Tag: performance

#6 Modalities + Podcast With Yarrow Kraner | July 2026

6 creativity quote charles mingus - fireside.rs - newsletter image

Welcome to the sixth newsletter from fireside.rs, ‘unlocking creative productivity by gathering humans effectively.’

This month, Te Uru Tāngata Centre for Workplace Inclusion, in Auckland, NZ, hosted the third ever fireside.rs workshop:

Timelapse from the third firesider.rs workshop

And less than a week later the fourth was hosted at Steelcase WorkLife Center, London, UK:

Timelapse from the fourth firesider.rs workshop

After four workshops in four cities some themes and lessons are emerging:

  • clever humans relish the rapid switching in gathering modalities as a way of sharpening direct knowledge acquisition;
  • using elements such as darkness, time, surprise, delight, emotional framing etc. elevate the understanding through novelty;
  • the participants evident laughs and smiles plus lightness and ease are outcomes of an effective learning experience.

Going back to the first point above and the different modalities of gathering shapes experienced in these workshop, I should add that the participants also move between groups / formats which means connections are accelerated along with social ties through shared space and practice.

In a little over two weeks I’ll be in Leeds delivering a closing keynote at the AMA Conference 2026: Together, in Leeds, UK—sharing for the first time my multi-year research findings, those insights from others via the podcast plus the direct lessons learned from the above workshops, in a presentation format. Will share what I learn in the next newsletter!

If you’re interested in bringing this unique offer to your community whilst it’s still a ‘no-fee’ workshop experience (just cover my expenses), please do get in touch and I look forward in collaborating with you in the future,

DK
fireside.rs Founder and Creative Gatherer

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

Where we feature, celebrate and learn from those who craft spaces for humans to actively belong and be, introducing:
6 Yarrow Kraner fireside.rs podcast - episode image - small

SHOW NOTES & PULL QUOTES

4.21 : “Well, there are things that we say when we’re inviting people that are true, and then there are things that we don’t say. That they discover along the way. And I think that one of the things that we’ve noticed over the last couple of decades is that people sort of realize that hatch is a verb and that it’s happening to them. They’re cracking…”

5.09 : “So when you’re sitting between an astronaut and a Grammy-winning musician and a 17-year-old that’s got two patents on turning human waste and electricity, everyone is learning something new from each other and realizing that someone has solved for something in a completely different industry that would actually be relevant to their own work. So that’s a component of it is de-siloizing expertise from all these different perspectives.”

6.43 : “And so I would say that one of the things that Hatch is designed to solve for is bringing leaders, industries, perspectives together, but offering those people an elevated view of not only what they are capable of individually, but collectively.”

7.49 : “You know, it’s a problem that not really everyone is naming clearly, but there’s this missing infrastructure for large scale systems change or even small scale small scale change. And that’s human connection and the human connection as missing infrastructure. It’s not just a nice to have. It’s literally the wellness benefit of how teams and organizations will be productive and effective. And so we really, over the years, we’ve iterated and learned and tinkered and dialed on, you know, different levers and so on. And like trying to figure out, like, what is the top thing we’re trying to accomplish? And ultimately, the authentic connection is at the top of that and everything else sort of cascades down below that.”

16.00 : “…we’re not going to ever take over half of a venue where there’s others kind of roaming around. And nobody is leaving early or coming early. So that container: don’t break the yoke, we call it; becomes one more thing that you can build trust just knowing that you’re in this bubble and everyone there is with you and for you in that environment.”

16.15 : “…i think we’ve tried to scale too quickly at one point in time then i had the realization that bigger is not always better and scaling is not necessarily, even though that’s what we get hammered into with business school and startup world, that does necessarily mean that that is the case with everything. Especially when you’re talking about authentic interpersonal relationships and building trust amongst leaders. The scale is not going to help that. The intimacy is going to drive that.”

28.12 : “…I have this sort of visualization that when you find people that are working intentionally on making the world a better place, you know, beyond just themselves, but into a larger ecosystem, they, they, they hum at a different frequency or vibration. And when you put that kind of intention in the same place, it’s palpable.”

29.46 : “Well, after 22 years of watching various different leaders in rooms together, a few things have really become unmistakably clear. And the hunger for real connection has grown and not shrunk. And that’s why we have started to refer to the missing infrastructure as the relational aspects of humanity.”

