Step Two in the Idea Distillation Plan: Describe the idea briefly, in 2 or 3 sentences, making sure to include what makes the program unique.

This one was easier, because Erin and I had already worked out the first sentence. I just added to it, to include the other things that make the Farm unique. As always, it’s a work-in-progress - I’m not even sure the last sentence is necessary - but here’s what I’ve got:

The Free-Range Drama Farm is a non-profit organization that allows young theatre professionals to create and produce their own professional production, without the constraints of a typical academic environment. This free program provides students with all the resources they need, including a staff of theatre professionals to advise them, and allows them to adapt their experience to their own needs and interests. Our students receive a taste of real-world theatre experience, while continuing to learn through their collaboration with their peers and mentors.

I’m finding as I try to write these things that I’m just too close to the idea. I know so much about it, and I’ve been thinking about it for so long, that I’m having trouble standing back and reading the words through a newcomer’s eyes. Does this make sense? Does it give you a feel for the big picture of what the Drama Farm will be? Comments, please!

Here it is, the first installment of the Idea Distillation Plan that I decided to embark upon the other day!

The first step in the plan was to come up with 5 words that embodied the core concepts and values of the Drama Farm - and let me tell you, it’s not as easy as it sounds! I spent a good 30 minutes this morning brainstorming, and ended up with a list of about 30 words describing everything I could think of about the project. I then spent another 15 minutes narrowing that list down to the 5 most important words - the things I’m really passionate about, and the things that would compromise the value of the program if we gave them up. It wasn’t easy, and I’m still not sure it’s the right 5 words, but I think it’s close. Here they are:

• Theatre
• Education
• Student-Motivated
• Collaboration
• Professionalism

The only one I’m not totally sure about Professionalism. It is important to me that we’re giving the students a professional environment to work in, and that their advisors will be working professionals, but I feel like the word “professionalism” doesn’t necessarily conjure up those values.

What do you think? Do these five words give you a good feeling for what the core values of the Drama Farm will be? Are there other words that might be better? I’d love to hear your ideas!

Meanwhile, I’m off to start working on Step Two - more updates tomorrow…

A couple weeks ago, I wrote this post about trying to distill the idea of the Drama Farm into a few sentences, in the hopes of explaining what we’re doing without talking our listeners’ ears off for 20 minutes. I’ve been thinking about it a lot over the last few weeks, and with Erin (my newfound partner in crime - more on that soon!) we managed to come up with a pretty good one-paragraph description that hits on the really important points. It’s still a work in progress, though, and several things that I’ve encountered in the last few days have given me some more ideas on what direction to go with it.

What makes us unique?

Chris Garrett, who writes a great blog about internet marketing, wrote a really interesting article about defining your uniqueness - figuring out how you’re different, and what sets you apart from the crowd. His focus is on how to use this to market yourself and make yourself stand out from your competitors, but he asks some good quesions that apply here as well:

• What are our core values?
• What’s our philosophy?
• What makes us uniquely us, and how does that benefit the people we’re talking to?

All extremely important things to think about, and to be able to define for people when we’re talking to them about the project.

Start with the basics

Then yesterday I had tea with the fabulous Mark Jackson, who told me about the application process he went through for his fellowship from the Humboldt Foundation. The written application started by asking him to describe his project in 5 words. After that, he was asked to describe it in 2 or 3 sentences, then a paragraph, and so on and so on, until finally he had to write a 4-page description of the project and all its details. Mark said that going through that process forced him to really focus on what the core elements of the project were, so that he could find the right five words to describe it. He then expanded from those five words, bit by bit, and by the time he got to the 4-page description, he knew exactly what he was doing and why he was doing it.

Think of the bunnies

Finally, I’m reading an inspiring book called The Imagineering Way, which is a collection of essays on creativity written by Disney’s Imagineers. I’m only partway through the book, but one that really struck me is by Bruce Gordon, one of the Creative Project Directors. He talks about how selling an idea is like coaxing a bunny rabbit out from hiding in the bushes:

You want that bunny rabbit to feast on your idea, but first you have to coax him out from under the bushes and convince him it’s safe to take a little nibble.

So think of your idea as a sweet, crunchy carrot.

The bunny rabbit needs to perceive a safe, non-threatening environment, as well as a reward that will justify the risk it’s taking by poking its head out.

