Beth Comstock: You Have To Tell A Story, Before You Can Sell A Story

Storytelling, experimentation, passion, and even failure - these are the ingredients that help great ideas make it to the finish line, says GE's Beth Comstock in this candid interview at the 99% Conference.

"Instigators wanted but not always welcomed."

In a rare interview, GE's SVP and Chief Marketing Officer Beth Comstock talks to Behance's Scott Belsky about what it takes to keep great ideas alive in a big company. Offering essential insights for creative leaders, the conversation touches on the power of passion and storytelling in getting ideas off the ground, why we should make heroes out of failures, and the challenges of driving change amidst bureaucracy.

What is magical? Etienne Mineur, the inventor of cool

This week Disney launched Appmates, a line of toys that interact with an iPad, demonstrated here by Disney Mobile Chief Bart Decrem interviewed by VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi. 

VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi interviews Disney Mobile chief Bart Decrem about Appmates

How does it work?

Here Robert Scoble interviews the inventor, Etienne Mineur, who shows how it works. This video was made at the LIFT conference in Geneva, Switzerland, on February 3 of this year.

Magical indeed. 

Live Action, Tilt-Shift, Miniatures & CGI All Seamlessly Featured In Reseau Ferre de France Spot

Nouvelle campagne RFF - Agence : W Atjust

via metalpotential.posterous.com

Love the look and feel of this spot.

The Conjuring Arts Research Center, A Real Life Hogwarts

Nestled in a hidden location in midtown Manhattan, the Counjuring Arts Research Center is ground zero for illusionists and historians alike. The Center provides a range of services, publishes scholarly journals, and teaches hospital-bound kids magic through its Hocus Pocus program. It is perhaps best known as home to one of the largest known collections of historic books, letters, and other media, which the center makes available online. Bill Kalush, the center's founder and director, explains how he built the collection piece-by-piece and shows us some of its highlights. See more of our videos at coolhunting.com/video

via Cool Hunting on vimeo.com

Nestled in a hidden location in midtown Manhattan, the Counjuring Arts Research Center is ground zero for illusionists and historians alike. The Center provides a range of services, publishes scholarly journals, and teaches hospital-bound kids magic through its Hocus Pocus program. It is perhaps best known as home to one of the largest known collections of historic books, letters, and other media, which the center makes available online.

Bill Kalush, the center's founder and director, explains how he built the collection piece-by-piece and shows us some of its highlights.

Comedians@Google Eddie Izzard: Sometimes you have to kill your creative babies

Eddie Izzard stops by Google for a conversation about his life, his influences, and comedy. The interview was conducted by Mark Day.

I'm a big fan of Eddie Izzard and his erudite style of surreal comedy. In this conversation, conducted by Mark Day, he talks about his life, his influences, and comedy. His comedy DVDs are highly recommended as a source of creative inspiration as they are full of hilariously out there juxtapositions. (In an early-in-his-career performance he did a routine on technology and the ridiculous challenges of getting a printer to work correctly that basically rendered me into a convulsing mess of laughter the first time I saw it).

Some of his insights from the talk, slightly paraphrased: 
• Spend time on what you are making, don't see it as the obstacle between you and success. 
• If you try too hard at being good, then often the final result is lesser than if you let go and just do the work, especially in creativity. 
• You've got to create and then move on. 
• Create things to be constantly moving, designed to be fluid, so it's constantly alive.
• Avoid creating something fully concrete.
• Whatever you are doing, it's not rocket science, it's not that hard, it's just a lot of work.
• Shame and guilt together are humiliation.
• The first goal is to make them laugh, the second goal is to inform using street language and not preaching.
• Make yourself the first person in the audience.
• The whole world is about the classroom.