Podcast music attribution: All I Did Was Wait For You: The Upbeat and Positive Track for Podcast or YouTube by kjartan_abel — https://freesound.org/s/543781/ — License: Attribution 4.0

Some creativity, productivity and gathering related content for the brain / heart:

“It offers a set of bold policy proposals, including hefty wealth taxes on billionaires, sharp reductions in working hours, a change in diets and a shift of investment from materially intense sectors like industry and mining to education and health. If these and other measures are taken, the report says 89% of the world population would see their incomes double by 2100 and global heating would be kept below 2C above the preindustrial average. The authors say their vision provides a positive alternative to the grim projections from far-right techno extractivists, nationalists and billionaires who claim the future will inevitably bring more fossil fuels, climate disruption and inequality.”
‘An equal and habitable world is possible’: academics set out sweeping vision for planetary survival | Environment | The Guardian

“I’ve been running my website Follow the Crypto since 2024, tracking the cryptocurrency industry’s influence on our democracy. The industry spent more than $130 million buying the 2024 elections, and the strategy worked. Pro-crypto politicians have proposed or passed industry-drafted legislation that threatens to open the floodgates to even more predatory crypto products, regulatory agencies were gutted, and crypto executives bought direct access to the President and positions in the White House. Now the artificial intelligence industry is following the same playbook.”
I’m launching Tech Influence Watch as AI follows crypto into politics

If you’re artistically inclined and like to travel, try a Vacation With an Artist | VAWAA (although no artists in Oceania yet).

A site to check ‘Is AI Profitable Yet?’.

Thank you again and please do get in touch with any ideas / comments / insights / suggestions etc. plus encourage others who care about ‘unlocking creative productivity by gathering humans effectively’ to subscribe also:

Published

#5 Sketching + Podcast With Elena de Kan | June 2026

5 imagination einstein quote - fireside.rs - newsletter image

Welcome to the fifth newsletter from fireside.rs, ‘unlocking creative productivity by gathering humans effectively.’

This past month, I had the good fortune to facilitate the first ever fireside.rs workshops (in Wellington and Christchurch).

This is a learning experience designed to expose participants to a multitude of collaboration shapes / models of gathering in an attempt to ignite their imagination to the array of possible ways to work and create and be together.

For me as a facilitator it was also an attempt to ‘sketch with humans’ and observe how others interact with the curricula, to deconstruct how to improve, what to drop, where to add etc.:

Timelapse from the first ever firesider.rs workshop

As illustrated above, the first and last shape participants experience is the conceptual fireside, where darkness is used as a design element to engender safety, trust and reflection. What happens in between is a myriad of human forms which can be adapted / adopted into future cooperative ventures (beyond the simple ‘meeting’ shape).

Deep gratitude to those who entered the space(s) with curiosity and kindness, thank you for your presence and contribution.

Here’s what a bunch of people said about it:

“Thank YOU DK!! Such a treat of an evening – all the gathering experiments you did on us all sparked so much connection and insight. My data-driven-nerdy-gathering-mindset absolutely loved how your creative flair hosted and created the spaces for everyone to experiment widely. THANK YOU!”
Antonia Milkop, Leadership Coaching & Facilitation + author of Team Spirit: the power of purposeful gatherings
“Invigorating evening DK. Thoroughly enjoyed the experience.”
Ian (Harv) Harvey, Founder at Collective Intelligence
“This was a great evening. Was so different to anything I’ve done before and really brought me out of my comfort zone. Thank you DK.”
Cory Hay, LLB/BCom Student | Social Innovator

Big thanks to host partners Goodlife Collective (Wellington event held at two/fiftyseven) plus Unchatter (Christchurch event held at Mt Pleasant Community Centre).

If you’re interested in bringing this unique offer to your community whilst it’s still a ‘no-fee’ workshop experience (just cover my expenses), please do get in touch and I look forward in collaborating with you in the future,

DK
fireside.rs Founder and Creative Gatherer

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

Where we feature, celebrate and learn from those who craft spaces for humans to actively belong and be, introducing:
5 Elena de Kan - fireside.rs podcast - episode image - small

SHOW NOTES & PULL QUOTES

00.55: “That means that we are trying to be a good, I would say, companion and guide through transformations in the space of professional work and education.”

05.23: “So I think here we went through a period of time that was actually quite long where sort of the extremes were tested and where this became a topic that was raised, I think, above the usual smaller crowd and maybe design, real estate, facility, strategic team to really a topic that CEOs were talking about, the press was talking about, the newspapers were talking about.”

