Learn How To Play From Your Kids!

Still glowing from the warmth of the SAP Inside Track Silicon Valley #SITsv which happened last Saturday. It hit me especially, when I got to my community engagement slide, where I show a map of all of the SAP Inside Tracks happening all over the world and realizing, yes that is one of the legacies my work helped create. I am in the middle of it and really enjoying it.

Great lineup of speakers and interaction with everyone. Best capture is Moya’s Storify Tweet Collection. Thanks to everyone who helped make #SITsv, especially:  Njål + Marienne, Mariza, Moya, Srini who delayed his family visit to India to be able to be part of our event. What dedication.

Ben Christensen captured my favorite comment during the Q&A portion of my Playful @ Work talk:

We can learn so much by watching how our children play with joy and abundance. Let’s join them more often with the Improv comedy rule number one: Every idea is embraced by “Yes, and …”

It reminded me of the time when I organized Sandwich and Play [once written up for Sharable.net] in our old neighborhood. I was tired of the play date diplomacy and gave the word out to the neighbors that we would meet every Wednesday 6pm on the elementary school playground. Bring a sandwich, to feed the hungry mouths and then we play.

The kids would wolf down their sandwiches and off they go to play. The parents would bring some wine too and enjoy the company of fellow adults and mostly talk.

Only sometimes we would get everyone and come up with a game that all young and old could play together: Rolling down the little hill on the red wagons, skateboards, scooters or anything else that has wheels for example.

Thinking back, that was the highlight for the kids, when the grown ups were part of the game. We don’t do that often enough.

One of the problems is, that we don’t know how to play as large groups of different ages. How cool that there is a whole festival going on this week in San Francisco to help us get more ideas about exactly that: Come out and Play! I talked to the festival director Heather Browning the other day and for the first time they are going to have some talks on Friday Night too, which I will not miss. Come out and Play!

People were asking me for my slides and here they are:

Update: Thanks to Moya’s excellent #SITsv summary post we have the recording of my Playful @ Work session. I will update this post with the link once I have it.

My favorite tweet of the day again from Ben Christensen capturing our joined hoverboard ride with the hashtag: #carpool

Go out and play together!