My nickname for it has been The Pit. A scene where anyone interested in excellence is welcome, despite or even because of unconventionalisms. Making nice-nice and authoritarism are expendable. Merit and discovery is currency although the ability to recognize such can be substituted, given sufficient social skills.

I too was noticing that theme when watching the climber documentary, probably because it was so similar to the Dogtown version (a skateboard documentary (as a kid I was a huge fan of Stecyk)). Even Anakin’s fictional childhood (pod racing) could be considered sceniusy.

My favorite example is in Ellington’s autobiography, where I first understood the long range impact of a scenius master at work, an MC of MCs. If you are familiar with jazz then your initial reaction to his account is likely to be “Who DIDN’T Duke know?”. His story about Tatum and New York is classic. But for me the most scenius moment was the tiny musicians club. You had to be hip just to know it existed, if you really wanted to cut then that was where you wanted to play (and learn). They started instrument nights. When they held a tuba night only a few tubas at a time could fit inside the club itself, so there were a bunch of tuba players sitting out on the curb, waiting for their shot. I can’t think of a more comical instance of excessive excellence.

We’re trying to do scenius (http://www.EcoReality.org) but are hurting due to the current recession. We own a small “starter ecovillage” property, and have purchased a larger one on the verbal assurance of the bank covering our butt while the old place sold. (This was after we had made financial disclosure to them.) Now they’re getting cold feet.

If anyone wanted to invest in a sustainable future in a very personal way — and become a component of our “scenius,” now is the time!

Thanks, Yuri. Building a community is a challenge, but it is a different challenge than building a scenius.

Kevin,

Again a great post ! Very useful for the team Mobile Monday Amsterdam which I am part of, especially the ways of nurturing the core values.

Your post reminded me of the books written by Richard Florida. The Creative Class and Who’s Your City seem to have similar drivers for success for cities. Tolerance, openness and emergence.

Similarly, your post might be relevant for online communities as well with The Well as a striking example in my view. And what about the different web 2.0 successes around at this moment in time ? How to ‘build’ a successful community ?

The corresponding question for online collaborative communities is interesting - what produces scenius in such communities? Which communities already have it? One place such communities are emerging is on FriendFeed - see e.g., http://friendfeed.com/rooms/the-life-scientists.

The late 1600s has got to be the ultimate example of “scenius”. Newton, Hooke, Wren et al in London and Huygens, Leibniz, Spinoza et al on the Continent worked together and in competition and communicated extensively.

They basically created the foundations for all modern science, mathematics and architecture in about 20 years.

Amazing stuff and a great concept but the name doesn’t seem “sticky”. It’s much better than “emergence” though, so we’ll see.

I meant to mention the Skunkworks story. I fixed the “lose” typo, and mention of radar. Thanks all.

Thanks, Phil. I’ll check out ‘Cities in Civilization’.

Sigh…I’ve been part of far too many scenes with scenius that have been killed, often with my help.

Thank you for the last paragraph of this post especially. I need the reminder often.

Check out the Skunkworks story — Lockheed Martin’s development program during the second half of the 20th century. Basically a small group of engineers who designed the most innovative, advanced and record-breaking aircrafts anywhere in the world… and did it over and over again for almost 50 years.

Radar wasn’t invented at MIT, although it was greatly improved there. Its genesis was in the work of Christian Hülsmeyer and Nikola Tesla, and it’s generally-accepted birth was at Britain’s Radio Research Station, under Robert Watson-Watt, a full five years before Building 20 got a radome.

As a Brit who used to drink in The Eagle and Child (although, alas, not with Tolkien, Lewis, et al.), I just wanted to point that out.

Bad guys use these techniques too, with spectacular success. See John Robb at: http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com

‘Cities in Civilization’ by Peter Hall is good on this kind of stuff at a city-wide level. It looks at cities that have proved to be crucibles of different kinds of creativity for specific periods in their history. Each chapter focuses on a different city, from Rome and Athens through to Silicon Valley.

I was slightly disappointed that it doesn’t analyse more closely exactly why these places were the right place at the right time, or see what they had in common, but it was still a good overview of a wide variety of amazing places and times.

http://www.amazon.com/Cities-Civilization-Peter-Hall/dp/0394587324/

Malcolm Gladwell had a good article on this phenomena where he talks about t-shirts, fashion, and the birth of American Apparel in LA.

http://www.gladwell.com/2000/20000424atshirt.htm

Actually I wrote a book about it (emergence), tens years before Stephen. It’s call Out of Control. Go to my name and click on books for a free online version.

There’s already a word for this - it’s called Emergence. Stephen Johnson wrote a book about it.

Paul Dirac once commented that in the mid-1920s, as quantum mechanics was being invented, even a second rate physicist could do first-rate work.

Just let it be. No rules. Right?

The question is whether we can produce a scenius consciously.

Yes, I meant to mention Los Alamos, which certainly qualifies.

Another example of a scenius would be the Los Alamos National Laboratory during the Manhattan Project.

I think this same notion could be assigned to many different serendipitous gatherings of greatness - from the basement of Big Pink to the locker room of the Edmonton Oilers in the 1980s.

You’re probably right, it can’t be wished into being, but surely there are things that will kill scenius outright. Trying to increase efficiency and/or eliminate plain good fun would seem to be the worst of those…