Editor: Why Cloudy Thinking is Innovative
No successful startup story begins these days without the Fiat first being moved into the driveway. If you’re going to be the next Apple or Google, you must unleash this innovative Zeitgeist on an oil-stained concrete floor.
We’re inspired by the started-in-a-garage storyline. Think big, start small, and become big and rich. It’s the new American way.
Except in Sarasota.
Garage, meet cocktail napkin.
The story goes that Peter and Nelleke van Lindonk were at a Sarasota holiday party hosted by their son Oliver. In attendance was entrepreneur Anand Pallegar. As the party evolved, so did their conversation. Someone pulled out the cocktail napkin and ... boom! Big dream becomes big idea becomes big deal.
The van Lindonks founded PINC after a magazine article and his endearing curiosity led him to the annual TED conference in 1996. PINC, an acronym for People, Ideas, Nature and Creativity, became the Dutch version of TED, known for thought-provoking presentations from interesting and occasionally eclectic speakers.
When Peter died, the cocktail napkin became more than a metaphor. How do you honor his spirit for learning? How do you create an experience you will never forget?
That’s how PINC, the import, came to Sarasota in 2014.
Ringling College of Art and Design got involved. No surprise, the debut was a smash.
And when big ideas excite curious, smart people, you do it again.
So, there on the Sarasota Opera House stage was Anand, bedecked in green bowtie and shiny green kicks, showing why he’s the most credible and charming genius you’ll likely ever meet.
“This is the most creative day in Sarasota. Maybe Florida,” he said on Thursday. He was right.
The crowd was abuzz, and it wasn’t the coffee. Four-hundred-plus gathered before 9 a.m., knowing they would be parked in seats for nearly eight hours.
This was a full work day for the mind. It was best to focus on brilliance instead of your bladder because the schedule was packed and bathroom breaks were minimal. (And no one, of course, messes with the door attendants at the Opera House).
Yet, participants were bursting — in the enthusiastic way — during those rare breaks, chit-chatting and marveling at the lessons learned.
“What could we do in 48 hours in Sarasota?”
“There should be a PINC just for kids!”
“She ... is ... inspiring.”
When you put the brain to work, no Fitbit can measure the excitement it takes to listen and learn.
Oh, if only school had been like this when we were kids. Maybe that’s the appeal of PINC; it’s going back to school when we’re wiser to the world. Wisdom, after all, is knowing we still have much to learn.
Treat PINC as an investment of mind and spirit, and you’ll feel like your day was spent getting a graduate degree. No need to turn in a research paper, though; just listen, experience, and occasionally snack on cheese slices and ice cream sandwiches.
Here, in this most adult of classrooms, you became mesmerized by how discarded wood is culturally transformative; why the love life of cicadas have a Shakespearean fate; and what Handel (and Mozart) can do to rethink our relationship between life and music.
At the PINC.Sarasota conference, geniuses abound on stage and in the audience like puffy white clouds in the Florida sky.
No surprise, PINC had a Cloud Guy. Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder of The Cloud Appreciation Society, was one of the favorites at PINC.Sarasota’s second conference.
Gavin’s advice should inspire the dream, innovator and napkin doodler in all of us:
“Because it’s aimless doesn’t make it pointless.”