Ideas come from people, so people must come first

What do you do when you're out of ideas or don't know where to go?  One of the things I do is to just let go of everything and go with the flow, with as little inhibitions as possible.  One of my hobbies is to just write nonsensical poems.  I have no rules other than it has to sound like a story, even if the story makes no sense, and it has to sound fun, and fun to me, is something that is rhythmic.  I often start with an object, the first visual thing that comes to my mind.  So the other day, when I decided to do this, I thought of a pecan tree - The pecan tree to be specific.  And from there, one just lets the stream of consciousness flow and look at what comes out the other end.  I always write the poems with a pen and usually it's illegible scribbles complete with arrows, sketches, etc. 

The Pecan Tree

I’m just a little pecan tree,

          but one day,

                   you will see how tall I will be.

And when that day comes,

          I’ll look around and see the tops of all the trees

                   that were once taller than me.

I’ll be covered with blossoms in spring

          with birds, bees and bugs around me, flying.

In the summer, I’ll have leaves, plenty!

I’ll give you shade

          when you’re hot and thirsty.

And everywhere you look,

          there will be pecans, pecans, PECANS!

My friends the squirrels will come to see me.

          Lonely, I will not be.

If you come fast, there will still be some left

          for you to make pecan pie.

So wait for me

          One day, I will be a big pecan tree.

I'm certainly no poet, but this was not written for anybody else but myself, so it doesn't matter.  I'm not even sure if the poem has any deep meaning to it.  But the point is, I made something out of three seemingly boring words - The Pecan Tree.  I generated an idea, some sort of story, some way to personalize or visualize a pecan tree.

Not too long ago, a few students gathered in the room by mine and somehow we got talking about ideas. I think one student had just gotten some data for the first time and asked me what he should do with it.  Indeed, what to do with data is probably one of the first and most challenging questions a student will ask. After all, in school, we're taught how to repeat and remember, never really how to create and think and identify our own problems and solve them.  I had the same question when I started grad school.  I was not sure what to say to the student, but it dawned on me that we should play a game.  I drew a somewhat messy triangle on some scratch paper and laid it out on the table.  I then asked each of them to add to the drawing.  I think everyone was shocked because they couldn't understand what I was trying to do.  I told them I just wanted them to finish the story, finish the drawing.  And of course, they were hesitant, even scared because even though what I was asking was so simple, I think they feared that I would be judging them.  So we took turns adding to the drawing, each person building on the previous persons integrated product.  This is what came about (oddly, we all signed the group drawing).

The part that I started was the triangular shape in the center.  But with six of us, from undergrads to graduate students to post-docs, this is what we generated in a couple minutes.  Honestly, it looks pretty disgusting to me, and clearly the product of a bunch of guys (there are more women in our group but for some reason on this day all the women were away).  I'm not even sure what it is, but the point of all this was that my initial triangle was at face value something useless.  But by just letting things flow freely, as a group, we generated something from, well, seemingly nothing.  So what I was trying to say was that if you have data, you should and can do something with it, as long as you are not afraid.  You can analyze it to evaluate its quality.  If the data really turn out to be of poor quality, it's not the end of the world. You should be able to learn from that mistake, and move forward.  If the data are of good quality, then you should be able to tell a story.  Now the first story, like this first group drawing, may indeed be atrocious, but until you allow yourself to do it, you can't move forward. Because once you start the process of interpreting, or telling the story, or finishing the drawing, you start to see the bigger picture and the direction you're going.  And if it turns out you are going down the wrong path, you can edit, by fine-tuning or by overhauling and starting over.  The key is that whatever you see in nature, whatever data you collect, it is not worth anything until you tell the story.  And where the story goes may depend on your experiences, your biases, your baggage.  The drawing above probably says a lot about who was at the table at the time. The final outcome is often something you never would have predicted from the beginning.  To me, there is nothing more exciting than seeing the outcome and being surprised.

So data come from nature, but ideas (and I'm not making any judgment of whether it's a good or bad idea) come from people. If you want to generate lots of ideas, then you invest in people and nurture their creativity.  And just like the communal drawing above, when you have an environment where people can interact with each other, they start to share ideas, influence each others thinking, amplifying the number and pace of idea generation that you wouldn't otherwise ever be able to do by yourself.  You can't predict how one person may take a story, which means you can't predict how that person will then influence another person. You can't predict how many dead-ends there may be or how dead-ends, because they steer you into a different direction, actually help lead you in the right direction, indirectly.   But you can, if the environment is good, be assured that something interesting will come out in the end.  Even dead-ends can be interesting.

----
on that note, this afternoon, I stopped by one of the student offices, looked out the window into our tall Water Oak tree, which separates Space Science from Earth Science, and wondered out loud, how nice it would be to put a little bridge between the two buildings, right through the canopy of the water oak tree.  Wouldn't that be nice?  A small wooden bridge, with a little rope for balance, perhaps a zip line, you'd be one with the trees and if you built a treehouse or two - water oak is tall enough - you could even take a break as you walked across the bridge. How nice it would be to take a short break in the trees.