No one understands the “magic of the dance” more than TEDxPeachtree 2010 presenter Beth Mynatt, professor and associate dean in the College of Computing at Georgia Tech.  And recently her unique approach netted Beth and her colleague Ali Adibi a Georgia Cancer Research Fund 2011 Cancer Research Award.

According to a press release issued by the university, the grant, which is funded by citizen donations, “will support a collaborative effort among Georgia Tech, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, the Georgia Department of Community Health, Morehouse School of Medicine and IBM to develop a distributed model of the pediatrics system in Georgia.  The goal is to better understand how care processes, information and resources flow through the system.”

This important initiative is a perfect expression of Beth’s 2010 TEDxPeachtree talk about the “magic of the dance” – the synergies that happen when personal creativity meets technological innovation. The talk also shared three steps to making the personal give-and-take of invention a key factor in success:

1)      Train your intuition to design the dance.  Learn what people want to do, what they can do; then, design technology around those needs.

2)      Leave space in your design for the dance.  Leave space for the uses to finish your invention.  Let the relationships you have with your collaborators fill that space with real-world ideas.

3)      When the magic occurs, the technology disappears.

In Beth’s words, “If you want to invent technology to change the world, you’d better learn how to dance.  Understand your partner, give them space to shine.  When it’s all said and done, the dance will be theirs and you will have been successful.”

Our congratulations to Beth on this award and the new and important initiative that it funds!  Fellow TEDxPeachtreesters, if you have a “dance” of your own, we would love hearing from you.

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