Why Sixty Is Sexy

Is There More To Life Than Donuts And Bingo?

Tim Carpenter

Tim Carpenter does.

Tim, the radio host of Experience Talks and the 2011 Winner of the James Irvine Leadership Award, also believes there must be more for people than bingo and donuts in their later years.  He tells the story, of course he does – he comes from an Irish Catholic family where storytelling was a competitive sport.  The older people told better stories so he sat at that end of the dinner table.

“Retirement is like college.  It is a launching period.  Free time.  Time to ask yourself, ‘OK, what do I do now?‘”

Tim grinned at his co conversationalist, Mark Freedman, the author of Encore: Finding Work That Matters In The Second Half Of Life at a session organized by Rohit Burman entitled The Big Shift: The Velocity Of Change In America’s Aging Society.

Rohit Burman

“An acre of time.”  I love that phrase.

What would you put in this acre of time?

They spoke about developing buildings around programs that get people out doing stuff.  Including college level programs and workforce development for artists, building an artist colony.  Asking the question – what if you could live here among artists?

Marc Freedman

“Age is a time to bloom, a time of great fertility.  A time to celebrate their best work when they are ‘over the hill’. People think genius happens early in life but actually many artists were late bloomers such as Cezanne. Priorities are affected by the sense of mortality which people experience as a compression of time, a heightened sense of time left to live.  Relationships deepen, spirituality attracts. ”  said Marc.  ”It is the trifecta of mortality, longevity and urgency.”

“The process of becoming something is more interesting.”  Tim said.  ”Suzanne, a woman in her mid 60′s, single mom with 2 kids, was ‘old before her time‘.  She attended my writing class and wrote a 12 page screenplay about the challenges and needs of aging called Bandida.  I remember thinking to myself ‘please don’t stink’. But it was good.  And we made it into a film that was eventually shown by Ira Glass on This American Life.

This answers the question ‘Where does funding have impact?’  Suzanne is a new person, a mentor and teacher to others.  This is why we need optimism, something Marc often speaks of.”

Marc shook his head.  ”I worry that we feed the notion of magical reinvention, that there is a genius inside waiting to pop out.  What is a more realistic vision for us?  Perhaps a reintegration of preexisting goals and ideas, more an extension of what you already are.”

“There is a need for arts in the schools to build these skills early, to get art experiences and to connect older artists with kids,” said Tim.

“What about that gap year we have at 18 and 19?  What if we had a disruptive creative period of time in our 50′s.  It could be a period of renewal focused on the arts.  Could we build in a leap year, a gap year.  In the UK, 200,00 people are grey gappers.”  Marc smiled.  ”You could have an encore career, a second career after 50.”

“How do you get one of those?”  asked Tim.

Marc said, “We need the arts to give a realistic vision to this new phase of life.  There is a lack of focus on this time.  There is a second group between midlife and elderly old age with no arts avenue.  Their challenge is to reimagine the shape of living.”

They closed with this:

“60 is the new 60.  Live your legacy.”

About the Author: Hoong Yee Lee Krakauer writes about how to be a nimble nonprofit, make life creative and make a difference at www.hoongyee.com.

She is also the Executive Director of the Queens Council on the Arts. Hoong Yee can be found surfing in the Rockaways whenever there are waves.

Do you want to know the fears, visions of perfect worlds and world changing advice of your peers and keynote speakers?

I have a special bonus post for you of interviews I conducted with people during the conference.  Just leave me a comment with your email or better still, subscribe at www.hoongyee.com and get my interview post and new style notes for people who change the world delivered to your inbox.

Individual Artists, Social Justice and Fabulous Food Trucks: Preconference People and Their Stories

Rhodessa Jones,  how should I begin?

Yes  you are a performing artists, writer & director, founder and artistic director of The Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women – is everyone following me?  Stay with the tour, people.

The Individual Artists & Social Justice Preconference

I am really honored to be one of the bloggers at this year’s Grantmakers in the Arts 2011 Conference in San Francisco.  Here is some great stuff I took away from the Saturday preconference.

