Secrets and synchronicities -- Ava Lindberg's blog

Don’t miss the September Qcast featuring Lindberg speaking on creativity. You can find the QCast on the www.QRCA.org website under September QCast.   I’m speaking on exciting new ways to intensify the power of creativity and brainstorming tactics within four radically different research and creative scenarios — generating marketing ideas with corporate teams, developing new missions and visions with senior management, debriefing research findings after qualitative research with the observational team, and adding archetypal and creative projective techniques to focus groups to gain depth of emotional learning.

Please join me at noon to 1:30 on Thursday, September 6, 2012, eastern standard time

Facilitating Consciously for Breakthrough Insights

September 6, 2012
12:00 p.m. ET (GMT -4)

Speaker: Ava Lindberg, President of SunResearch

Applying the right form of creative facilitation and brainstorming exercises can achieve breakthrough results in qualitative research.  But how do you know what the right form is, when, and how to use it for your particular situation?

Join Ava Lindberg as she shares her top four ways to increase the probability of breakthrough research and conceptual insight using case histories from major brands and other corporate situations.  These approaches are appropriate for:

• Cross-functional brainstorming sessions to develop new concepts and tactics
• Immediate debriefs for innovative co-creation of research findings
• Politically savvy high summits with senior management
• Stimulating creative focus groups using deep projective exercises

Ava Lindberg is President of SunResearch, a leading-edge qualitative research practice located in New York City.  For 20+ years, Lindberg has delved deeply into consumer behaviors, experiential-emotional need states, vision, brand imagery, and creative development as well as spearheaded innovative new forms of qualitative methodologies for leading brands and companies.

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A reader, R, has written to request a category called New Synchronicities so that she and others can post totally new synchronicity experiences in its own section.

I am adding this category today, calling it Totally New Synchronicities.

To review the purpose of the blog Secrets and Synchronicities for new readers…it is to create an ongoing forum of interactivity on the theme of building and exploring a compendium of synchronicities recorded from an intentional desire or completely spontaneous, unsolicitied occurrence in order to see and experience such meaningful coincidences on an ongoing basis.

It is also to analyze their meaning, muse, see where and if the coincidences move and expand, and note any connections between personal or professional synchronicities with the field of in-depth qualitative, archetypal research.  Carl Jung, champion of synchronicity, believed that meaningful coincidence and archetypes existed in the same continuum.

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My SunResearch blog is a one-year experiment in the intentional paying of attention to synchronicity.  Since about April 2011, I have been recording meaningful coincidences in my professional and personal life, photographing where possible, discussing what they may mean, how they turn out, and following along where such synchronistic occurrences go.

I add in theory, discuss the usages of synchronicity, archetypes, and the semiotics of everyday occurrences in the world of research and innovation, along with new ideas about trends in qualitative research.

These secrets and synchronicities throughout the blog vary widely.  Some seem important; others are recorded to fulfill the nature of the research experiment.   I am fascinated by the subject and have committed to noting individual synchronicities and special qualitative secrets against the greater backdrop of this year-long investigation.

The reader is invited to send in your own synchronicities–professional or personal.

Here is one that is small and associative.   In Toronto on the way to Pearon Airport early yesterday morning, I am riding in a cab on the second day of Divali–the Feast of Lights–celebrated by Hindus around the world.  I talk about Divali with the cab driver who is Sri Lankan; he noticeably brightens when I wish him a Happy Divali.  I had sent, the night before, a Divali card to a client who is a VP of an Indian food company, for whom I’m doing a brainstorming session on November 5.

When I get into Pearson Airport, I notice this Incredible India ad, which is across from the gate of the Air Canada flight I’m about to board.  I had also mentioned my visit to the Taj Mahal with the cab driver.  The Taj is featured prominently in the ad.

Perhaps my wish to return to India on business will be fulfilled.

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What ideas do good readers have to help me remove and prevent spam and inappropriate backlinks from my (or your) blogs?

Spam and backlink reactions are a daily deluge.   If I don’t log on or post daily, I might have 800 spam entries, which is tiresome to wade through to move to trash or spam.

Spam and backlinks clutter up a good blog and prevent other readers from sending in important posts to the subject of synchronicities, research, ethnography, and archetypes.

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Wanted to tell my blog readers who are professionals in the field of qualitative research…that I’m speaking at the QRCA Southeast meeting on September 16, 2011, in Duluth, GA, in case you want to come by and participate.  If you’ve just received the evite as a member of the Southeast Chapter, I look forward to this observational/ethnographic workshop experience a lot.

What I like –and think other researchers will appreciate about the September 16 experience–is its interactivity–the chance for participants to try out a couple of types of observational processes on your own, under my supervision, and in the company of other skilled researchers who may or may not know much about authentic observation.  This will help you immeasurably in ethnography.  Of course, we’ll examine theory and best practices, tips and techniques, the 10 principles of authentic ethnography, and weave it together with case histories from U.S., Canada, and international research.  But the observational skills can be considered a chance to move more deeply into the very essence–the tap root–of the authentic ethnographic process.

What I’ve learned about observation and true ethnography–now and since my graduate work at Columbia University in cultural anthropology…there’s no end to learning about how to observe. Any chance inside or outside of anthropological research projects should be used as an opportunity to practice observing, watching, listening, and paying attention to real-world activities of other people happening in front of you without changing their behavior in any way, yet astutely seeing and being present with it.   Like performing on piano, doing quantum physics, creating a painting, or learning Mandarin Chinese, observational abilities can be just as complex.  Observation evikves through multiple levels from beginning into intermediate into expert.

Again, there’s no end of learning about observation, and it’s real easy to get rusty if one hasn’t done it in a while (like a few days or weeks).   What I find is that ethnographic observation requires a slow, relaxed, deliberate process that continues to intensify as the hours of observation pass….being present within a heightened state of awareness as one experiences through participant observation the world of other people within the framework of one’s own interpretive self

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As a cultural anthropologist, qualitative market researcher, and enthusiastic discoverer of insight and truths, I’ve long been fascinated with the nature of reality on both mainstream and esoteric levels. I’m now featuring a blog with two purposes.

The first is strongly connected to my business website. Some posts will be focused on the elements of qualitative research, i.e., to share “secrets,” ideas, experiences, and reportable case histories about planning, developing, and conducting breakthrough research for brands, companies, and concepts. It will benefit clients, colleagues, and independent researchers. There’s an emphasis on techniques using archetypal and projective devices like Tarot, collage, visual storytelling as well as the underlying philosophy behind doing authentic research.You’re invited to share your research experiences and ideas.

The blog’s second purpose is a self-experiment in synchronicity. The researcher is researching herself. Each day I begin with an oracle like Tarot and a definitive intent to become aware of meaningful coincidences, i.e., synchronicity, serendipity, and threads of interconnection, that I see and that occur during the day. I note early thoughts about the preliminary intention and oracle with pen or visual, and then review the results of synchronicity at the end of the day. I’ll report back my ongoing synchronicities, whether profound, superficial, intriguing, obvious, or in some form of intuitive process.

The experiment is intended to continue at least one year to learn how day-to-day perspectives and actual synchronicities related to oracle-induction and intentionality play themselves out. I will share the results as and when they unfold and invite you to share your own tales of synchronicity. You’re welcome to join me, on my Chariot of exploration, into the new world of synchronicity.

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