Wisdom 2.0
Last weekend I made my yearly pilgrimage to Wisdom 2.0 in San Francisco, one of the few conferences I attend every year. Wisdom is always hard to describe accurately, but I talk about it as “a conference where you learn about bringing mindfulness to the workplace”. There’s lots of stuff in there about life as well — but there is a strong emphasis on work, tech and the imbalances that these things can create in our lives.
Sometimes it’s better to describe Wisdom 2.0 through it speakers as this can give a better sense of the topics and audience. Some of my favorite speakers from the past have included:
- Senior execs from Facebook, Google and Linked In
- Evan Williams (Twitter & Medium founder)
- Ariana Huffington (of the Huffington Post)
- Authors Jon Kabat-Zinn and Dan Siegel
- Musicians Jewell & Alanis Morisette
- Brandon Stanton (of “Humans of New York”)
- The translator to the Dali Lama
- Congressman Tim Ryan
- Chade-Meng Tan (the “jolly good fellow” from Google and founder of the Search Inside Yourself program)
I also used it as an opportunity to play with a GoPro Hero 5 which I recently purchased. I recently committed to learning filmmaking as a means of storytelling and this will be part of that. Slow, but fun progress — here’s my video from the weekend:
Finally I jotted down a few quotes / comments that resonated with me the most. Some of these standalone well, others may need more context, but I’ve included them nonetheless.
- “Stand up for what you believe in, not in a heroic way. But in a dedicated way. Because you love it.”
- “Trust what you find in yourself is what the world needs”
- “Sit and tend the garden. No matter the size” (there were lots of interesting comments this year about the importance of doing great work, whatever the size / scale)
- “One person with courage is a majority.”
- “You can pick all the flowers but you can’t stop the spring.”
- “I offer myself as a guardian of nature , a messenger of peace.” (from the poem: http://www.yourdailypoem.com/listpoem.jsp?poem_id=91)
- “Save something because you love it. Make peace the thing that you contribute”
- “Art is not about showing off, it’s about showing yourself.” (it took me a long time to learn this for myself)
- “We don’t need more gurus. We need people who can have authentic lives.”
- “Hardwood trees grow slowly. But they are resilient. I wanted to be a hardwood tree. My roots are my values.”
- “Fear is a thief. And it takes the past and projects it into the future.”
- “The point of life is to transmute pain into beauty. We don’t get to avoid pain. None of us get out of here without pain.”
- “People use art as propaganda to show themselves as being more perfect than your really are. But you drown under the weight of your own armor. The more vulnerable I am, the safer I am”
- “I like being hard to offend. When I become offended, I become curious. This is a pointer or neon sign to something interesting.”
