Catalyst Ranch’s
Creative Juice Blog
We are very lucky to meet some cool people at the Ranch and equally lucky that they let us profile them every now and again. You can check out some of those videos here. Often a lot of fun and humorous tidbits end up on the cutting room floor. Our new friends, Rick and Susan Riddering [...]
Chicago Ideas Week kicked off on Monday with Labs, Talks, MegaTalks and Partner Programs. I attended one of the talks that was held at the Chicago History Museum by some of Chicago’s innovators and explorers in Architecture. Blair Kamin, Architecture Critic for the Chicago Tribune and author of Why Architecture Matters: Lessons from Chicago, hosted [...]
The global event Social Media Week hit Chicago for the first time from 9/19 - 9/23/2011 and Catalyst Ranch was in on the action! With such great local events like "Journalism in the Age of the Tweet" and "The Power of Social Media for Social Activism", we wondered where we might fit in. But with our passion for innovation and creativity, as well as invoking conversations no one else was having, we came up with the perfect event.
Name: Joe Kutchera Title of Book: Latino Link: Building brands online with Hispanic communities and content published by Paramount Books What are some of the main themes of your book? Latino Link outlines the convergence of two major trends: the growth of digital/social media and the growth of the Hispanic audience in the U.S. How will [...]
Name: Jason Seiden Title of Book: How to Self-Destruct: Making the Least of What's Left of Your Career What are some of the main themes of your book? Oh, you know, the typical career stuff... how to fail as an employee, how to suck as a manager, how to jam your head totally up your colon [...]
Catalyst Ranch recently held a Cubicle Makeover Contest in honor of Administrative Assistant Day. We asked admins to send in photos of their boring cubicles. We were inundated with entries and it was one of the hardest decisions we’ve made in a long time to pick just one winner. Inevitably, you want to help everyone! However, [...]
Name: Dan Heasman Company: ?What If! - The Innovation Company Area of Expertise: Innovation training & capability building Share one of your trade secrets for keeping the energy and enthusiasm flowing when working through a long session or meeting with your clients. Keep changing things up! This can be your discussion points or exercises, it can [...]
We’ve all attended multitudes of networking events throughout our working careers. Some have been more successful than others. Sometimes it’s easy to meet people, other times it feels awkward starting a conversation with someone you’ve never met before. I think few of us have considered the full effect that the choice of venue has on how well [...]
"Through my work I wish to remind ourselves of how we preconceive what is around and inside us. Knowledge, ideas, and values are too often accepted without questioning. Can we find a way to evaporate ourselves from a pond and condensate over an ocean? Can we see a common thread that connects all things?"- Kumi Yamashita [...]
Sometimes you want to get people in a completely different mindset before you get to the meat of the business at hand. This is a great exercise to get them thinking about everything but your business - specifically a business they know nothing about. It’s also a great way to level the playing field amongst meeting [...]