Edward Reed makes a very important differentation between primary experiences and secondary experiences.He argues that through the enormous technological progress ” there has been considerable regress in meaningful communication among people. He claims that many of us spent much of our work time in this age of information pushing buttons,and responding like machines to symbols that are created by someone else, symbols that hold no meaning for us.”

Mark Hansen, Lego Company and guestlecturer for the European Centre for the Experience Economy spoke in Umbrie for executives and for the Hospitality Sales Management Association International. In Mark’s view the customer of the future wants to be the designer, and the marketeer of his own desgined products. So what’s the changing role for Lego Company in this? Listen to Mark’s lecture, for members only

Ronald Dalderup of Philips lighting showed us the process that they followed and his view on experience. One of the things he told was that the opportunity for customers to express themselves and their need to connect with others are becoming more important everyday.

Weblogging as a new tool for self expression. Hans Mestrum is one of the front line webloggers with his weblog Hans On Experience. He gave a workshop for the European Centre for the Experience Economy. You can watch the full video of his workshop in Dutch. Hans will give a new workshop on the special day off line and on line experiences on the 8th of December 2006. By clicking on Read More you can go to the video and the sheets of the presentation.

The 12th of May drs. Anna Snel will elaborate on her findings so far concerning her Integrative approach to Experiences at the University of Amsterdam Business School at 12.00-13.30 (Roeterseilandcomplex, Nieuwe Prinsengracht 130, building G, room 2.02). Free for members
Register by e-mail, for details PrimaVera

Our society is changing to a system of communicative self-steering according to the philosophy of Arnold Cornelis. It becomes more important to learn at the level of communicative self-steering besides learning at the level of the social ruling system. Education should contribute to that. This paper gives a view on education in a society in which people live thogether according to the logic of communicative self-steering and in which an economy of experiences is upcoming. Download article (in Dutch)

On the 31st of march Human Emergence/Klaar om te wenden organised a meeting with very interesting thinkers and speakers Ervin Laszlo( Club of Budapest) Video presentation English, Don Beck(Spiral Dynamics) Video presentation English, Herman Wijffels (Videopresentation Dutch) and Peter Merry (audio presentation) the video’s are made by Henk Jan Winkeldermaat and also recommended to read the summaries of Hans Mestrum.(hansonexperience.nl) See also other initiatives Vision 21.nl(NRC next of today05-04-06, www.nrcnext.nl)

Yolanda Eijgenstein spoke about innovation in leadership at the HSMAI conference

Today Albert Boswijk presented an elevator speech at Event.Hosted by Sprekersplatvorm. He talked about the dilution of the concept experience. The only way to look at experiences is  to start from the perspective of the individual . He differentiated between personal,social and economical experiences. Experience economy is a symptom of deeper structural changes in society. We are moving from a social ruling system to a society where deep communicative selfsteering and selfexpression are going to be the key values. Companies have to rethink their role in the process of making meaning by the individual. Read excerpt of the book See pictures below. Download presentation English or Dutch.

“Many views on the experience economy start with the behavior of actors in society at large and try to understand and explain their dynamics. In other words, the focus is on the external, objective, physical world of experience. But since experiences are inherently personal and only exist in our own internal, subjective, mental universe it is interesting to start from the inside and see what cognitive science can tell us about the central role of experience and story. This article is therefore quite literally an inside story about the experience economy and the pervasiveness of story and text.”
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The main questions we will discuss in the sections of this paper are: 1) What is the nature of human experience? 2) What is the process of creating meaning? 3) What are the characteristics of meaningful experiences? 4) What are the starting points in bringing about meaningful experiences? 5) What are the design principles of meaningful experiences 6)What are the stages in designing and developing meaningful experiences?
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