Remember that any sudden movement or loud noise is going to scare the bunny away. And don’t hold out a carrot that’s too big. In fact, you might think of the carrot as just a portion of your idea, rather than the entire concept.

It’s a carrot topping to a whole salad of ideas.

When a concept is revolutionary and changes the current thinking or status quo (no matter how much you know in your heart it’s the right thing to do), a big change can be a scary thing for someone to try to take in all at once. If you were trying to coax the bunny out so it could feast on an entire salad, you wouldn’t dump the whole salad on the ground at one time. The bunny would disappear back into its office - er, rabbit hole - before the last piece of lettuce floated to the ground.

Just coax it out gently with a tasty sample of what’s to come, then carefully introduce the benefits of the big picture: your salad.

This has been my biggest problem so far - I start with the Big Idea, rather than a bite-sized portion of it, and it’s just too much for people to chew on all at once. Reading about the bunny, and thinking about Mark’s experience in formulating his concept, have given me a pretty clear idea of where I need to go from here.

So, what’s the plan?

First, I’m going to go through a process much like Mark’s fellowship application, while keeping in mind Chris’ questions about uniqueness and standing out:

1. Find 5 words that describe the Drama Farm’s core concepts and values.
2. Describe the idea briefly, in 2 or 3 sentences, making sure to include what makes the program unique.
3. In 2 or 3 paragraphs, give an overview of the program, with detail about the philosophy behind it and benefits of it.
4. In 2 or 3 pages, describe exactly what we plan to do, why we’re doing it, and how we plan to do it.

That’ll give us a pretty good foundation of written materials to include on the website, in publicity, and in materials we send to potential donors. The next step is to figure out how to talk about it, without sounding like a canned speech. So, we take those four written descriptions, and we turn them into:

1. a 15-second pitch
2. a 30-second pitch
3. a 1-minute pitch
4. a 5-minute pitch

Once we’ve accomplished that, we’ll have a definitive language for talking to people about the idea, hopefully reeling them in (or coaxing them out), just like the bunny rabbit.

What do you think? I think it sounds like a good exercise for anyone embarking on a big project like this. It’ll help us distill our ideas and focus on the core values, which we sometimes lose sight of while thinking about the more mundane aspects, like funding and legal issues… I’ll post the pieces here as I finish them, and we’ll see how it goes - now, I’m off to start writing!

This article gave me a little motivational pick-me-up when I read it this morning - it’s about how gifted children are often perceived as crazy, because they’re acting outside the norm.

In general, the world wants us to do things the way they’ve always been done - that’s what they know; that’s what’s comfortable. To do anything other than the norm usually involves taking a risk - almost a leap of faith in what you believe is possible - and to someone who doesn’t share that faith, the idea of taking that leap seems utterly insane.

I’ve been suffering from a small crisis in faith these last few days - after all, when people I trust and respect think I’m nuts for believing we can raise an endowment from nothing but an idea, it’s hard to have faith that I’m headed in the right direction. Reading this article made me see it in a different light, though. I’m not saying the idea’s guaranteed to work - but maybe, if I can incite some of my faith in a few other people, I can get them to take the leap with me. And maybe, just maybe, the idea’s not so crazy after all…

Thanks to Derrick for pointing out the article - it made my day…

Just came across an article on CNN.com about how giving money to a good cause actually stimulates the pleasure centers in your brain.

What better reason do you need? Give us some money - it’ll brighten your day! (There’s a button at the bottom on the right - go ahead and click it!)

I was talking to a friend about the Farm yesterday, and she asked me how I was planning to structure the curriculum - more workshops and seminars towards the beginning, and then send the students off to work on the production, or just let them fly free from the start? I realized as we talked that I don’t have a definite “This is how I want it to work” plan. I have ideas about ways that it could work, but I don’t want to be the one that sets all the rules. As much as participating in the program will be a collaboration between the staff and students, I want the creation of the program to be a collaboration too.

Ideally, I’d love to be able to hire the staff advisors well before we accept our first students - 6 months, maybe even a year ahead of time - so that we can spend that time working together to come up with the structure and details of how the program will work. Even when we have that figured out, though, I envision the way it works changing slightly every semester. We’ll adapt what we’re doing based on input from current and past students, as well as the working style of the current guest director, and what the current students are looking to get out of the experience.

