I pride myself on being creative, or at least my attempts to be creative. I respect people and companies who don’t do business as usual and love to inspire creativity in their employees. I HATE boring!! Why be boring- I ask?  Why not take some risks?  I get ideas popping in my head all the time. Things we could do at Ottawa. I love taking things I see that are emotionally moving and unique and figuring out how I can apply that to Ottawa. Sometimes I take it too far and get ideas that are what I call “half-ideas.” These are the ideas that get my heart racing for just a second before the balloon bursts. Ideas that are so brilliant I can’t keep them to myself, I HAVE to tell someone! And, after I tell someone, I realize just how dumb they are. I call them half-ideas because sometimes my ideas never fully emerge and hang there, dangling off a cliff in my mind.    So, the “Half Ideas” series is about those ideas that pop in my head that are just unrealistic, lame, weird, nonsensical, etc that I momentarily thought were brilliant and ABSOLUTELY necessary to Ottawa’s social media strategy. Maybe you can use them? Facebook Scarves  (half-idea) How half-idea was formed: I was watching “An Education.” (Great movie) The main character, who is an English school girl, was wearing a striped scarf. Similar to the scarves worn in Harry Potter   Flash of brilliance: Since Ottawa is a school (just like the one Harry Potter goes to…not) what if we gave our Facebook fans scarves(in Ottawa colors) to wear? And, you could only get them on Facebook!? Everyone could wear them around campus and we could take photos and we could be the SCHOOL WITH THE FACEBOOK SCARVES!!    Why it won’t work: Once I shared my flash of brilliance with my mom, she told me how bad it was. Too much money, probably no interest in wearing scarves and…why??? So this idea is going into my mental vault (and on my blog) of half-ideas. Tucked away in a crate just like the ones in Indiana Jones where they might be found to be useful one day.