06.11: “And now the most disruptive thing that is happening is certainly artificial intelligence and how that might shape and change further how we are working. That then I would say has quite an impact on things like attention, well-being, some fears have for sure sparked again both individually and collectively so I see a little bit of a parallality to what happened to the pandemic and again it raises questions around well-being and with that I come to the to I think the biggest topic and that is underlying of the other trends that we see around privacy, around working from home, around the collective coming together, everything that happens on a social sphere is that element of well-being and how much that aspect that we all rely on heavily, physically, emotionally, cognitively, being well is something that we all have an interest in, companies that we work for and we ourselves.”

08.40: “And if we think about modern workspaces, often we have, especially in open offices, we see rows and rows of desks. So here there’s a lot happening, of course, in front of you, behind you, next to you. And that also means that a part of your brain is always going to scan for danger from where you can’t see it. So that in return means we don’t have a lot of brain capacity left to actually, first of all, relax. Second of all, have our default mode network working well and then be able to actually form and articulate a thought and work well. So I think sometimes it comes down to those very basic aspects of what do we need physically to be safe.”

12.13: “I would say trust by default happens when vulnerability is possible. So only when people and systems at large are able and willing to be vulnerable to share something that feels a bit risky, maybe, to themselves, only then can you create trust, right?”

13.35: “So environment can never solve for everything that happens sort of on an emotional and cognitive level, but it can nudge you into different modes. It can nudge you to write something on the wall. It can allow you to actually see other people in the office. So if you have only built walls and all you see is a hallway and separate rooms, it’s hard to be, it’s hard to connect with what’s happening on the other side…”

16.49: “Now, we will always have some tensions because there will always be some people, some brains that really need impulse, that they need color, they need light, they need change, they need texture. And there will be other brains that really need the absence of all of this. So how do you decide, right? How do you design one space? I think there’s a few things, a few general principles that can help to not overcome this tension completely, but at least to mitigate that and make a lot of space. And one of them is biophilia.“

17.51: “Everybody feels good when you have a mix of texture, when you have biophilic elements. We need less medicine, less painkillers. When we look into nature, we learn better when we are in a biophilic or natural environment. So there’s lots of fascinating data, actually, how impactful this can really be. So when you design with nature as your role model, you cannot really go wrong.”

27.04: “Also, the representative aspect of a space is, I think, not to be forgotten. If you think about law firms, if you think about doctor’s offices, if you think about professor space, their office has a function that goes beyond the individual work that they do, that has a function also in shaping that identity and representing a certain role that is taken by them in the spaces that they operate in.”

30.42: “But think of an intern maybe or somebody who’s new in a role, sitting next to someone, they might have ideas, questions, wonders that they might just be able to ask in the space, like, “Hey, what are you doing here? Can I have another look at your screen, at your table at whatever you’re doing, they might never have the idea to even ask that question when they never share the same space.”

37.16: “I hope that as humans, we get strong in understanding where we actually need to defend space from AI. Where does it actually cost us more than we can gain from it?

Podcast music attribution: All I Did Was Wait For You: The Upbeat and Positive Track for Podcast or YouTube by kjartan_abel — https://freesound.org/s/543781/ — License: Attribution 4.0

Some creativity, productivity and gathering related content for the brain / heart:

“He once said that his aim was “to reach a level where I will never cease to make progress” and even in 2013, just before his retirement, he was arguing he still had much to do: “People say, ‘Sonny, take it easy, lean back. Your place is secure. You’re the great Sonny Rollins; you’ve got it made.’ I hear that and I think, ‘Well, screw Sonny Rollins. Where I want to go is beyond Sonny Rollins. Way beyond.’””
Sonny Rollins, colossus of jazz saxophone, dies aged 95 | Sonny Rollins | The Guardian

“Globally, the number one reason people say they go to the office isn’t to do their best work — it’s because they’re required to.”
Blueprint for a Better Office – Steelcase

If you’re a music artist check out Subvert as a cooperative-owned marketplace to sell directly to listeners (the platform itself is owned by the community who use it).

Some wicked Artemis II Mobile Wallpapers – NASA.

Thank you again and please do get in touch with any ideas / comments / insights / suggestions etc. plus encourage others who care about ‘unlocking creative productivity by gathering humans effectively’ to subscribe also:

Published