A friend shared this article and I really love it. As we all look ahead to 2019, we should commit to living these thoughts with greater intentionality.

So I was just consulting one of my clients about gobo choices for a design I coached them on. I’ve been asked about gobos a lot over the years. See past posts (such as http://egwolfe.com/post/some-of-my-favorite-gobos or http://egwolfe.com/post/gels-and-gobos or http://egwolfe.com/post/a-note-to-producers-about-the-lighting-cue-sheet) for further thoughts. You can search by hashtags such as #lightingdesign on the right side of the page to make searches through old posts easier. Anyway, I just gave the following advice:

I voice-texted this final line of the podcast into Evernote from my phone while listening back on October 17, 2018 at 9:02 PM. I just pulled up the link to share: https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=657547685

Great tool for creating proposals and reports; for managing and delegation of tasks and projects; and for collaboration and ideation with live editing by multiple users both inline and with comments. It’s simple, clean, and intuitive. I love the assignable tasks. The mobile apps are good.

I wish it had a computer app instead of simply web app. I wish the filing structure was better. I wish there was a handwriting/drawing feature for note-taking, diagramming, and annotating. I wish to-dos integrated with Siri/Reminders.

Venue Creation and Lighting Design

A few years ago a friend came to me with a dream of creating a space for artists to present their music in an unique, distraction-free, beauty-filled, environment. He took me to a run down old building that literally had dirt floors and birds living in the rafters. It was freezing and dirty. All I could envision was the magic that would be. We began ideating out loud. We walked the space, and in the actual space we paced out where we would put the stage, and have people sit and enter, and where the green room for the artists would be. We used our hands to visualize what our design aesthetic would be.

I napkin sketched some ideation and kept the dream simmering in the back burner of my mind. Months passed before I got a call that the venue was approved and that we would get to take our dreams forward with reality. We put on some temporary concerts in the dirt and construction zone along the way. This was great for us as we got to braintrust our concepts by interviewing people who would be customers and investors. After many months, we finally got to integrate our V1.0 design. We were remarkably frugal with our choices so that we could open up; and at some point, we’ll upgrade to our dreams of 2.0, but it feels so great now, that we may just live with the budget version…

You should really take in a show there. It’s an unique experience found no other venue in the world! We’re really proud of it.

I went to the Story Conference the other week. I was just reflecting on my journaling from the conference. This section of scribbles jumped out at me today and I thought I would share what I’m contemplating.

—Van Gogh

My friend John shared the quote in a meeting yesterday. I asked him to send it to me so I could share in this post. He did one better and took a photo of the page in the book (Windows of the Soul by Ken Gire) that he read it from. I thought about simply posting the quote, but honestly love this whole page that he sent me. Therefore I share that as well!

—C.S. Lewis

I came across this quote today and find it a great reminder. We care about legacy and want to lead well. It’s important to remember that we cannot truly succeed by trying to be better than others in a competitive nature. Such narcissistic thinking is a zero-sum strategy. It will backfire. Instead, it is far more virtuous to think less of self and care more for the greater team. Such focus will yield so much greater fruit - not only in the charge of the task, but in life.