DO Lectures at Fforest Farm
At fforest farm in Cilgerran, West Wales, a conference called the DO Lectures, organised by David and Clare Hieatt, provides inspiration, ideas and stories from people about what they DO. If memory serves me well I’ve linked to several of the individual podcasts over the last five months, but it seemed worthwhile to share the wealth and point everyone to the DO Lecture videos.
People invited to speak at the DO Lectures are ordinary people who do extraordinary things. They climb mountains, or design mountain bike trails, or author books like Bread Matters or Cradle to Cradle or even The Cloudspotter’s Guide. The crux of it though is they DO things and they inspire you to get off your sorry backside and do things as well. It’s always going to be easier to sit back and read and offer up opinions on a blog – like your’s truely – because doing takes a lot more effort, more resolve and a commitment to action. You might be a beekeeper, a web designer, a self-defined entrepeneur but if you don’t actually get out there with the bees or designing or pushing your ideas then it not only fails to benefit your own industry but it fails to benefit the rest of society, too.
The DO Lectures are also great for expanding our worldview on subjects we might not have thought about – like bread. As a direct result of Andrew Whitley’s presentation I no longer eat supermarket bread and nowdays I shop at a real bakery where they use organic flour and bread is nutritious. As opposed to mass produced. But the overall message is simple. DO. Reading is fine but in the context that we should be following through on our ideas.
There is a saying – someone who tries and fails three times has at least three times the experience of someone who never tried at all.
Something worth thinking about. So what are you going to DO?
[As a sidenote: if you only read one Design (with a capital D) book this year I'd recommend Cradle to Cradle. And if you're still hungry turn to Bill Buxton's Sketching User Experiences.]
