The OpenMind conference in Tampere is full of people who seem to have a very open attitude. This leads me to Carl Rogers and his Openness to Experience -thinking and how coding (programming) can be a flow-like experience.
"It has been found that when the individual is "open" to all his experience, then his behavior will be creative, and his his creativity may be trusted to be essentially constructive. (Rogers, 252,1954) Good news for those who are worried about ethics of an hacker ! Let's hope that there will be more and more open-minded ones ;-)
Abraham Maslow speaks about self-actualising people. Actually, he found it necessary to distinguish "special talent creativeness" from "self-actualizing (SA) creativeness. But...what does this SA creativess mean? Maslow explaines:
"All my subjects were relatively more spontaneous and expressive than average people. They were more "natural" and less controlled and inhibited in their behavior, which seemed to flow out more easily and freely and with less blocking and self-criticism. This ability to express ideas and impulses without strangulation and without fear or ridicule turned out to be an essential aspect of SA creativeness." (Maslow, 136, 1968)
We are getting to the flow concept of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. I earlier went through some indicators of flow, like disappearing self-conscious and autotelic activity. Within OpenMind conference, I have been interested in flow in coding. Benno Luthiger has some classical findings related to Open Source programmers. 
In Dublin IADIS Mobile Learning Conference I met Daire O'Broin who has studied Java-programming and flow-like experiences within it. Measuring these experiences is not simple, interviews and observations of subjects are not necessarly reliably. Csikszentmihalyi developed the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) to measure flow. ESM is like a questionnairy that user fills in randomly and reports his/her flow levels. Daire and Siobhán Clarke made a mobile artefact (tool) of this ESM and I still think that their research is remarkable! One of their key finding is:"In order to get a good match between the challenges of the task and the skills of the student most of the time, the (Java programming related) task repository needs to be extensive". Check their research paper here.
To my understanding, flow is also linked to reflection and meditation.
Finally, almost every city in the globe has a 'Creative City Program'. To me, their topics and agendas are very abstract and high level. These programs are rarely based on creativity research or touch subject like flow (in programming). I wrote about these dilemmas in the local Aamulehti newspaper, discussing about the Creative Tampere (Luova Tampere) Program (article only in Finnish, sorry).
I hope that some day there will be an extension or a sub-conference to OpenMind, focusing on creativity and open innovation. Perhaps with educational and psychological 'Open to Experience' and flow topics :-)
Any comments about the connections of flow, creativity and coding?
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