I went to an impromptu night-time session called a "Nite Flite" on Monday night and had a terrific experience. Maybe I found this so terrific because I had a couple of beers before I went, but I've had a lot of non-drinking hours since then to think about it, and I still think it's great.

The presenter (again, it was Jon Pearson, the Robin Williams of creativity consulting) had us spend 15 seconds writing on a piece of paper a thought we had never had before. Later, at almost the end of the session, he asked us to turn the paper over and, again in about 15 seconds, write down a thought about the meaning of life.

Then at his instruction we crumpled up our papers, tossed them up in the air like Mary Tyler Moore's beret, and left the room! That was the end!

Later I talked to a fellow participant who said this exercise can be useful in ideation sessions and brainstorming meetings if everybody also is asked to pick up one of the random pieces of crumpled paper and use whatever is written there as a starting point from which to create.

Now I realize I found this so powerful because it reminded me of blogging. Isn't this what we're doing?! Writing bits of thoughts, both profound and not so profound, and sending them out for strangers to pick up at random and use as a starting point for their own thoughts....which they then send out too, and even better, an interesting conversation can be started between random blogging strangers (or would that be random strange bloggers!)....blogging of course is a much better distribution method than crumpling up your written thoughts and tossing them into the wind, or even making a paper airplane out of them and flying them off to Buffalo or wherever....!