1. The Problem With Creativity

    A follower on Twitter @theotherpete sent me this link via @grhartfordarts

    “The Creativity Crisis” by Newsweek http://ow.ly/2dlZ8

    It’s a great article that addresses our educational system’s failure to teach kids creative problem solving.

    This article ended up spurring a question on our site.
    http://ideamass.com/question/how-can-innovation-and-creativity-be-integrated-into-all-levels-of-education

    In my comment, I stated that I think it should be a required class. What I meant to say is that it should be woven into every class. Creative problem solving isn’t limited to one field, it’s vital to all.

  2. Is Someone Posting Photos of Your Children?

    I saw something the other day on Facebook that really alarmed me. Indirectly, it did have something to do with their privacy settings. A young girl who worked at what I can only assume was a daycare, posted a picture of the kids she was taking care of. I immediately thought “Is that legal? What if those were my kids? And this worker is posting photos of them to her profile!”. Depending on her own privacy settings this could be open to the world. It wouldn’t be hard to track down where and when she worked, scout the place, and possibly grab a child. With Facebook’s geolocation features pending, this concern is also somewhat related to the uproar over http://pleaseRobMe.com regarding user safety when posting location data. I have no idea if there are predators out there who would go to this much trouble, but it poses the question, should there be restrictions or guidelines when posting photos of children online? If nothing else, something preventing people from posting photos of other people’s children without some sort of approval. This might not even be possible without better facial recognition or automated algorithms, but I think it’s only going to get worse until we start to address it.

  3. Making Things Better

    ideaMASS isn’t just a Q&A site. It’s a place where people can express their passion for change and try to make a difference.

    My name is Kevin Palmer and I am one of the four founding partners of ideaMASS.com. I know this blog is a bit delayed, but we felt it was important in documenting our journey. Hopefully it will help other startups out there by sharing what did and didn’t work for us. We want to keep this as honest and open as possible.

    ideaMASS.com is the result of a collaboration between HEAVYGIANT.com and TheParagraphProject.com. I was talking with my HEAVYGIANT business partner Hardeep Khehra, about the idea of a site that allowed users to collaboratively brainstorm ideas. We felt that everything currently out there was pretty weak. I mentioned this idea to a friend who had worked in Advertising for many years to see if she thought it would be a viable tool. She said she thought it would, but she was somewhat vague. A day or two later she revealed that her husband Dan Carlton and his biz partner Dave Alsobrooks of The Paragraph Project had been working on a similar idea and may want to collaborate to share resources and ideas. The Paragraph Project had actually begun development on a similar theme two years prior. But they weren’t happy with the direction and the project was shelved. We immediately began working on integrating our concepts. The result was ideaMASS.com.

    In it’s current state, ideaMASS is a place for people to share their big ideas to solve big problems. We try to post questions that affect the masses. Often, those are very difficult questions to answer. But we have faith that we will find our audience. People who are willing to spend a couple minutes sharing their insights in hopes that it will spark a change for the better. Our biggest hurdle right now is in finding that audience. So any help in that regard is greatly appreciated.

    There is still a long way to go, and we have a lot of ideas for further developing the site. We are talking about options for rewarding our top contributors. We are also working on a new area of the site to help with the ideation process. There will also be tighter integration with Facebook and Twitter.

    Our dream is that ideaMASS will help to change something for the better. Even if it’s just one thing, we will have succeeded. So submit your ideas and questions, and help make a change.