Maurine Knighton and Lynn Stern

We spent the day at SOMArts getting into a single question:  How are artists changing the world?

Ron Ragin and Frances Phillips

Rhodessa had us cooing like pigeons, insisting, “Nobody told her” like a restless Greek chorus as she folded that question into poetry, quotes and stories.

“The team is everything”  Lionel Ritchie

“The Creator has a plan”  John Coltrane

Rhodessa Jones

Rhodessa says the job of an artist is to introduce different communities to each other, such as incarcerated, HIV positive women and theatre.  She changes the world through the theatre of everyday tragedies and unexpected glories such as Cassandra Steptoe, an HIV positive woman who not only is surviving, she is thriving.  She is the story of a woman whose life was transformed through the crucible of theatre into a positive life force and more importantly, a way for others like her to achieve a full life.

Oh, by the way.  Did I mention that the food trucks were awesome?

Frances in front of the breakfast truck

Jeff Chang, executive director, Stanford university Institute for Diversity in the Arts, said something very cool about waves.

He said that the waves on the south shore of Tahiti, perhaps the most beautiful in the world, are a process that begins with Antarctic storms that are a gathering force that push their way thousands of miles to Tahiti and manifest themselves as waves.  So these waves are actually part of a process of visible and invisible forces.

Jeff said that culture is like the ocean.  Culture is the realm of ideas, stories, identity, where public sentiment is formed.  It is where people are at.

Cultural change always precedes political change.  Culture is essential in the theory of change.

Artists are essential to the process of shaping public sentiment from the beginning.

This one I really like – Communication is surfing.  Artists want to be makers of waves.

We believe we can move national imagination.

We can make some waves.

Favianna Rodriguez, the artist who designed the image of this year’s GIA conference, is interested in opportunities for visual artists and cultural workers to become part of the core movement, specifically in:

1. Publishing
2. Rapid response
3. Convenings
4. Education and skills

What are the ideal conditions to inspire artists?

What ideas can reshape the situation?

Art reframes the debate.

Erin Potts, executive director of Air Traffic Control, spoke of how small investments can yield great results.  Taking 75 artists on a four day retreat empowered them to engage their 16.6 million Facebook friends, 2.5 million Twitter followers, and 3 million YouTube viewers to think about their world differently.  For example, one band encouraged their fans to rethink carbon consumption caused by driving to their concerts and created phone apps with information about utilizing public transportation to get to the concerts.

In this session, these models of cultural strategy and cultural organizing were, at their core, all about creating support for artists, moving hearts to create art and to become waves of change.

L. Frank

“I am a decolonizationist,”  says  L. Frank, an artists and activist, who is a member of the Tongva/Ajachemen Nations.  “Being extinct is not easy.”

She also says,

I was once a shadow of my former self

I followed my footsteps to the past but the journey was too far

I turned away failing to run but succeeding to fly

Allison Smith remarked that more and more conference were including hands-on art making experiences.  She offered a workshop on trench art, inviting us to create beaded and embroidered pieces that can “bridge the gap between civilian arts and crafts people and military service people and veterans.”

She says,  “It is a way to start a conversation.  Crafts and textiles make visible a hidden history.”

Allison Smith

What did I learn from all this?

In the larger picture, you have artists in communities engaged in social practice.  On a smaller one on one level, you have engaged personal experiences and storytelling.

About the Author: Hoong Yee Lee Krakauer writes about how to be a nimble nonprofit, make life creative and make a difference at www.hoongyee.com.

She is also the Executive Director of the Queens Council on the Arts. Hoong Yee can be found surfing in the Rockaways whenever there are waves.

Do you want to know the fears, visions of perfect worlds and world changing advice of your peers and keynote speakers?  I have a special bonus post for you of interviews I conducted with people during the conference.  Just leave me a comment with your email or better still, subscribe and get new style notes for people who change the world at www.hoongyee.com.

How To Sell Water And Market Your Brilliant Career

When you ask for water at Cafe Bar in Astoria, this is what you get.

