I presented two sessions and each was well-received.  Lots of head-nodding, aha! faces, and note-scribbling.  Questions were good and pertinent. I'm thinking I'll be getting pretty high ratings on this one, fingers crossed.

Of course, it was pointed out to me after my second presentation that I had given them the wrong Twitter handle on the last slide: @TheLichtenbergian instead of plain old @Lichtenbergian.  But that means someone had tried to follow me on the spot, so I'm taking it in stride.

So all of you out there in Corporate Land: if you were hesitating to hire me with large sums of money to come talk to your teams because you weren't sure that a composer/writer/director had anything to say to you, fear not! If you're trying to build a culture of creativity/growth mindset, I'm your guy.  (You can do that here.)

Oh, also: Minneapolis.

To be fair, this is 24 hours after a blizzard shut down the airport.

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