I started thinking about all of this after reading this article - specifically the part about how open-source ideals can be applied to education. Derrick Kwa had some interesting comments on it, and I agree with a lot of them - open-source is about the users controlling the development, and that’s really where I want to go with the Farm. Our whole purpose in existing is to serve the students - so why not let them be involved in creating and changing the program?

What I’d really love to do, at the same time that we’re collaborating with the staff to come up with a curriculum, is talk to current undergrad students who might be interested in coming to the Farm. Find out what they’re looking for in an internship, and what we could do to make the program even more useful to them. Maybe set up a Student Advisory Committee of some sort - or maybe just go to their schools and talk to them. I really think that they know better than anyone else what they need to fill out their educations - so why not ask them?

I’ve been running into an interesting phenomenon as I talk to more and more people about this project. I start by telling them about the program - where the idea came from, where I want to go with it, how it would work - and I generally get a very positive response. Then comes the inevitable question, “How are you going to fund it?” When I tell people that we want to raise a $20 million endowment to support the whole program, the response is usually “Wow.” or “Okay…”, accompanied by a look that says “You really think you can do that? Keep on dreaming…”

Now, I’m not deluding myself - I know very well that $20 million is a lot of money. But I also know that any goal is achievable, if you break it down into smaller and smaller goals, working towards the Big One. Am I going to run right out tomorrow and stumble across a bunch of millionaires who want to give me money? No. But I can work up to that. Here’s how:

Round One

1. Figure out the Big Goal.
   In our case, raising $20 million to fund an endowment. There’s a capital campaign too, but let’s focus on the endowment for now.

__(’Read the rest of this entry »’)

Imagination is more important than knowledge.
~Albert Einstein

And to add my own thoughts to Mr. Einstein’s…

Passion and potential are more important than having all the answers right now. The answers are out there, if you’ve got the drive to find them.

More on that later too!

(scheme scheme scheme…)

I just unearthed all of my notes from the best theatre management class in existence, taught by the one and only Don Marinelli. It’s amazing how many things you learn in college that you never really thought you’d need, and then years later you realize just how useful they are. There’s stuff in here about how to choose the best board of directors, how to come up with a financial plan for starting a company, even how to get people to give you money! I’ve got a lot of reading to do…

A few choice tidbits that really struck me when I first learned them - and that hit me again with fresh inspiration as I skimmed through my notes:

• People don’t give to companies - people give to people.
• Marketing is about educating your audience, not about persuading them.
• Never underestimate the power of your board - they can be your greatest resource, if you respect them and know how to use them.

More on these later, though - I’m off to read some more. Thank you, Don!

I just spent a great weekend in Mendocino with a bunch of friends, some of whom I haven’t seen in almost a year. As we chatted and caught up on each other’s lives, I got a lot of questions about what I’ve been working on lately - and I found I didn’t really know how to tell them. The Drama Farm is such a unique, out-there idea - how do you explain it in terms better than “this crazy theatre internship idea I have”, without taking over the conversation for 10 minutes?

There are a lot of great resources out there to help you write an elevator pitch (also known as a 15-second pitch) - basically, the idea is to have a brief overview of your venture that hits all the key points, but is short enough to tell someone about in the space of an elevator ride - ideally, 15-30 seconds. I’ve read through a lot of them, and I’ve been tossing ideas around in my head for a while, but I hadn’t really come up with the right words yet - which left me sort of sputtering and sounding clueless anytime anyone asked about what I was doing.

So, I spent some time this weekend trying to figure out how to explain the basic idea of this project to someone who knows nothing about it, without telling them everything about it. My problem is that all the concepts I want to use to explain the Drama Farm end up needing explanations of their own: it’s a theatre internship based on informal learning, but no one knows what informal learning is; it’s a professional-level theatre production with the safety net of an educational environment, but how is that different from a college theatre production?

After giving it some serious thought, here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

“It’s a semester-long theatre internship program. We’d take two dozen students, give them a professional director, a script, a budget, and all the resources they need, and let them at it. They’d make all the decisions and do all the planning, but with a staff of advisors there to guide them when they needed it.”

It’s definitely a work in progress, but what do you think so far? Does it make sense? If you knew nothing about the project - or even really about theatre education - would you get the idea? Better yet, would you be excited by it? Tell me what you think!