What I learned from the Blue Man Group…

Posted by Fitzy

November 26, 2007

Hey all…

I had an opportunity to go see the Blue Man Group in concert this weekend at the Pepsi Center in Denver. What an amazing show! (You can see my review at my other blog here.)

But I learned a few things from them that I thought I’d share. Though an oddball way to cover the topics of marketing and publishing, it’s applicable to many disciplines, hobbies, and jobs, so I thought I’d see where it led…

Don’t JUST think outside the box… Think WAY outside the box.What do I mean by that? Take what we know from simply living in a media age. How do we make music? How do we behave if we’re rock stars? Turn that on its head… Approach it like you’ve never heard music before. Take what’s in front of you and make it yours - beat on it - experiment - have fun - and see where it leads. Or take the behavior you know you SHOULD do (like if you’re a rock star, you have to be on stage jumping around, singing, and playing music) - and break it down to its component parts, then look at each of those like you’ve never seen them before.Try it… You might come up with something new and unique. I’m working on some new ideas now for the game to see what shakes out. I’ll let you know how the experiment goes.
Take an established idea (like writing a roleplaying game) and turn it inside out.What do I mean? Well, in the game case, traditionally roleplaying games are like Dungeons and Dragons or Vampire - you have a character, the character interacts with the world and changes as a result. But what if the character maybe… creates the world? Or perhaps the experience for the players becomes more interactive — there IS no game master maybe. Perhaps there’s a set of ground rules, a character for each player, and an idea and each player runs with it for a while.The same applies to blogging or writing. Take an established idea and turn it inside out. So we need to do SEO and marketing. Why? Break it down. Build it back up again. Maybe we’ll come up with a totally new paradigm that will change life as we know it!?
Have fun!This applies to the Blue Man as well as the rest of us. We can’t just go through the motions. If we don’t enjoy what we do, something’s wrong and we need to fix it, change it, or at least figure out WHAT’s wrong. We spend too much time in our lives working to not enjoy it. Maybe find the one aspect of your job that you want to have fun with or find a hobby to enjoy — but we MUST find something to squeeze some enjoyment out of life or it gets very gray very fast.

So that’s it. I’ll be interested to hear what you have to say. How will YOU become a Blue Man and turn life upside down?

Let me know!

–Fitz