A few weeks ago I was a guest of the Soaring to Excellence program. For those of you unfamiliar with Soaring to Excellence, it is a national library teleconference program to which many state library systems subscribe. Many thousands of librarians tune into the three programs that are held each year. This year the program theme is “Mapping the Library Landscape: Every library worker a trendspotter“. I am pleased to have had a role in developing the content for this season’s series of programs. I also had the opportunity to be a featured guest on the first program of 2007-2008 which was about “Finding the Trends That Matter: Get Your Environmental Scan On“.

One of the trends I discussed on the program, from the world of business, was design thinking. The folks at Soaring to Excellence were generous in providing me with the nine-minute video segment (you’ll see the link to the video on my design web page) from the program that covers design thinking. It includes the showing of a “vignette”, a short tele-scenario related to the topic, in which two librarians discover design thinking. Then I have the opportunity to share some more insights into design thinking, doing my best to help the viewer to grasp the basic concepts. I am not quite sure how effective this presentation was – developing sticky messages about design thinking is a work in progress. But you can decide for yourself. Please take a look at the video, and share your thoughts as a comment to DBL. Oh, and by the way, keep in mind this was live television – there are no “do overs” in that situation. So it is what it is.