Welcome To Shrinkonia. : About.

In June I tweeted a link to Jon Whitty’s must see video “The Private Life of Project Managers.”

Steve responded. Because he loved that video. It turned out he lives in Amsterdam. So somewhere in June we were drinking coffee in Amsterdam. Yes. Not a bad place and a bad time to drink coffee.

We had many more cups of coffee during this summer. This resulted in us working together on storytelling in projects.

You see.

I have the ambition to provide project teams with tools that give them connection and a state of flow. And I want to draw like a 5-year old on white boards in boardrooms. And I want to sing with a team of software engineers Janet Jackson’s “Control” every time they feel their state of flow violated. “Controooooooool”.

Steve has the same thing. But entirely different. Although. We haven’t talked about his opinion towards karaoke.

As everyone here knows, I have an extensive background in map making. Yes. Drawing maps. In my latest incarnation of my life’s story I come from a long-line of Map Makers. Yes people. Reframing. Can’t live without it. And denial of course.

Steve is a man of many talents. Leadership. Software. Many. Really. And how about coaching and improv theater? And blogging!

Aha! You say. Now here is a man who knows his way around storytelling. Correct. I say.

And the rest is, as they say, history.

Oh well. Will become history.

I step out of this awesome narrative for a moment, and walk you through the things you can learn from this great story.

First. Steve and I had the opportunity to meet and self-organize. We both made time available and we found an inspiring environment. There was an “empty space” for us. You can view an “empty space” as structureless space or piece of time where something can emerge. An opportunity for anything creative to happen.

The “what” of what could happen in the empty space is determined by both our individual stories. I know my personal journey, so it was easy for me to recognize a fellow traveler on a journey that is somehow similar. My own story provided me with a sense of location of the empty space. Where am I at this moment in my space and time? What am I doing here? Stuff like that.

By sharing our individual stories we discovered similarities and, perhaps more important, diversity. Which provided us with the answer to: “What the heck are we both doing here?”

Do you see the importance of your story?

Perhaps the following movie trailer will get your creative juices flowing.

Finding Joe – Trailer V.7 from pat solomon on Vimeo.