Now I don’t know about you but all I need is a glass to go with my water.

I am amazed that someone actually figured out how to reconstruct water, bottle it and get it on a menu.

I love packaging.

I love stuff that is put together for me, made easier for me, cleverly wrapped and boxed for me.  If the actual thing is something I actually need, that’s a home run.  I appreciate the thinking behind the product.  Ask me how many pairs of #9 knitting needles I own.  Go ahead.  I must have a dozen pairs and will probably continue to merrily acquire more.

Because they came in these OMG!-must-have knitting kits that came with a beautifully styled photograph of a fabulous knit quelque chose, some yummy yarn, and a pair of knitting needles in a cute little bag.  Could I have gone out and put all that together myself among all of the boxes of knitting stuff that has slowly taken over Seth’s side of the closet?  Of course!  But I put all that, and the vision of thousands of loose needles, skeins of yarns tumbling out of shoeboxes and towers of knitting pattern magazines and willingly flung down my credit card because I was blissfully seduced by smart and sexy -

packaging.

What about your brilliant career?

Here are some thoughts that ran through my mind about you.

Do you have a product you are passionate about?

I have been talking to a lot of writers who want to know more about marketing and telling their story.  Well, besides the obvious book, there are other ways for your words to work their magic.  A set of poems in an ebook?  A serial romance on a local radio show?  A reading of your newest work?

Can you picture your perfect customer – their likes, weaknesses, impulse shopping habits?

Who would buy your book?  Is she like you, does she read on a Kindle, what genres does she read, does she belong to a book club?  The more you know about your customer, the better you will be at getting her to become a loyal fan of yours.

Are you making it easy for people to buy who you are or what you have to sell?

People are lazy.  If you can create something that is easy to understand and either solves a problem or promises a unique experience, people will take notice and buy it.

Be creative.  If you need some inspiration, have a nice tall glass of reconstructed water.

Get more Wow!

If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:

Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good

Nonprofit Knitwear for all things knit and nonprofit

Style Notes from me, your artspy

Hoong Yee

– Subscribe and get a little Wow! every day

– Forward the link to someone you think would be interested

– Link to a post on Twitter (follow me @hylkrakauer)

– Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update

Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.

Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?

7 Incredibly Simple Ways To Get People to Love Your Blog

I drew Dan Heath, co-author of Switch, and the keynote speaker at a recent NTen Technology Conference on my iPad

Has this ever happened to you?

You are in a roomful of people who you would love to get to know.  People who are important or influential connectors in your field.  How are you going to make a good impression on them so that they remember you and better yet, want to work with you?

Why people connect

Think about it.  Why do you want to meet certain people?  For world peace?  For a better tomorrow?

People connect to benefit themselves.  Simple and plain.  If you happen to cure cancer along the way, great.  Now why would someone read your blog?  To increase your subscriber list?  To move you to higher in Google search?

Are you kidding?

People will read your blog if it helps them save money, learn how to do something or meet somebody.  To solve a problem or to make their lives better. Think about it.  You search for a deal on airline tickets, how to invest, where to go for fresh gnocchi, etc.  You read blogs that are all about the things you are interested in so that you can learn stuff and connect with similar spirits.  It is all about your readers, not you.

Here’s a simple twist on human nature

There is another reason people go on line.

They like to see themselves in the blogosphere.  People love to see who is responding to their tweets, who liked the photo of themselves they just posted on Facebook, who left a comment on their blog.  They want to be noticed, they want their presence to be acknowledged.  They want other people to see them.

Knowing this, I have a secret weapon for all of you ninjas:

Sketchbook Pro for iPad

How can a drawing program help me?

So glad you asked.

You don’t have to be a portrait artist to do this.  Stick figures, flattering of course, will work just as well with a little creativity on your part.

