The Bis Key Chronicles

There are so many great people to hear at my company as part of the Visiting Speaker Series. This is mostly for Dad who used to work here too. I know he misses going to many of these.

ABSTRACT: What enables us to innovate, problem-solve and be happy, smart, resilient human beings?

Our ability to play. We’ve all seen the happiness in the face of a child while playing in the school yard, or the blissful abandon of a golden retriever racing with glee across a lawn. This is the joy of play: purposeless and all consuming and most of all: fun. Yet play is anything but trivial, it is a biological drive as integral to our health as sleep or nutrition.

Beyond play’s role in personal fulfillment, its benefits have profound implications for child development and the way we parent; education and social policy and even the future of our society. From new research suggesting how the direct role of three-dimensional-object play shapes our brains to animal studies showing the startling effects of the lack of play: it seems that play might be the most important work we can ever do.

BIO: A medical doctor and a scientific researcher, Dr. Stuart Brown was the founding clinical director at Mercy Hospital and Medical Center and an associate professor at UC San Diego prior to founding the National Institute for Play. Dr. Brown first recognized the importance of play by discovering its absence in the life stories of murderers and felony drunken drivers.

His years of clinical practice affirmed the importance and need for healthy play throughout the human life cycle, and his later evaluation of highly creative individuals revealed the centrality of playfulness to their success and well-being. Dr. Brown was the Executive Producer of the three part PBS Series “The Promise of Play” and his research in this field has been profiled in cover stories from National Geographic to the New York Times.

I’ve tentatively signed up to attend this one. And I’ve sent Suzy an email titled, “Teach me, baby.  :o)” so that she can show me how to get the book on my gen one Kindle that she gave me when I bought her the gen two model.