Entry 1

So let me get a few things off my chest...

I feel like my creativity level and innovation skills are severely lacking! :-( I am not as creative as I used to be! I used to write poetry, draw random pictures (tattoos) just sketch out new advertisement ideas, new products that I dreamed about. I don't even know the last time I've done that! I don't know if it's because I just feel like I have no time or that it's not going to go anywhere! If I had to grade my skills on a 1-10 basis I would probably give myself a 6 for creativity and maybe a 4/5 for innovation.

I am going to say this though...I put 70% of the BLAME on society and our education system. Well the education system that I was forced into as a child (it's going to be my 5 year ruin so I can officially not be considered a kid anymore! :-D). Anyways back to our serious discussion; society and education is going to take a brunt of my hostility! Throughout schooling I felt that teachers stunted my creativity growth, I felt as if things always had to be their way or the highway. They put too much pressure on everyone to be the same and "fit in," that leaves our creativity and innovation skills to never develop :-(. I personally feel that I have a fear of rejection and being told that "you're wrong," or "that's stupid." I remember when I was in high school I told one of my friends that they should make heated steering wheels, my friend said "that's stupid, the only people that would want heated steering wheels are people who live in the arctic, like us!" Well 4 years later my mom purchases a new Cadillac, and what does it have? Heated steering wheel, I was so upset (I'm sure that there were patents in the works already) but I had doubted myself for fear of what people would think. I do believe that I am getting better though, I only share my ideas with people close to me that I feel won't judge me and will support me instead, but I am not completely open to my creativeness nor do I tap into it as much as I could or should.

I work in the technology industry (Cellphones) so innovation is always swarming around me! For example the virtual keyboard (rumored to be coming out on the iphone5) that displays from phones on a flat surface to allow for better text messaging and or composition of emails, or documents etc. Also a lot of applications or phones are beginning to over augmented reality, have you heard of augmented reality? It's quite amazing! Go ahead and GOOGLE it! But let me give you a quick run down, a lot of us have issues with our cellphones being glued to our hands, we like to text while we walk, and lets be honest how many of us just stare at our phones and text while we walk? Well there is augmented reality apps that allow us to use our camera feature and see where we are walking as we text. I'm sure a lot of you are thinking, "really?! do we need such things? has society come as far as not being able to just put our phone down in order to walk to our cars?!" But look it up there a lot of other cool things that augmented reality can offer us outside of on our mobile devices! :-)  I do think the virtual keyboard would be quite COOL! YES I said COOL!

I like to think that after this course I will raise my grade to at least an 8, although I think I may always lack in the innovation department because I have tendency to think inside a very restricted box. I still am a little hazy on what innovation actually is and means, from assignment to assignment my way of looking at innovation changes, sometimes drastically but sometimes just a little tweaks here and there. I hope by the end of this course I will have a better understanding of creativity and innovation and how to tap into it as well as rid myself of mind/creativity blocks! 

Thanks for reading :-) I'll be back soon!!

Shannon Demeny