1. Download SketchBook Pro on your iPad You can get the free version to start off.  If you want more features, the upgraded version is about $7.  Use your stylus to take notes.  I picked one up at the Apple store.  You can also get them online if you Google “cheap iPad stylus”.
2. Use your stylus to capture quick sketches I like doing quick sketches of speakers at conferences.  Here are some of  the smart folks I heard from at the NTen Technology Conference who told us why you should be in the Google nonprofit program.
3. Take photos with your phone camera Can’t draw fast enough?  Can’t draw?  Take pictures of people with your phone camera.  If you have a really nice camera, use it.  Try to get good close ups of their faces.  Many times I produce a sketch from the photos I take.  The great thing about SketchBook Pro is that you can scribble notes on your sketch so if you do a lot of conference blogging like I do, you can capture both text and image.
4. Get business cards This is what I always do:  Go up to the people you have just captured in a sketch or a photo and ask them for their business card.  Smile like a media pro and say,  “I have a great sketch of you and it is going up on my blog.  Do you have a card so I can spell your name right?  I’ll send you a link.”   People will gladly exchange cards with you and remember you with interest.
5. Make notes Whatever people say to you is a story worth remembering.  Try to capture the essence of your conversation in brief notes, I am partial to  seven words or less.  You can use them later as quotes or even as captions
6. Write a hot headline If you write something that piques or provokes interest on top of your sketch, people will be curious and want to read on.  Here’s a great piece on Copyblogger about how to write magnetic headlines.
7. Link and love Remember those business cards?  Link to them if they have a blog or a website.  I like to send a personal email with the link inviting them to read my post and see themselves!

People love seeing themselves drawn and photographed.  And shared with you.

Get more Wow!

If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:

Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good

Nonprofit Knitwear for all things knit and nonprofit

Style Notes from me, your artspy

Hoong Yee

– Subscribe and get a little Wow! every day

– Forward the link to someone you think would be interested

– Link to a post on Twitter (follow me @hylkrakauer)

– Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update

Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.

Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?

What Twitter Can Do For Three Comics in Astoria

This sounds like one of those Catskill comedian jokes but I swear this actually happened.

I walked into the Quinn Funeral Home on Steinway Street in Astoria to meet a group of local artists. As I entered the large lobby that was stylistically embalmed in the late sixties, a young man smiled sympathetically at me and offered me a box of Kleenex.

“I’m not here for a service, I’m here for a Queens Art Express meeting.”

“Ah, fourth floor, just past Weight Watchers.”

On the fourth floor, about twenty people were talking about their art, their upcoming shows and exhibitions. There were some theatre folk, several gallery owners, a photographer who lives in a carriage house in Long Island City, three comics from Astoria and a baby.

These three guys do their performances in unexpected places. Their living room, streets, the backs of bars. Marketing their events will take some creative thinking. I am happy to hear they already have a strong presence in places like Twitter and Facebook.

Meeting face to face is, in my experience, the only way to create local universes and to “hasten serendipity”. Other means exist to further the connection and thankfully, they are becoming more intuitive for people like me.

The one tool I am working on now to master is Twitter. It can be a powerful piece of your social media marketing if you do things simply and logically.

I found these Twitter tips by Robin Stephenson to be really do able and helpful.

Here’s one of her tips that I think my Astoria group could really benefit from:

” Be Authentic: If your organization puts out a couple of tweets a day of your own content with nothing more, Twitter is probably not working for you. People want to know that behind the curtain a real person exists who authentically cares about your cause. Don’t assign Twitter to someone in your organization that doesn’t have an interest in using it effectively. The community can feel lack of interest. If you are having an office celebration or having an interesting event, share it with a twit pic. If you are reading interesting news articles around your issue, be the hub of information and share. Don’t be afraid to put out the occasional silly tweet that will make your followers laugh or an inspiring quote that makes people think.”

Why couldn’t these three funny guys create some kind of cool performance on Twitter itself? That would be an unexpected blast of serendipity, don’t you think?

Get more Wow!

If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:

Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good

Nonprofit Knitwear for all things knit and nonprofit

Style Notes from me, your artspy

Hoong Yee

– Subscribe and get a little Wow! every day

– Forward the link to someone you think would be interested

– Link to a post on Twitter (follow me @hylkrakauer)

– Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update

Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.

Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?