Ideasabound

At WPP, one of the most junior people on my team taught me something I still use today. She had a gift for visual thinking. Where I would write a long explanation, she would sketch it out, and even the most complex idea suddenly felt simple. I tended toward complex, almost academic approaches. She pointed out how I could make my ideas easier to grasp. That made me better at helping her with her work, and it made the work we delivered for others clearer too. I was her manager. But in that moment, she was leading me. I've only taken one leadership course in my life. Most of what I know came from moments like that. In every job and situation, I noticed what made great leadership and tried to build it into my own way of working. Along the way, I came to see a real difference between a manager and a leader. "Manager" is the word business uses most. To me, managing is about pulling people along to hit goals: checking off tasks, making sure everyone ...

What a beta chatbot reveals about the gap between brand ambition and lived experience, and where the real opportunity still sits. In a previous role, I spent a lot of time studying the airline experience end to end, from the moment someone starts shopping for a ticket to the moment they arrive at their destination, with every step in between. One consistent finding: the pre- and post-flight experience is almost always the weak link. Once money changes hands, an airline's attention narrows to the window between doors closing and doors opening. Everything outside that window (planning, anticipation, recovery, loyalty) gets far less design energy, even though it's where a huge share of the emotional relationship with a brand is actually built. Airlines know this. It's why they keep rolling out services meant to show they care before a passenger ever reaches the airport. But in practice, those services are gated almost entirely by status: built for the people who a...

I wanted to see if I could create a sci-fi story that revolved around a product that Midjourney usually sucks at creating. But this time... hey... not bad Prompt:  Create an action-filled sci-fi story about two people drinking Coca Cola Here we go "Battles, Blasts, and Coca Cola: The Intergalactic Adventure" In the year 2249, humanity had long since colonized other planets in the galaxy. Among the pioneers were two scientists, Dr. Ava Lee and Dr. David Chen. They had just finished an experiment on a distant planet and were taking a break in their spaceship.  Dr. Lee took a sip of her Coca Cola and sighed contentedly. Dr. Chen grinned at her. "That good, huh?" Dr. Lee nodded. "It always hits the spot. You want some?" Dr. Chen shook his head. "Nah, I'm good. I'm more of a Pepsi guy myself." As they bantered back and forth, an alarm blared through the spaceship. They scrambled to their feet and rushed to the control panel. A message blinked ...

This week I am going to Disneyland with my family. We go almost every year and though my kids are no longer small, it is still one of my favorite things to do.  This brings me to my next adventure in AI. Imagining Disney Princesses as middle-aged women in modern society. I used ChatGPT to create the story imaging these princesses as modern middle-aged suburban wives and then asked Midjourney to supply some portraits to help our imagination. Once upon a time in ideal suburbia... "Snow White and the Seven Kids: A Modern Fairy Tale"   Snow White Once upon a time, there was a stressed-out middle-aged suburban housewife named Snow White. She had seven children, a husband who worked long hours, a broken-down minivan, and a waistline that seemed to expand with every passing day. Her once youthful beauty had faded, and she struggled to manage the daily demands of running her household. Snow White's days were spent shuttling her children to school and extracurricular activities, g...

On Saturdays and Sundays, I usually take over the kitchen and cook. My youngest often says that what I make is "all the same". So this week, I decided to see what would happen if I asked ChatGPT to give me a recipe using ingredients I want to use. Here is what it looked like My ask: Create a recipe using the following ingredients: Chicken thighs, carrots, yellow onions, maple syrup, soy sauce, ginger paste, garlic paste, red pepper garlic powder, onion powder, salt, black pepper, basil, and parsley. Other ingredients may be recommended. No brown sugar. ChatGPT's recipe: Here's a recipe for Ginger-Soy Glazed Chicken Thighs with Carrots and Onions: Ingredients: - 4-6 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs - 2 cups carrots, peeled and sliced into rounds - 2 medium yellow onions, sliced - 1/4 cup maple syrup - 1/4 cup soy sauce - 1 tablespoon ginger paste - 1 tablespoon garlic paste - 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes - 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder - 1/2 teaspoon onion powder - Sal...

I started working on Midjourney to see what it can do and over time I want to compare it to other platforms offering AI image development. Getting set up in Midjourney is not hard nor does it take time but it is a full-year subscription for the basic at $98. As an initial step, I played with some work-related images which I won't show and some Harry Potter ideas but then wanted to see what it could do with some simple commands and mathematical-based functions; so Fractals! But not just ask for Fractals but for Fractals in specific artistic styles. Each image comes in a set of 4 and then you can choose to make an upscaled version of one or a variation of one of the 4. Here are 4 of the  2D minimalist Bauhaus fractals. I then only upscaled one. But I can upscale later at a later time if you choose. a 2D minimalist bauhaus fractal I liked this pattern and I would want to explore more in this style. Now let's go into the realm of Salvador Dali, who is one of my favorite artists be...