Abstract:If your innovation technique is to wait for a great idea then you have no technique. Brain Snorting is a collaboration game that can be played casually or formally depending on your mood. The formal version is played with a spreadsheet and a referee, the casual version is played with pen and paper or even nothing at all. All games are played with "snorters": small pig shaped toys that emit a snort when squeezed. All participants have their own snorter. By giving people a second voice, it allows them to contribute and make meaningful contributions despite social barriers like hegemony, embarrassment, bashfulness and intro/extroversion. It provides a mechanism to quiet down or even expel participants who seek to dominate the discourse. Rude tactics like interrupting people by repeating what has already been said or shaming do not have to be tolerated. The snorting devices provide instant and rapid feedback. It's also very funny and keeps people in a good mood.
The game directs people to imagine without constraints, cross pollinate ideas and generate epiphanies. This brings much more creativity and foresight to the table. Virtuoso mental techniques of inventing are defined, discussed and practiced. Respect and appreciation of others is highly encouraged. The best feature of all is the Freebie list. This is a mechanism where highly desirable features that initially appear to be too expensive to manifest, are partially gained by exposing infrastructure that is going to be built anyways. Gaining even a piece of a highly desirable feature for next to no work is a great benefit.
Learning Outcomes:- The attendee will take away a system of collaboration that seems light hearted and hilarious on the surface but is actually highly sophisticated and has many advantages over simply meeting and throwing around ideas.
- Participants will learn about high level techniques of creativity like:
synesthesia, complex inversion, the diagonal lemma, super discipline, the meta self, anthropomorphize and protagonize, reductio ad verum, pink light, and strong bottle. As well as understand how to train for these things.
