This quote reminds me of how much fun a brainstorm session can be. Two key rules for brainstorming are that there are no limits and there is no criticism. Once those rules are established, the idea of a brainstorm session is to come up with new and ground-breaking ideas.

In order to accomplish that, you must get your team out of the box by reframing the objective. Don’t ask “How will we make the event theme (exploration) resonate with the audience?”. Instead, find a parallel universe and design for that universe. Then you come back and apply that thinking to the actual design task at hand.

One of my favorites (that I learned from Micky McManus) was to brainstorm a theme park ride. What does a theme park ride about exploration look like? What is the journey? How does it make the audience feel? What kind of ride is it? A thrill ride? A dark ride?

Obviously, your event won’t end up being a theme park ride (unless you are Google at CES), but the unpacking of the theme into a theme park ride provides you with many of the contextual cues that can be used to design your event.

And don’t forget to have fun, go off the deep end. The entire idea of reframing the question is to go to extremes. Those extremes often break the thinking down to its most basic elements, and those same elements that make the theme park ride engaging will make the event engaging.

via SwissMiss