To be or not to be (happy, creative, bold)

Be happy

The great thing about being decisive is you can always change your mind.

I am pleased and relieved to be going to the WXO (World experience organisation) Summit in New York next week. I’m a freelance creative, it’s my own personal chat GPT world, it’s my Midjourney, my Firefly, my Dalle-darling, my alternative reality, of course I’ll go – only I wasn’t.

Freelancing is like living in the wild and freelancing as a creative means you take wallet-growth, over self-growth every time, I was being decisive, I took the hit.

And I was so wrong.

And then the freelancing roulette wheel spun two days ago. I suddenly had time, and thanks to the quick witted and flexible team at WXO I am decisively going.

And I can’t believe how happy and relieved I am about that.

Be Creative

In tough and uncertain times creativity and imagination is sometimes a better metric than logic. You won’t believe me but now is the time for a creativity boom. Our experience economy – and more so our audiences - are desperate to grow.

The value of experiences over physical goods is growing, the relevance of emotional and social connection to experiences is growing. The technological advancements to design depth and uber-personalisation into that connection is growing. It aligns with evolution of our social dynamics, another growth towards trust in real life experiences.

Be Bold

So why am I getting on plane (which disturbs me – I use train travel for Europe – and spent two hours finding the lowest carbon-flight) to spend 40 hours at the WXO summit?

I don’t know, and I’m OK with that. I’m going for the start of something, not the conclusion, the big questions that will outlast the answers. I’m going for the experience, to listen, to learn, to exchange ideas and grow new ones. I’m going for growth, my growth.

I’m going for zeitgeists and insights that elevate me from my competitors and learnings I can share with my communities. I’m going to explore bold ideas in a space where we can let them breathe, give them space to grow, and let the whole audience join in.

I’m going to an ideas mega-factory.